“each piece of work is a journey through the personal, a means to identify and translate experience into an external manifestation”

Suzan Kostanich is a fibre artist living in Taranaki, New Zealand. Her work has developed over four decades of self directed learning and exploration of textile and fibre techniques.

Retirement has enabled her to extend her practice from part to full time and has resulted in further development of her range of work, which encompasses both 2 and 3 pieces.

Primarily process driven her work is a combination of felting, hand stitch, print and collage, the process begins with wet felting merino and kozo fibres together which provides a laminated surface for further development.The unpredictable nature of this process ensures each piece is unique, the completion work is intuitively sensed “the work speaks to me”.

Looking closely at her work you will often find a layer of very fine hand stitching beneath the finished surface, this is done prior to adding colour and involves many hours of painstakingly adding a stitched pattern to increase the richness of the surface design. This slow making imbues each work with intention and thought and underpins Suzan’s overall approach to her work, attention to detail and ensuring all materials are archival.

Thematically Suzan’s work is thoroughly researched prior to beginning , the range of themes is informed by her rich cultural background of Pasifika, Asian and European origins her work weaves together these different elements in the hope that it will echo in others the richness and harmony and that can be achieved when these elements work in synchronicity.