Sda SDJ Fall2013 Sample 11-1-13

Surface Design Association, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited.
4 Surface Design Journal

w h o s w h o
Surface Design Journal is a quarterly publication
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1
e d i t o r i a l
COVER CREDIT: NATIVIDAD AMADOR Untitled Detail, traditional hook-tambour embroidery on fabric, 27.6" x 20.9", 2010.
Drawing by ALEJANDRO SANTIAGO. Featured in the 2011 Museo Textil de Oaxaca (MTO) exhibition Pinthila Bordados de Natividad Amador
en relacin a otros artistas. Shown courtesy of MTO, Oaxaca, Mexico. Photo: Jaime Ruz Martnez. The complete piece is shown ABOVE.
A Taste of Latin America
Fall2013
One of the most rewarding aspects of my job is
researching material culture. The trove of textile art
treasures and traditions I discovered for the theme of
Latin American Fibers is as diverse as the region itself. With
dozens of countries spanning two continents, each story
in this issue offers a taste of fascinating work by contem-
porary artists who either hale from or are inspired by this
complex part of the world.
A potent trend throughout Latin America is
the transformation of traditional textile techniques into
contemporary art forms, beautifully illustrated by the
stitched detail on our cover. Mexican artist Natividad
Amador achieves this stunning surface design with hook-
tambour embroidery commonly used to embellish
women's blouses. The finished piece (shown here) is
Amador's reinterpretation of a painting by her mentor
Alejandro Santiago. A special exhibition of these fiber
homages was presented in 2011 at the Museo Textil de
Oaxaca, Mexico. Museum Director Hctor Manuel
Meneses Lozano discusses their dynamic curatorial
programming in a related Q&A article.
Betsabe Romero's softening of macho car
culture treads new ground through the streets of Mexico
City and abroad. In the highlands of Peru, the Center for
Traditional Textiles of Cusco fosters global appreciation
of ancient craft practices to preserve them and open new
markets. Fiber workshops taught by American artists in
Guatemala strive toward similar goals, with the help of
the fair trade organization Mayan Hands.
The political and creative interactions of so many
Spanish-speaking countries is discussed in the in-depth
article Latin American Textile Art...in process by Costa
Rican artist/educator Paulina Ortiz, President of the Ibero-
American Textile Network (Redtextilia). Joanne Mattera
offers a first-hand assessment of fiber-based art included
in the growing array of international art fairs that take
place each December in Miami, Florida, home to one of
the largest Latin American communities in the US.
I hope you enjoy this initial overview of Latin
American textile artists and their stories. We look forward
to featuring many more in future issues of the Journal!
Marci Rae McDade
journaleditor@surfacedesign.org
C o r r e c t i o n
SDJ Summer 2013, Vol. 37, No. 4
In the Exposure section on page 54, we
listed the technique for Gary Schmitts
piece Five Tools (2012) as beedle felting.
You may have guessed, but the term is
needle felting! We apologize for any
confusion this may have caused and look
forward to seeing new works in wool
from this talented artist.
Velocity and Memory
B e t s a b e R o m e r o
b y P a m e l a S c h e i n m a n
Surface Design Association, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited. Surface Design Association, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited.
LEFT: BETSABE ROMERO Car/Ayate (at U.S.-Mexico border) Cloth-covered auto painted with roses
169.3" x 82.7" x 55.1",1997. InSite Biennial, Tijuana, Mexico. Daros Collection, Switzerland.
ABOVE: BETSABE ROMERO Law-abiding Mat/Petate justiciero Auto covered with woven reed matting, 2000. Absolut L.A.
International Biennial Art Invitational, Iturralde Gallery, Los Angeles, California. Collection of the artist.
7 Fall2013
In 1997, Betsabe Romero covered a 1955
Ford Crown Victoria with cloth and paint-
ed it with flowers in a popular nineteenth-
century style. According to the artist, This is
a textile, like the famous mantle on which
the Virgin of Guadalupe revealed her true
presence to the peasant Juan Diego on
December 9, 1531, as miraculous proof to
Roman Catholic Church officials. Ten thou-
sand red roses filled the autos interior.
Car/Ayate was parked at the U.S.-
Mexican border in Colonia Libertad,
Tijuanathe birthplace of the Low Rider in
the 1950s. Like the Zoot Suit a decade earlier,
the outrageous appearance of classic cars
jacked up on enormous tires caught on
among Chicanos in California and forced an
invisible population into the national spot-
light. Nearby this site, a thousand people a
day passed through an illegal tunnel.
The piece won first prize in Insight
97, which included an exhibition at the
Monterrey Museum of Art in Monterrey,
Mexico. Thus, Romero established herself as a
mediator of popular culture, using vernacular
objects to bring the street into the museum
(real cars along with photographs of their
installation), and vice versa. She belongs to a
generation of loners, which includes the con-
ceptual artists Gabriel Orozco and Frances
Alys. They change our perception of com-
mon-place things and situations, while
engaging in a critique of social and political
realities like consumer culture, racism, undoc-
umented immigration, and the smug com-
plicity of both governments.
