The work of Marian Bantjes

Marian Bantjes, the celebrated artist, designer, and typographer, is known worldwide for her intricate lettering and mesmerizing patterns. From her early days as a typesetter in Vancouver to her rise as a leading figure in graphic arts, her work reflects a lifelong fascination with form, pattern, and meaning—and is held in collections including the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt, LACMA, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Now based in Nova Scotia, Bantjes has opened the Design Art Gallery (DAG) in Lunenburg, a UNESCO World Heritage town. Upcoming exhibitions include the Tolerance Project, a global poster showcase curated by Mirko Ilic; a Valentines show featuring 15 years of her personal mail-art; and summer highlights with Niklaus Troxler, Annette Lenz, and the group exhibition "All Lobsters, All the Time".

Diving deeper into her new venture she reveals the role of the DAG and the interrelationship between her design and visual arts practice.

Can you explain the role of Design Art Gallery as both an exhibition space and a creative hub for designers whose work transcends traditional boundaries?

In late 2024 I moved from the small community of Bowen Island, BC to the small community of Lunenburg, NS. Once there, a friend, Jon Smith and I decided to share a gorgeous store-front space in the heart of Lunenburg. He opened WetInk Fine Art Printing, and I opened Design Art Gallery on May 1 2025. My goal was to have a place to sell my own work (both from my previous catalogue as a Graphic Artist, and my new work as a fine artist), and to bring in work by other designers who also function as artists, either in their design work, or on the side. This is something I’ve always wanted to do, as I know so many incredibly good designer-artists, and as designers they are often turned down by traditional galleries.

As well, Lunenburg is a big tourist town and local art leans heavily toward depictions of the area. The natural surroundings are so beautiful I’ve felt the pull myself, so I can’t say I blame them, but I thought the locals and tourists might appreciate something different. I’ve had people thank me for opening this space, for that difference, and some have said Lunenburg is ready for it and needs it. That is incredibly gratifying, but it has been a very hard first year (not over yet).

How does your artistic practice influence your design practice, and vice versa?

My own work, since 2004, has always been both very much my own artistic vision as well as serving a client’s needs, and making “fine” art has just been an extension of the commercial work with only myself to answer for. It has also allowed me to work in much greater detail and a larger size than would survive magazine-size or web-size reproduction. I’ve actually always had a penchant for using materials (translucence, printing in neon colours or glow-in-the-dark, reflective surfaces, etc.) that need to be seen in person to be fully appreciated.

When I was working for Varoom Magazine some years back, I had free rein to respond to a theme, and a lot of experimentation came out of that. My first “sticker painting” came from that, and that has evolved into a whole series of elaborate pieces using (mostly vintage) mass-produced stickers. 

Then, at the very beginning of 2023, prompted by Jonatahn Hoefler, I started playing with AI (Midjourney). I went into it with a prejudice against it, and was intending to write something about it (I eventually wrote 5 long pieces; one of them for Eye Magazine), but I thought I’d better use it first. And I was astonished by it! I have an interest in kitsch, and Midjourney has absorbed lots of kitschy fantasy art through vacuuming up images from Deviant Art, and I was having fun with that. I soon discovered its ability to make many multiples of the same thing, but with slight variations between them. I felt I’d found my new “sticker” art, so I began to use hundreds of these many same-but-not-the-same images in large digital collages which I print at 44” x 55”. But, as I predicted, AI imagery has become much more realistic and literal and as such, less interesting to me.

For the near future I will continue to show my own work at the gallery (currently showing my complete 15-year (2005-2019) Valentine’s project), and other people’s work, including 94-yr-old local Edith Pahlke’s interesting word-based linocuts from the 1960s (co-curated with Jayme Spinks), followed by the work of Swiss designer Niklaus Troxler.

I may be doing something too ambitious for Lunenburg, but it’s such a great place, I hope people will come out to see both the area and the gallery. It’s an adventure!

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Planning a Canadian getaway? Head to Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, and make a stop at the Marian Bantjes Design Art Gallery—where stunning design meets a vibrant creative community.