Following the Thread
For Bryan Czerniawski ’11, a lifetime of preparation unfolds, yet the pattern emerges only in hindsight.
The interior of a Westchester County country club, doubling as a Newport, RI, mansion, buzzes with the last-minute activity typical on set just before film begins to roll. Dozens of crew members move purposefully among the actors, all draped in elaborate period costumes historically accurate to the 1890s-era estate. Among them is set costumer Bryan Czerniawski ’11, who expertly examines buttons, bustles, and closures before the cameras capture a complex ballroom scene in the final episode of HBO’s The Gilded Age Season 3.
“I realized what 10 years’ experience feels like all of a sudden, because this Olympic-level costume show didn’t feel hard,” he says.
What may be an atypical career path for a visual artist and printmaking major is more a fortuitous overlap of skills and timing than a deliberate plan.
Patterns Emerge
Czerniawski grew up on Staten Island in a family of theatre people. While his sisters performed, even at age six, he knew designing sets was for him. He would accompany his mom to the local theatre and stand by while she helped with the costumes.
In high school, he immersed himself in set painting, design, and art direction for every show. The Theatre Design/Tech program led him to Purchase, but he chose the visual arts to pursue a more well-rounded fine arts background. Live figure drawing and Professor Elizabeth Guffey’s design history course—which defined history by design eras, rather than wars—proved to be incredibly formative. And the art he made back then focused on the wear of industrial objects and how things age.
“There have been a lot of consistent threads and overlaps in the work that I started in college that somehow remain as threads in my professional career now.”
Scene Change
A job offer in 2012 through his best friend, Dylan Rossman ’12, also a printmaking major, proved pivotal. As a costumes production assistant on the set of Darren Aronofsky’s film Noah , Czerniawski knew just what to do—thanks to his mom. “She raised me as her little costumes PA my whole life.”
The costume roles continued. As an ager/dyer on the NBC series Believe in 2014, he turned new clothes into those that look properly worn, torn, or dirty for each scene. Or as if they’ve been through an explosion—as he did for the Netflix series Zero Day .
The techniques came naturally—his body of work and figure drawing skills aligned perfectly. “It requires a combination of being aware of how people move in the world,” he says, “and needing to know how things break down, wear, or age.”
By the time he first worked on The Gilded Age in 2020, he’d held more roles like key costumer and costume supervisor—each a deliberate choice about time and energy. “What I like about this industry,” he says, “I can pick and choose job to job how invested I want to be.”
Finding the Through Line
In 2016, Czerniawski pooled resources with Rossman and two other printmakers from Purchase—Alex Derwick ’11 and Manny Bova ’11—to create Bigfoot Press, a full-service printshop in rural Pennsylvania. He’s now its sole proprietor, the house and barn serving as both retreat and studio.
After 10 years on film sets, Czerniawski has returned to figure drawing with a group in New York City called Doable Guys. “An unfortunate name,” he admits, but they’ve been incredibly encouraging following his hiatus from the practice since Purchase. They also host art sales in and around NYC, a welcome opportunity where he’s had luck selling original drawings and prints on cork, totes, and hankies he made in the printshop. Hoping to devote more time to his own art and less time on sets, he was thrilled when his art sales matched his day rate in costumes—on the nose his first try, then tripled the next.
His next move might involve sharing his printmaking retreat with artist friends. “It’s magical to come out and spend a weekend,” he says.
“I consider it a Printshop of Requirement, like Harry Potter, because what people really need is space and facilities, and that’s what I have.”
Serendipitously or not, the pieces are falling into place. “It’s like all of the little things I’ve been training for my whole life have been perfectly organized, where I’m in the right place in the right career at the right time.”
—Kristi McKee
