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From Painting to Indigo Dyeing: A Japanese Couple Explores New Territory in Fabric Design and Sculpture
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12572 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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6 / 1987 |
1,478 Words |
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Janet Koplos
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Two young Japanese designers, Shigeki Fukumoto and his wife, Shihoko, planned on careers as artists when they were studying oil painting at the Kyoto University of Fine Arts. A trip to the South Seas, however, by Shigeki as a member of a university team researching tribal art of Oceania completely changed the course of their lives.
Shigeki was particularly captivated by the work being done in the Pacific area in textiles. He returned there many times, both for research and to buy materials for Japanese ethnographic and textile museums. Since his original trip Shigeki has published three books on the tribal art of Oceania.
Meanwhile, Shihoko continued working as an artist for several years. She exhibited her abstract paintings, showing as well resin-coated metal works and wall reliefs incorporating light sources.
Joint Creative Efforts
Today Shihoko and Shigeki have centered their joint creative efforts on the dyeing of textiles, employing centuries-old Japanese techniques. They came to this field by quite different routes.
Shigeki's father is a master dyer. When illness prevented his working for two years, Shigeki stepped in, dividing his time between college and his father's business. According to Japanese tradition, he was considered "too young" to create any work in his own name.
Shigeki produced kimono yardage using the roketsu-zome technique, a dyeing method in which certain areas of the fabric are protected by an application of wax. Through repeated applications of wax and dyes with brushes, stamps and stencils, he could create extremely complex multicolored designs. Eventually Shigeki turned out panels and screens in contemporary style for exhibition purposes, in addition to his kimono designs.
Shihoko made her career shift after accompanying Shigeki on a trip to New Guinea. Art and life are closely related in that culture. She recognized something in the craftsmanship of village arts that seemed to challenge her own work. She came to feel that she had only been copying a Western style that had no relation to her life or traditions. She wanted to find a purely Japanese method of creating contemporary abstract images. Kyoto has a long history as a textile center, and there she discovered what she was looking for in a textile dyeing technique called ori-nui shibori.
She accordion-folds a length of fabric, stitches selected areas on her sewing machine, and dips the sewn bands into indigo dye repeatedly until they reach the depth of hue she wants. Then she dries the material and removes the stitching. The more tightly sewn an area of fabric is, the less the dye can penetrate. A soft, blurred edge of color is characteristic of this technique. Part of the challenge of shibori is that the folds and stitching must be planned in advance. Only when the dyeing is complete and the stitching removed can she see the patterns she has created.
Dyed in Indigo
The majority of Shihoko's works are dyed in indigo, an ancient Japanese color that she
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