Mania Dajnak

Biography
I was born in Philadelphia in a working class neighborhood to parents who emigrated from Poland after World War 11. I grew up in a very traditional Polish family--Polish was my first language-- and I attended Polish schools until I was a teenager. I received a B.F.A. in Printmaking from Tyler School of Art and an M.F.A. in Painting and Printmaking from The University of Pennsylvania.

Before moving to the Midwest, I had a studio in an old candy store in that same Polish neighborhood, and I also taught dance to children and performed and choreographed for a dance group. During this time, I spent a year in Poland on a Fulbright at the Academia Sztuk Pieknych in Krakow, and I also studied dance and folklore with the Krakus Ensemble. I also received a Pennsylvania Council of the Arts Individual Artist Grant.

Since leaving Philadelphia, I've lived in Wisconsin and Tennessee and have been in Ohio for almost five years. I currently teach Drawing and Foundation Design at The University of Toledo as well as Bowling Green State University and Owens Community College while raising three young children.

Statement
In an earlier series of prints titled Bearings, I arranged figures interacting within an environment delineated by geometric slab-like structures. Early in the series, the slabs formed stable, wall-like structures; later they were portable objects, props to be rearranged, thus defining their own space and mobility. Toward the end of the series, the slabs and figures deconstructed and fell apart. The images related to the definitions of bearing(s): a carrying or conveying; locating oneself in relationship to other things; manner in which one conducts oneself--carriage, posture, gesture; patient endurance; reference (has some bearing on)...

In my current efforts to construct images, I'm monoprinting-- making one image only at a time rather than an edition, because of the immediacy. Rather than using stencils, I paint the ink directly on a silk screen and push the ink through with a squeegee in successive stages. In the final stage, I use black to edit and pull everything together; thus, creating a theatrical environment with limited props of figures and shapes.

Beginning without any preconceived ideas or sketches, I allow the forms and figures to emerge with their own freedom. The results sometimes bewilder the viewer, as well as me, but what transpires is a dialogue of continuous responses to what I have done intentionally and what occurs accidentally. Each work is thus a surprise that has been invited to happen, and only later is subjected to evaluation. Why these images and not other, perhaps more carefully calculated contenders? Poet William Stafford got it best when he said, "I think it's because these chosen ones must survive as they were made, by the reckless impulse of a fallible and susceptible person."

Figures leap, images swirl
Among the floating shards
Of what used to be walls.

Scenes and snippets of myself
Descend onto the black stage
Of what used to be edited.

Layers of caverns stack
Above and below the levels
Of what used to be an assemblage of slabs.

Who are they? Now elusive
Among the silvery ebony marks
Of what used to be flat unknowns.

They long to be perched again
Below the inward surface
Of what used to be fallen platforms.