About

BioGraphy

Mallory Zondag is a mixed-media fiber artist and artist educator. Her experience with textiles while in art school led her to create both independent and community sculpture through a variety of fiber art mediums. She explores deeply personal and connective universal stories through the meditative and hands-on practices of wet felting, weaving, sculpting, and stitching, seeking to bring the ephemeral into physical being.  The growth and decay of the natural world, the duality of discomfort and attraction we feel towards it, and humanity's place within this dichotomy informs her dimensional textures and sculptural pieces.

Zondag’s work has been exhibited at The Banana Factory, Bethlehem, PA; The Allentown Art Museum, PA: The International Biennial of Textile Art Scythia, Ukraine; View Arts and Culture Center, Old Forge, NY; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA; Cornell University, Ithica, NY; Towson University, MD; Ceres Gallery, NYC, NY: and Main Street Studio, Ballston Lake, NY. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at Acadia National Park, The Allentown Art Museum, and The Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY. 

Zondag shares her passion for handmade one-of-a-kind textiles through various educational programs and residencies. Many of these programs involve a collaborative element where the entire school works together on a single project. These programs bring an exciting hands-on artistic experience to the students as well as emphasizing community and collaboration through art. As a resident artist in over twenty schools and community organizations she has led her Fiber Living Wall program where hand felted wool living walls are collaboratively created with students of all ages and abilities. The final sculpture finds a permanent home within the school or community space. She has been the recipient of a NY Statewide Capital Regrant for Independent Artists and a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition for Creative Excellence and Support in Pennsylvania. Her work is in private collections and The Allentown Art Museum. She studied Fashion Design at Pratt Institute (BFA 2016).

artist statement

My artwork is an investigation into humanity’s tenuous relationship with the natural world. I am addressing our fascination and fear of our own planet through soft sculpture, a medium that from a distance conveys comfort, but upon closer inspection can relay hard and uncomfortable truths. How we delight in natural spaces but we are constantly interfering with and destroying them for the sake of our own desires. I use natural, found and recycled materials to connect my sculpting process to the earth, both what it gives naturally and what we as humans have done with it in the creation of waste and plastic. In the age of the Anthropocene, there is no denying our impact on our living planet, we are living with the consequences of climate change, species extinction and habitat destruction. I look to tell stories of our inexorable connections to the earth, how dependent we are on a healthy planet and the reality of how our choices in the modern era affect that health. I am constantly using motifs of the natural world to reflect personal and universal narratives, to weave internal experiences with the external world to reflect the interconnected nature of being alive on this earth.