I went to Japan.
I had wanted to go for a long time. I have always admired the Zen minimalist aesthetic, the simple and precise Japanese wood architecture, and the centuries old textile history. I have been intrigued by the sense of ritual that blends tradition, tools and perfection in almost all aspects of Japanese craft. And I wanted to explore how the cultural traditions, surrounding artisanal art and craft disciplines, might play into my own art practice.
I had the privilege of spending ten days of this trip in Fujino Japan in a 170-year-old traditional farmhouse with the venerated teacher Bryan Whitehouse and eleven other women from around the world doing just that.
The farmhouse is a beautiful mix of museum, art gallery, curated textile archive, student atelier, silkworm factory, indigo manufacturing facility, Japanese flower gallery and a 5-star private restaurant with the absolute best farm to table meals.
The ten days at the farmhouse were filled with a mosaic of experiences: textile lectures, vintage fashion shows, clicking Kumihimos, preparing historic recipes, waiting for the indigo flower to stop spinning, blue hands working around the table, creating cloth with rice pasted stencils, standing in a cold river, lining up glass counting beads, midnight stitching, whapping dyed cloths against rocks, Bob Dylan music, vintage markets, and pottery studios in the forest, hanging dyed cloths in the entry way to dry and, always, the ever present magical indigo vat. These experiences rewarded me with a stash of hand handmade textiles created in the traditional Japanese manner.
The textile art pieces I made aspire to honour the process of creating Japanese indigo cloth and to present a contemporary textile response to a few of the memories that left Japan in my heart. They are made of natural fibers: cotton, linen, ramie, wool and silk. Except for the linen backgrounds, all the cloths were either made by me (and the indigo vat) or gathered at vintage markets and fabric stores in Japan. Each piece is hand stitched and hand embellished.
Process photos:
