Conversations are streamed talks with esteemed textile artists and artisans, specialists, scholars in the field of textile art including shibori, natural dyes, sashiko and quilt, weaving, fashion, and costumes, delivered through Zoom webinar.
Our purpose is to spread and share authentic information substantiated by the presenters’ hands-on and scholarly experiences. The conversations will serve as oral histories that record the lives and works of people who have contributed to the evolution of the textile field by building on the tradition with innovation and passing on knowledge to upcoming generations.
You may sign-up for the full streaming series at a discount or pick and choose episodes to attend. If you miss an episode you registered for, you will be able to view the recording. The link will be emailed to all registrants a week after the event and be viewable for one month.
Conversations with Cloth, Winter-Spring 2021
Streaming webinar series on Zoom. The Third Wednesday of the Month.
Our Conversations with Cloth series continues connecting Japanese shibori tradition to the world, traversing cultural landscapes from the familiar to the fantastic and mysterious. We will celebrate shibori phenomena from American tie-dye to rich and varied cultural traditions in North, Central, and West Africa; from the Indian-subcontinent and Indonesia and Cambodia to Southwestern China and the Himalayas; and finally to pre-Columbian South America and Mexico. Using shibori as a common language, our co-hosts, Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada and Ana Lisa Hedstrom, will decipher patterns revealing memories imprinted in the cloth by dyes.
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Episode #1. Bound resist: American Tie-dye, Kumo, Miura, Kanoko Shibori, and guests Courtenay Pollock et al.
From left to right: (1) Hiroshi Murase: Arimatsu, Japan; (2) Junichi Arai; (3) Ana Lisa Hedstrom; (4) Jean Cacicedo; (5) Carter Smith with his tie-dye in 1973
Wednesday • February 17 • 2021, 1 pm-3 pm (pacific coast time)
This episode will cover the most enduring Japanese shibori traditions of bound- or knotted-resist dyeing including Kanoko, Kumo, and Miura Shibori as well as the burst of colors and energy of tie-dye that celebrates the dynamic, youth counterculture of the 1960s and 70s in North America.
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Episode #2. African Shibori: Congo, Mali, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Morocco, Tunisia, Nigeria, and guest designer Christina Kim and artisan Gasali Adeyemo.
From left to right: (1) Woman’s Turban, Tunisia; (2) Cameroon & Mali; (3) Dida Raffia Tubular piece, Cote d’Ivoire; (4) Contemporary Dida (Kru people) Wedding, Cote d’Ivoire; (5) Adire Oniko by Nike Davies-Okundaye, Nigeria; (6) Raffia skirt from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Wednesday • March 17 • 2021, 1 pm-3 pm (pacific coast time)
The vast African continent nurtured a wide array of shibori traditions representing many indigenous cultural landscapes. The articles vary from bound-resist on woolen-sprang women’s turbans to raffia shibori textiles in interlaced tubular cloth, and cotton strip-woven, indigo-dyed wraps, some intended for royalty and others for ordinary people.
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Episode #3. India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia, the Himalayas, and the Minority Peoples of Southwest China.
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Artists, artisans, and contributors including Aranya Natural, Craig Diamond, Christina Kim, Ghea Panagaaen, Hanmin Zhang, Jabber & Abdullah Khatri, John Ruddy, Jorie Johnson, Judy Frater of Somalia Kala Vidya, and Thomas Murray.
From left to right: (1) Rajasthan, India; (2) Toraja pori roto, Sulawesi, Indonesia; (3) Laharia turban worn by a prince, Rajasthan, India; (4) Unknown silk stitch-resist, & Cotton bandhani from Pakistan; (5) Bandhani Tyer in Kutch, India.
Wednesday • April 21 • 2021, 1 pm-3 pm (pacific coast time)
The Indian subcontinent is known to produce the opulent resist-dyed textiles depicted in Ajanta Cave paintings. Later its silk textiles were traded to Southeast Asia as well as to the New World where eventually some were transformed into iconic American bandanas. In the Himalayas to Southwestern China to Mongolia, shibori was used by different groups of people as an important way to color and pattern textiles.
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Episode #4. The Americas: Shibori and four-selvedged weaving in Mexico, Peru, & Chile, and Jim Bassler studio in California.
Stitch resist- and Bound resist Replication Projects, and guest artist James Bassler and his contemporary work, Hiroshi Murase & Kazuki Yamazaki on their replication project, Elean Phipps on four-selvedged pre-Columbian weaving, and Alejandro de Avila on Woolen skirt from Mexico, and Vanessa Moraga on Mapuche & Ranquel ponchos.
From left to right: (1) “Tattoos 2012,” by James Bassler, USA; (2) Jim Bassler and Catherine Ellis presenting “Discontinuous warp and weft weaving,” ISS 2016, Oaxaca; (3) Tejido, Amarrado Enagua, Vizarron, and Queretaro, Mexico; (4) Detail of Enagua (woolen skirt) before Cochineal dyeing; (5) An artisan in Queretaro with Irmgard W. Johnson, 1950s, Mexico; (6) Amarras, Huari culture, Museo Amano collection, Peru.
Wednesday • May 19 • 2021, 1 pm-3 pm (pacific coast time)
The cultures in the Americas were as remarkable as the others, the World Shibori Network has taken the opportunity to create a dialogue with scholars and artisans of the International Shibori Symposium (ISS) host countries and organized replication projects. For the ISS Mexico, a Japanese shibori artisan and a natural dyer replicated a stitched-resist woolen skirt. For the ISS Chile, artists and artisans in the USA and India replicated the pre-Columbian amarras (bound-resist) textiles on camelid fiber and cotton. One of the replication team members, James Bassler, an American contemporary weaver, has since explored the technique of scaffold weaving and shibori and continues to create superlative fiber art that will be featured in our episode.
You will receive event details (including the Zoom webinar invite link) and your registration receipt. Reminder emails will be sent a day before the event date. Event registration also includes recordings of the event. The streaming link will be emailed to you a week after the event and accessible for six month after the event.
Streaming Library Edition:
In mid-2021, you will receive an email announcement when a streaming version of the series becomes available with study guides. This archival documentary will be a valuable tool for educators and scholars of craft, design, textile, and art. This series will also help artists, artisans, and designers to gain creative inspiration and increased technical literacy.
Cost to download the four films with study guides to your computer is $45 for those who purchased a series ticket at $75, or tickets totaling $75.
Cost for each film with study guides is $10 for those who purchased a $25 ticket for a single episode.
Cost for Four Films with study guides is $120 for those who did not register and wish to purchase and download. A single episode with study guides is $35.
Viewing of the film is limited to non-commercial use.
SHIBORI has become an international textile term because no equivalent has been identified. Other languages have no term that encompasses all the various shaped-resist techniques, nor is there English terminology for all of the individual methods, which often have been incorrectly lumped together as “TIE-and-DYE” In the 1970s, three terms to describe some of the shibori methods came into international usage: PLANGI, used for the process of gathering and binding cloth, may be a Malay-Indonesian derivative from the word pelangi (rainbow); banda, BANDHANI, or bandhej are Indian terms for the process of plucking or gathering and binding; and TRITIK, used for stitch-resist, may be a Malay-Indonesian derivative from the word titik (dots). However, these three terms represent only two of the most useful processes, stitch-resist and bound-resist. No other term in the international textile vocabulary but “shibori” encompasses the entire range of shaped-resist dyeing techniques. There has been continuing research on global shibori traditions including amaras, a pre-Columbian bound-resist; nuet of Tunisia and Morocco; many shibori variations in Central and West Africa; and more.