“Dichotomies in Silk: Sheer and Opaque”

 

by

Yuh Okano

 

Since my days as a student of design, I was interested in fiber as a means to express myself creatively, influenced largely by Junichi Arai’s innovative works in the 1980s.  As an artist, I emphasize the material itself and how it takes on shape in the same manner as that of a sculptor.  It is in my character as an artist and designer to play with diverse materials and experiment with an array of techniques that can be applied to them.  Illustrated by slides, I would like to share my creative exploration using silk fabric and recent technical improvements in surface design processes.

 

Having had the opportunity to explore a huge array of polyester fabrics in the 1990s, I experimented with the thermoplastic characteristics of polyester using various shaping processes and heat.  This gave me the foundation to open the potential of silk when I later worked with Isao Negishi, a chemical engineer who perfected the process of silk cloque in combination with traditional Japanese paste-resist dying techniques of kata-zome (stenciled) and tsutsu-gaki (hand painted). 

 

Sheer silk fabric may be either screen printed or hand-painted with paste-resist, then immersed in chemicals. This causes the exposed areas to crimp and condense into opaque sections, puckering the fabric.  The resulting design is much like a bas-relief pattern set against the reserved areas of the original sheer fabric. A stronger chemical solution (or thinner reserve paste) yields greater shrinkage. The possibilities in achieving expressive textural patterns are endless and silk fiber, being natural, behaves like a living entity with its subtle nuances seen in each piece.

 

 

Yuh Okano is an artist and designer who grew up and did research in Japan and was educated in the US, receiving her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in textiles.  As an artist, she searches for the potential of materials and how they relate to people’s everyday lives.  Okano has worked as a designer for Tanuki Studio, NYC; Junichi Arai’s J. Christie Co, Japan; and was a full-time faculty member at the Otsuka Textile Design Institute.  Her works have been featured in numerous group and solo exhibitions, including “Structure and Surface: Contemporary Japanese Textiles,” St. Louis Art Museum and MoMA NY; Textile Designer’s Show; and Tokyo Fashion Festival.  She has collaborated with costume designers, including Academy Award winning designer Emi Wada for a movie “1/2 Woman” by Peter Greenway.