LAKE AT NIGHT
 

The “Lake At Night” series grew out of an invitation by Jay Rich in 2010, to participate in the exhibition, “Carved Board Clamp Resist Dyeing: Historical Perspective and Contemporary Application” at the University of Nebraska Art Gallery in Omaha. The exhibition juxtaposed traditional and antique Japanese and Chinese carved board clamp resist textiles with new carved board textiles by nine contemporary textile artists. The invitation to participate gave me the opportunity to return to carving boards and gave me a renewed interest incorporating that technique into my work. Carved board clamp resist is known as kyokechi in Japanese and is a little known dye technique. The resulting pattern is determined by the imagery carved on the resist boards. The boards are carved as a mirror image and fit tightly together. The same set of carved boards were used to pattern all the cloth in the“Lake at Night ” series. I use the technique and process to create layers of modulated colors and forms. What fascinates me is that the very simple pattern I have carved, results in complex imagery. I utilizes repeat but the cloth reads as abstract landscape. The contemplative scenery suggests lights at night reflected on water. I enjoy reading poetry, and since I began the “Lake At Night” and“Perigee” series, I kept coming across poems I feel are related to the mood and imagery I have tried to establish. A poem by the Albanian poet, Luljeta Lleshanaku, in her book of poems, Fresco, titled,“The Night Will Soon Be Over . . .”When night arrives trees strip off their shadows . . .and quarrel in the warm lake. The moon’s white calves flash through the rushes.The owl’s eyelike a drop of mercury slides across the nude body of the world. A few more hours and the night will be over . . .remaining only in the pleats of a black cloak slung over the branches of a cypress tree.