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Hakusai Kimono
by Kiranada Sterling Benjamin
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Kiranada Sterling Benjamin
Roketsu Zome - The Art of Contemplation and Wax Resist
by Tunizia Abdur-Raheem
Kiranada Sterling Benjamin is an American artist who has mastered an historically Japanese art form, roketsu zome (wax resist dyeing) or rozome (wax dyeing).
Straddling two worlds, Kiranada (her name means ‘she who radiates moonlight’ in Sanskrit) has studied in the European style, studying art in the United States. She received a Bachelor’s degree in art education from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Ten years later, she studied fiber arts and achieved a Masters degree from Arizona State University. At the insistence of her family, who saw early on that she had a talent for teaching, she also has a teaching degree.
Kiranada has become quite an expert on rozome, authoring a book on the subject, “The World of Rozome: Wax Resist Textiles of Japan.” Her exhibition in Indonesia, “Transcendence: Japanese Batik in Bali,” featured her as an artist representative of Japanese batik. She describes, in her own words, a little of the history of the art:
“Rozome came from the Asian continent, as ro-kechi, with Chinese immigrants in the 8th Century and is one of the three ancient resist processes found among the 180,000 stored textiles in the Shoso-in Repository, Nara, Japan. Wax-resist textiles went out of favor during the following centuries and did not reappear until the 16th Century when Indian wax-printed fabrics arrived in Edo. The history jumps again to the past century when Japanese artists, visiting the Paris Exposition of 1900, found beautiful examples of Indonesian batik and came back to Japan inspired to try this process in their own style. . . .” (To read more, go to Vol. 19, No. 2.)
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Abiquiu Lake (Santa Fe, NM)
95” x 40.5” 1991
by Mary Edna Fraser
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Mary Edna Fraser
Celebrating the Barrier Islands Through the
Ancient Art of Batik
by Joanna White
Mary Edna Fraser is an artist who highlights environmental concerns in large silk batiks, which are often based on maps, satellite images, and the photographs that she takes. Her mission is to go beyond making a pretty picture....she would like her art to serve a greater purpose. If she could sum up that purpose in a few words, it would be “save the world’s barrier islands.”
Her life’s work is from an aerial perspective. From her elevated view of the earth, she transcribes her impressions onto silk using dyes, using the ancient medium of batik. The art comprises a series of narrative landscapes inspired by the watery reaches of the continent, where realms of earth, sea and sky converge. Each area is carefully researched, often by hiking the terrain, hiring guides, exploring waterways by boat, and painting studies on location. She studies the geology, topography, maps, charts, and even satellite images to identify features of particular visual interest.
What makes Mary Edna’s work really unique is, of course, this aerial perspective. She started flying with her father, who is a Master Pilot, from the time she was two weeks old. They flew in his restored 1946 Ercoupe (a single engine propeller plane that belonged to her grandfather). She now flies with her brother in that same plane or sometimes flies the plane herself. She has banks of aerial photographs that span the United States East and West coasts, Mt Fuji, the Great Wall of China and beyond. These photographs are the blueprints of the batiks. (To read more, go to Vol. 19, No. 2.)
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Jane Dunnewold
Spinning Her Wheels To Make Beautiful Cloth at the
Soul of Silk 2012
by Kaki Steward
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Etude 35
We’re thrilled that Jane Dunnewold, author of Complex Cloth said, “yes” when asked to be a guest speaker and instructor at SPIN’s 2012 Festival! She’s also agreed to participate in the panel discussion.
Those of us who view Jane Dunnewold as something of a super woman heroine type, have always wondered how she became the artist we know and love. What did it take for her to get where she is today? And can we have some of whatever IT IS?
When web searching for Jane, in preparation for our conversation, I found her sophisticated website, www.complexcloth.com, her list of publications, her international tours and lecture series, the workshops offered, as well as her existential neighborhood blog. (To read more, go to Vol. 19, No. 2.)
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