ZK

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Architectural

Sketches

Rynn Dziak (ZK) is a Chicago-based artist and undergraduate student of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), mainly studying drawing and printmaking.

3rd Person

Born in Westchester, Illinois in 2003 with one hand on their face and the other holding a slight complex about suburbia, Rynn started attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2022 to pursue a BFA in Studio. In this interdisciplinary school, “I will plant one foot down in drawing and see where I can reach” Rynn declared, and so they stepped into architecture, back into drawing, then into printmaking, which really just turns back into drawing, and… Rynn Dziak draws. Rynn Dziak draws when they print, when they paint, when they write, when they draw. Rynn Dziak has realized that prior to SAIC, they never did much other than hold pens dipped in ink and stare ahead, head slightly tilted, slightly dipped.

Written Note

"I grapple, in my art I grapple a lot, I think.No matter at what, I'm always looking up and out; I'm always far away. And I think about why I'm so far, and I try to see if I can reach whatever I'm looking at, which I cannot, and so I respond to it, and in that I create something. The created thing is not there (up and out), but it's not here, either.So I'm always observing. I'm always investigating, but that's because I've always been an investigative person. These are quite crappy investigations, if you were to ask me. Art is as if you were to write a book, and at the end of the day, packed up your things and thought, 'Well, I like how it looks!' There isn't even an answer in the book, I respond, 'It's all up here,' and point to my head which I have locked away. It's incredibly stupid. It is a creation of books, and only that. The point? The point is, I fear, for me to eventually have enough of these incredibly stupid books to then point at, and this point will represent the fact that I had created books, and the fact that I had existed, and that all answers were missed by everyone, because it was locked up here, not there, and I was not there, I never was. And who the hell is watching me point at books?But there really is content, I speak too harshly. Industrial, the machine, the man-made, non-human... Urbanization, the differences in location... The blurring of space, time; what perception means, what visual means, what any aspect of anything ever means. And by 'means,' I mean: how it functions, an operation. I am investigating things after all, I do hold the information. It's there.If creation responds, sometimes a response is petty, it takes a stand, it goes against something. I am too shy to ever say what. I don't die on hills. I have a patch of grass, somewhere.'I am interested in representing nothing, and proving my own existence' is something I had written at some point in time. I used to say, when I was too young to know anything of importance, that my art was information sharing. My work is personal, but I'm not a personal person, which is the point (no finger included); personal by way of first-person (first-person-all). Yet, is all work personal? No, that question isn't real, I didn't ask that. 'Isn't everyone like that...' is just a statement everyone says... Well..."

How to get downtown

330 to BNSF; 330 to UP-W; 317 to Blue line; 322 to Pink line.
554 to MD-W.
You are here.
554 to MD-W.
Red line.

First Person

I am not from an artist family. I was born in Westchester, Illinois and grew up playing baseball and drawing baseball logos. I had very neat handwriting, and I attribute my early ability to draw to the same reason I had neat handwriting. I was always intrigued by ‘the city’ more than anything. And I liked watching the trains pass and I liked riding them, and I liked looking out the window and watching how everything transitions so smoothly from suburb to city to even more city, each architectural decade getting older and older.When I was older I moved to a farther away suburb. I was still ‘good’ at ‘art’ and I was also good at math and other things, and I’m not sure what happened, but at a certain point I felt as if I had been permanently paved into the walls of the art department hallway. They eventually gave me an award for getting paved into the wall, and they gave me plenty of supplies throughout the years. I cannot answer when I decided to take art “seriously.” I told people I’d go into art because I was good at it, which was enough of a reason for anyone who asked. I no longer think I’m good at art.I only ever used pens and I was good at detailed crosshatching and line work. We used oil paint once, which was the first time I had painted, but I didn’t think much of it. I had almost no opinions, save for art history class, where for the first time I felt compelled to get into a heated argument with another person. I realized that during the various instances of having gone to the museum, I picked up a bias towards the modernists.No one really knew, but everyday I’d go home and draw in an ‘anime’ style and post it for the internet to see. And no one ever knew how long I’d been doing this. When I was 10, my cartoons were now live on cable and so I would no longer pause the TV to copy them to paper. When I was 11, I got the computer moved up to my room after my teenage brother decided he’d sleep in the basement. Now I had google at the tips of my fingers, which no longer was a simple picture-oriented encyclopedia, but a world of anime screenshots to copy. Every time I drew these, I would hide the papers in a stack until a day no one was paying attention, and then I’d run out the back door and shove them as deep as I could into the recycling can. I never got them quite deep enough, though.My detest for suburbia only grew wilder and somewhere along the line, perhaps when I got paved into the wall, I grew fond of industrial areas. I’m not sure what I was searching for. If it was for nostalgia, I’d be sleepwalking towards the cemeteries. I guess it is the antithesis of suburbia, what suburbia tries to hide. And maybe I thought I was hidden, so when I entered the wall I finally understood the operation of paving, and all clicked once I went to college. I drew architecturally for the first time and entered a wild world of towers, and once my hand cramped up I went abstract for the first time, but it got much too wild and so I learned printmaking instead. I have multiple recycling bins now and I’m not sure what to do with them, but I’ll find my way.

Factual Description

5 foot 8.
Good vision.
Exists in black and white.
Pronounced like Rin JyAAKUncertain.

Rynn Dziak
[email protected]
rynnzk.com
b. 2003 Westchester, IL.EDUCATION
2026. BFA. School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, IL.GROUP EXHIBITION
2024. My Chicagos: SAIC Students Honor Georgia O’Keeffe. SITE Gallery. Chicago, IL.
2024. Two-Person Display. School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, IL.
2023. Tiny Works. Fulton Street Collective. Chicago, IL
2023. Class Exhibition. School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, IL.
2023. Art Bash. School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, IL.AWARDS
2025. Edward R. Ryerson Fellowship. School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
2022. Honors Merit Scholarship. School of the Art Institute of Chicago.PRE-COLLEGE WORK
2022. Illinois High School Art Exhibition: Senior Scholarship Exhibition. Bridgeport Art Center. Chicago, IL.
2022, 2021, 2020, 2019. Annual Harper Area High School Art Show. Harper College. Palatine, IL.
2020, 2019. Illinois High School Art Exhibition: Northern Regional Art Exhibition. Bridgeport Art Center. Chicago, IL.2022. Department Award (representing Art). Schaumburg High School.
2022. Top Scholarship Awards Recipient. Illinois High School Art Exhibition.

Hello.
My name is Rynn Dziak.
I am an undergraduate student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
I study painting, drawing, and printmedia.
I pick up some other things here and there.

selected printmedia