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Natalie Wiersema is a mixed media artist from Mundelein, Illinois studying at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She creates mainly with video, illustration, and animation on topics like environmental sustainability, nature, and world culture. She will graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Kinetic Imaging: Animation in May 2026.
She has shown video work in many screenings and exhibitions at Western Michigan University and across Michigan such as ARTPrize Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo Art Hop with Public Media Network, TOPIA Art and Technology Festival in Jackson MI, Short Shorts Fest in Coldwater MI, and has had four Jury-Accepted Submissions at Western Michigan University Richmond Center Albertine Monroe-Brown Gallery. She finishes her time in her Undergraduate Studies being awarded Presidential Scholar for Art for the 25-26 class.
She is currently developing her senior animated film, No Dawn Until Dusk. After graduation, she looks for employment in marketing or entertainment where she can apply her creative skills especially in animation, illustration and video, and find continued learning and improvement.
Artist Statement:
I am a mixed media artist who works mainly in video, illustration, and animation on topics like environmental sustainability, nature, and world culture. My work is research based and explores my relationship with the natural functions of earth and its interconnectedness with human structures. I am fascinated by ecological processes that don’t come with clear visual associations and I discover those pictures.
My passion for environmental sustainability and nature has inspired me to use my art as a tool for communication. It’s a mode of transport for these important topics that can reach audiences in new ways. My research has centered on prairie conservation, indigenous land to modern land transformation, carbon emissions and ozone, the arctic tundra, and energy.
New media is a powerful tool that helps me communicate my concepts freely, imperfectly, and interpretively. I have come to appreciate the practice of leaving humanity in my craftsmanship as a powerful force in my work flow that allows me to feel that my product is complex and real. My work is responsive to the materials. Pen and paper animation allows me to best demonstrate a human touch to drawing and motion, as seen in Sensational which explores both this method and concept. The simplicity of the black and white limited mark making has a special way of bringing focus. I find its motion more raw, textural and pleasing to the eye. Similarly, brush strokes tell a story through free-flow and instinctive motion that I prefer in my animation.
Through studies of folk art, I incorporate traditional aesthetics to new media works. I enjoy utilizing pattern; a historically common method of decorating any functional item or place. Remembering these practices in my own art making helps me bring valuable character to videos like Pulp Culture or Knots. Pen, charcoal, paint, organic materials (fruit, seashells, foliage), video, and photography all work together to layout each story.
My work will continue to show my artistic hand in ways that feel natural to me. Natural materials, varieties of drawing mediums, color, pattern, and technology will have recurring collaboration in order to communicate my research and my own perspectives on the earth’s symbiosis with humanity.
Contact:
Email: nataliewiersema@yahoo.com
Instagram: @nataloeart, @nataliewiersema
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-wiersema/