About

Marian Bantjes is a Canadian artist, designer, typographer, letterer and writer. She was born in 1963, raised in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and has spent most of her adult life in and around Vancouver, B.C.

From the late 1980s to the early 1990s Marian started painting anonymous figures with flat patterned backgrounds and often patterning on the figure but without form or material folds. An interest in patterns and particularly in non-conforming, variable patterns led her into print-making in the mid 1990s, where she printed in intaglio-type or silkscreen to create single units, vary them in colour and then assemble them in to larger pieces with variation throughout.

Patterns and ornament then became a large part of her commercial design work from 2004–2019. These themes, along with custom-made typography (including typographic systems that also work as variable patterning) are what made her famous in the design world and resulted in the publication of two books by Thames & Hudson. I Wonder, an “illuminated manuscript” of essays and experimental design was published in 2010 (shortlisted for the British Design of the Year award in 2011), with an expanded paperback edition published in 2018. Marian’s extensive monograph of work, Pretty Pictures, was published in 2013 (named one of the best 20 art books in the past 20 years by BookForum).

In 2018 Marian began working on her “sticker paintings” which use mass-produced stickers (most of them vintage) to create patterned allegories. As patterns, her work had always been edgeless, but in 2020 she became interested in the idea of “figure/ground” in the form of the vase: an eternal and near-universal depiction in art.

Working in mixed media on large (42” x 52”) sheets of paper, Marian painted seven vase paintings in which the vase is always flat black representing a void or absence-of-vase, but out of which comes a series of abstract, ornamental forms. In 2022 she returned to the sticker paintings to create more vase forms in that medium.

At the beginning of 2023 Marian started working with the AI program Midjourney, and soon discovered its ability to generate many multiples of the “same” but different things, and understood it as the next step in her exploration of patterns and ornament that varies throughout. She continues to use the vase-void as a grounding point for the emanations, which are digital “collages” made of hundreds of AI generated images.

Design

Honours

Marian Bantjes has an honorary degree from Emily Carr University (2011), was admitted to the international design organization Alliance Graphique International in 2008, and awarded a Fellowship of DesCan (Designers of Canada) in 2022.

Collections

Her design work has been collected by the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York; the LA County Museum of Art (LACMA), and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Exhibitions

March 2015
Several pieces included in the exhibit “Framing Fraktur” at the Philadelphia Free Library, Philadelphia, PA.

June–October 2014
Solo exhibit at the Musée de design et d’arts appliqués contemporains (mudac), in Lausanne, Switzerland.

June 2013
Featured in “Work at Play” (about 30 pieces) at the Chicago Design Museum, Chicago, IL.

2012–2103
Included in the exhibit “Graphic Design: Now in Production”, at the Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, MN; Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, New York, NY; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston, TX.

September 2011–January 2012
Included in Deep Surface: Contemporary Ornament and Pattern, at CAM Raleigh, Raleigh, NC.

September 2011
One of Wallpaper* Magazine’s “150 Movers, Shakers and Makers” from the past 15 years.

March–June 2011
Solo exhibit @ OnSite Gallery at OCAD, Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto, ON, Canada

July–October 2010
Centraal Museum Utrecht, Netherlands in “Saved by droog” collection.

April 2010
One of 14 designers represented in droog’s “Saved by droog” exhibit at the Salone del Mobile in Milan, Italy.

April 2010
Also represented in Wallpaper* Magazines exhibit at the Salone del Mobile in Milan, Italy.

December 2009
Included in the exhibit “Lubalin Now,” at The Cooper Union, School of Art, New York, NY.

Jan–Feb 2009
Solo exhibit at the University Art Gallery, Department of Art and Design, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA

March 2008
Included in the exhibit “Rococo: The Continuing Curve” at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum (Smithsonian), New York, NY.

May 2006
Included in the Sacramento Art Directors and Artists Club’s “Spoken with Eyes” exhibit at the UC Davis Design Museum in Sacramento, CA.

April 2006
One of 10 Canadian designers represented in Wallpaper* Magazine’s “Global Edit” exhibit at the Salone del Mobile in Milan, Italy.

In 2010, Marian Bantjes spoke at TED.

For more information see https://bantjes.com/about/