Zach Liljeholm '25

Zach Liljeholm ’25, a Graphic Design major with a minor in Public Engagement, sat down with us to discuss their thesis show, Natural Affinity, at SPACE Gallery.

Your exhibition, Natural Affinity, explores the relationship between empathy and nature. How did this show come about?

As a coastal city, it's really difficult to disengage from the impacts of the climate crisis, and it was weighing on me.

I decided to do something about it, so I joined an organization called the Sierra Club. I found that everyone was so passionate about what they were doing, and that became a vital part of their relationship to their work. Being able to love something so dearly that you are willing to spend so much time protecting it.

The show responds to my experience and hopes to push people in the same direction to advocate for change.

What is your relationship with nature?

My family is very spiritual. They believe that all these natural elements around us have a spiritual essence to them. And I've learned to adapt to that mindset over the course of college, living more closely with my grandparents.

So I go about the world understanding that there are ways that I can give back to the world in the same way that it can give back to me. I try to stay as mutualistic as possible within the environments that I inhabit.

That's not always possible. Humans have set up this way of living that is not necessarily mutualistic, but I think there are ways that you can comfortably live your life while adhering to more mutualistic or nature-focused ways of living.

Even if it's not a physical exchange, it could be as simple as referring to nature when you're in a bad mood. Going to a park and allowing it to sustain you, and then finding some way to give back to it

What is your favorite aspect of nature here in Maine?

It's always been water. I grew up in Massachusetts near the coast. So I would swim all the time, spending most of my summers in the water. In general, any body of water is helpful for me. On a bad day, go to the water and talk. It'll help you more than you think.

Part of the show (Natural Affinity) includes a takeaway postcard, featuring exercises similar to those. The first one is to take a leaf in the palm of your hand and use your finger to trace from the stem up the veins of the leaf, then cross over onto your veins, and then up to your fingertip and back.

It personifies nature in the same way that we personify ourselves, developing a more inclusive and understanding relationship with nature in a way that is similar to us. This allows people to go to the ocean and talk and feel as though not only are they speaking, but they're also being heard and replied to.

It’s clear through your work on Natural Affinity and other projects like “don’t bring the wolf to your door” voting poster that there is a strong connection between art, design, and public engagement. How have these connections emerged for you?

Initially, it was an academic overlap. I was taking a lot of these courses in my sophomore year. And that started to make me think, what is the difference between design and public engagement?

For a long time, I was looking for people to give me an answer because there's tons of overlap. Design is a people's industry with the intent of solving a problem. But for me, it's about what people do after looking at your work.

There's design that leads you places, design that communicates information, and some design that lets you sit in one spot and look and admire or experience. But in a lot of my work, the goal is to get people outside or, at the very least, shift their relationship to the world around them.

The voting poster specifically was like, you should have a keen awareness about what is going on in the world, and stay informed. It was a series of two, and the other one was a microscope slide. It's saying, “do your own research.” Really, you need to create your own opinions; you need to educate yourself.

It's directing people to go out and experience something. Natural Affinity is very much in line with that, where it prompts you to go out into the world and appreciate nature in a new way that you didn't before. That, to me, is public engagement.

It's targeting an audience and then directing them somewhere else. Design can be independent, small, and intimate. While public engagement cases happen at an intimate scale, they can also be applied in a very large breadth.

Your animation work is very playful and is often infused with a message. How did you find animation, and what purpose does it serve in your design work?

We are in a time when the design world is somewhat encompassed by animation. It feels pretty vital to a lot of work nowadays.

You can't necessarily make a logo without showing how it's going to move. The motion and the tone that come across from a brand are necessary to the voice in general. It's much less visual and more experiential. So animation in traditional design work is incredibly important.

Animation for the purpose of play and joy is vital now, and it’s a way for brands to speak to their audience in a new way.

You posted on Instagram about chasing design mistakes. What do design mistakes mean to you, and why should one chase them?

I know the project you're referencing, and I think I did 25 iterations; that’s four percent of the pieces that actually worked. So you're getting all the way to the end, finding what works and what doesn't, and more importantly, why it works and why it doesn't.

That is vital to creating an impactful project. It's also necessary to learn from your own mistakes and iterate on what you're doing so that you know why it's working or not. But as artists who do this every day, we get so into the habit of the styles, motifs, and shape languages that we're using. The best thing I can do to get out of my habit is to find a new way to present my work.

The posters themselves were like nothing that I had made before. They integrated image and typography in a way that I wasn't used to.

I used reference material from magazines like I hadn't before, and the whole thing shone through without my style. A lot of my work is very flat, and this was focused on depth and texture. It was a total divergence from my traditional work.

My first three, four, five were exactly what I thought I would make. Finding new ways to reinvent your artistic practice is pretty much the only way to move forward, and that's through iteration and mistakes. Many, many mistakes.

What is your favorite place in the Porteous building?

The fourth-floor staircase, the old one. Sometimes I go up to the fifth floor just to walk down that staircase. If I need a break, I'm going right up there and I'm taking a slow walk down each of those steps.

Guaranteed. I love that.

When you're working, do you listen to anything? And if so, what do you listen to?

Everything. I’m so deep in the weeds now that I've run out, though, so I've turned to audiobooks.

Right now, I'm listening to The Hidden Life of Trees, which talks about how trees communicate and physically interact with each other and their roots. It discusses how fungal colonies will interlink the trees via their roots and how forests will uplift and sustain each other. When one tree is doing poorly, other trees around it will siphon nutrients to that tree to keep it alive.

What's your favorite object in your studio?

I have this giant chunk of malachite stone, which my grandmother gave me for my 19th birthday. It stays right in front of me, in view all the time.

I also have a huge section of design-focused books, and sometimes, if I'm looking for inspiration, I'll just pull one out, flip through it, and see what I can find.

When you leave the house, besides your phone, keys, and wallet, what do you always bring with you?

Headphones. They're on my head when I close that door. Guaranteed. And I always bring a book. Do I read the book? No. But one day, I'll need it and I’ll have it.

Do you have anything coming up that you’d like us to know about?

The biggest thing coming up is my show Natural Affinity at SPACE Gallery. It's gonna be really fun. I have curated an exhibition of student artwork from across Maine discussing empathy and emotional attachment to nature.

DJ Ben Spalding will perform live music. Tickets are not required; a donation is available at the door. Come and enjoy, see some artwork, have some fun, go out, and talk to the ocean. It's going to be great.