KARA CEKUTA
Staff Writer
On Sept. 15, the award-winning illustrator Andrea Dezsö presented to a small audience at the Fredonia Technology Incubator, followed by her gallery opening in the Marion Art Gallery later that night.
After a brief glance at her work, it is obvious that Dezsö has fully embraced the art of experimentation. She has worked in all types of media, from embroidery to mosaics.
Dezsö has a bachelor’s degree in graphic design and typography, as well as a master’s degree in visual communication from the Hungarian University of Design in Budapest, Hungary.
Although Dezsö comes from a graphic design background, she rarely uses a computer for her work.
“I mostly used my hands, so I do a lot of things by hand, and then I use graphic design for production to layer things and to composite things,” said Dezsö.
The Marion Gallery exhibit featured personalized embroideries, mesmerizing ceramics and a spooky animation. The general atmosphere of the exhibit was eerie and mystical, connecting Dezsö’s work back to her childhood.
“It’s from since I was a child that I was very interested in fairy tales, especially the scarier ones, and then when I was a teenager I think not so much. [Then] when I was an adult it came back, but I had this very intense previous connection with them as a child, so it brought back memories of them being read to me and being really worried about them like many of the Grimm fairy tales,” she said. “If the kids eat too much, the parents take them to the forest and leave them there because they are a nuisance and so those kinds of things were worrisome, and I was wondering, ‘Is that going to happen to us?’”
Dezsö also personally illustrated a book cover for the Grimm fairy tales.
“There was a clear, crafted, well thought out direction to her imagery, almost as if it were arranged and crafted like text on a page,” said Justin Gennaro, senior BFA graphic design major, on Dezsö’s work.
Gennaro was inspired by the diversity of Dezsö’s work.
“I feel that Deszö transcends the boundaries of a designer strictly working with inks and papers. Her cut pieces speak volumes, while so do her embroidery pieces, her pop-up books and so on,” he said. “So to sum that up, I feel that her process is very creative and unrestricted. She lets her mind take her to new places where she is free to try new techniques, styles and mediums for different projects.”
Throughout the lecture, Dezsö explained that her goal is to mesh her work and her life together. This can be seen through many of her pieces, especially the embroidery series “Lessons from my Mother,” which depicts different falsehoods that her mother would tell her as a child.
Jesse Anna, senior BFA graphic design major, expressed her appreciation for the incorporation of Dezsö’s personal life into her work.
“The way she can mix her life and her work is, I think, every artist’s dream. They say if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life, and I think that Dezsö is the perfect example of that,” she said.
Growing up in Romania, Dezsö’s creativity was very much limited. In her community, “individuality was not very much tolerated or encouraged,” she said. She gained much of her inspiration by “travelling and seeing things that look very different in the environment, like buildings or plants.”
Deszö has illustrated for “The New York Times” and “The Washington Post.” Her work can also be seen in the New York City subway system.