Katazome and Ikat Exhibitions in the Greater Puget Sound Area

 

by Barbara Matthews

Katazome Today: Migrations of a Japanese Art showing at the Whatcom County Lightcatcher Museum in Bellingham, WA now through June 11, 2023

Ikat: A World of Compelling Cloth showing at the Seattle Art Museum now through May, 2023 

Katazome Today curated by Seiko Purdue, Professor of Fiber/Fabrics at Western Washington University and Amy Chaloupka, Whatcom Museum curator brings together nine artists plus Seiko’s work of students at Western Washington University.   Panels of the student’s creation greet the visitor and you know immediately from the quality that you are in for a treat.
Both wall and wearable art is featured.  Traditional Katazome using indigo and natural dyes and classical themes stand next to current day interpretation and uses.  Cheryl Lawrence’s Snowstorm demonstrates the mixture of both—snow geese applied with alternating resist and dyeing swoop around a resist spiral she created through tsutsugaki a method of applying the paste through a ‘cake decorating’ type bag.  She innovated the process by allowing the bag of the liquid rice paste to swing above the piece. Cheryl also produces limestone tiles with the Katazome process. 

Snowstorm by Cheryl Lawrence

Mika Toba of Japan has two pieces in the show with contemporary views of Vietnam.  A film features her work on a large, commissioned project showing the Katazome process.  The multi-step process starts with making the katagomi stencil to applying the paste to dyeing the fabric.  She was also instrumental in saving a 400 year old factory, now a father/son business in Japan that makes a fresh batch of rice paste each day beginning at 3AM. Basically the Katazome process involves spreading the thick rice paste over a stencil laid on the fabric and several iterations of applying soy milk sizing, drying, dyeing, applying mordant, steaming, and washing the fabric free of the resist. 

The Other Side of the Scarf, 2005, Mika Toba

Ikat: A World of Compelling Cloth

This exhibit in the Seattle Art Museum truly represents the migration of this technique that originated in Indonesian and as kasari in Japan to other parts of the world.  The Japanese method dates back to the 12^th or 13^th centuries. The exhibit includes cloth made in New Guinea, Nigeria, Peru, Sumatra, Uzbekistan, Iran, Viet Nam, and Sumatra, among other countries.

At the entrance to the exhibit entitled Zurashi/Slipped you walk through 6,000 vertical lengths of indigo resist dyed warp that hangs from the ceiling to nearly the floor. Chinami and Roland Rickets who cultivate an indigo farm in Bloomington, Indiana created his exhibit, which took over a year’s time to produce.

Zurashi/Slipped by Chinami and Rowland Ricketts

Ikat an Indonesian word translates as cord, thread, knot, or bundle. Ikat has three methods – 1) tying the warp yarn to introduce a resist, then dyeing of the warp, 2) the same tying for resist of the weft and 3) the method on both the warp and weft.  Although the blurriness of the design is prized and quite beautiful, some of the pieces shown, for example the Japanese and Iranian examples shown here, had an exactness that could be achieved through a careful design and resist dyeing of both warp and weft.

Japanese Cloth double dyed warp and weft

Cushion Cover and Prayer Cloth in collection of David and Marita Paly

Typically silk and cotton fibers provided the warp and weft. Uzbek women produced their own silk raising silkworms and harvesting the silk from the cocoons that they use for both warp and weft. In the example shown here, a Munisak or robe, the silk warp is treated and woven with a cotton weft. Two hundred yards of silk were required to create the velvet effect. 

Munisak (Woman's Robe)