From that first flamboyant gesture,
Romeros work emerged on the international
art scene as a transgressive feminist pres-
ence. Early support from Ramis Barquet
Gallery in Monterrey and New York promot-
ed her image at art fairs and biennials. There
followed a whole series of decorated autos
rescued from junkyards. One, tightly sewn
into woven-reed sleeping mats (petates) like
a pre-Hispanic burial or turtle in its shell,
suggested the dangers faced by desperately
poor migrants bedding down in doorways
and fields like packages in transit.
A Volkswagen Bug encased in cro-
cheted baby blanket reminded Romero of
her own grandmother. At street level, a strip
of pastel-colored yarn trailed from the car
into the Carrillo Gil Museum of Art in Mexico
City and up a ramp to the top floor, where a
seated guard continued hooking loops.
Romero makes the analogy to a giant umbili-
cal cord tying alpha males to mamas who
wont let go. A third piece, shown at the 2006
Cairo biennial, inverted one fabric-covered
car on top of another, like victims in plaster
casts after a collision.
An everyday person may not be able
to tell you the style or period of the building
he or she lives in, but that same person prob-
ably can tell you the make, model, and year
of any car. The mass media are saturated with
car crashes and car bombings that epitomize
random violence today. Some images, for
example the convertible 1961 Lincoln stretch
limousine in which John F. Kennedy was shot,
have become historic icons. Like Warhol,
Romero exploits tabloid imagery to inject
irony, new meaning, and popular appeal.
On a conceptual level, Romeros dec-
orated cars oppose speed and macho
NASCAR culture. They are feminized and
given stories, a history. They also are dressed
up, like the paper doll clothes she invented
in sets as a child. For velocity, she substitutes
memory. Memory, like the fabrication of
textiles, is a slow accumulative process. Her
own process is equally generative.
From cars, she went on to car parts
(doors, windshields, rearview mirrors) and
tires. An insatiable curiosity to categorize,
research, and explore objects from a variety
of different facets stems from early training
Fall2013 9
in semiotics during undergraduate studies in
communication at the Iberoamerican University
in Mexico City and a masters degree in art histo-
ry in Paris. Her work is saturated with references
to ancient Mexican art, colonial motifs rendered
by native craftsmen, and typical images that are
contemporary pop iconsan art movement
dubbed neomexicanidad. She also plays directly
with the manipulation of materials.
Tires are symbols of mobility, the cos-
mos, and the eternal female principle. Tires sliced
like an orange peel spiral to the ceiling. Instead of
white walls, Romeros tires are ornamented like
precious ceremonial objects. She uses chicle
(think Chiclets), a substance once harvested
under slave conditions from sapodilla trees in
tropical zones along the east coast of Mexico,
that was fashioned into decorative objects and
chewed to abate hunger. Tire treads are carved
into cylinder seals, an ancient form of Aztec writ-
ing and printing, some as big as tractor wheels.
Inking and rolling her own designs, Romero has
printed everything from fabric to gallery floors
and walls, and even city pavement.
Meetings at the Intersection/Encuentros
en el cruce (2011), shown last spring in the 8th
International Fiber Biennial at Snyderman-Works
Galleries in Philadelphia, reveals Romeros contin-
uing embrace of Mexican textile traditions and
her ability to position this work within diverse
contexts of installation, fiber art, and printmak-
ing. In the piece, two pure white cotton shawls
from Tenancingo (a rebozo-making center) are
crisscrossed at right angles with two tires placed
vertically astride the center point. The textiles are
printed with positive and negative patterns in
parallel stripes like the security wall running
between the two countries.
In Mexico, the all-purpose rebozo is used
not only as outer protection, but also to swaddle
babies and carry bundles (firewood, produce,
etc.), freeing the hands. It is a vehicle for Romero,
a symbol of mobility, of migration, of the eternal
quest for a better life. At the same time, her rebo-
zos connect to the female body, to nurturing, and
spanning the earth. She associates warps
stretched in the act of weaving on a backstrap
loom with horizon lines and flat landscapes.
A whole range of domestic clothsthick
striped twill for scrubbing (jerga), flannel for pol-
ABOVE: BETSABE ROMERO Altar for Chavela Vargas and Carlos Fuentes Tissue paper hot-air balloons, silkscreened with floral motifs,
hand-decorated sugar skulls, breads representing souls, carved forklift tire, 2012.
The Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Missouri. Collection of the artist.
LEFT: BETSABE ROMERO Caught in Flight/Atrapadas al vuelo Five tires, carved and printed on jerga,
variable dimensions, 2010. Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C. Collection of the artist.
B E T S A B E R O M E R O
BETSABE ROMERO Birds Scream/Aves en un grito Three colors of cut tissue paper silkscreened with birds, PET frame,
41.7" diameter each, 2010. Installation view at Museum of San Ildelfonso, Mexico City, Mexico; featured in the artist's
retrospective exhibition Black Tears/Lgrimas Negras. Collection of the artist. Detail INSET.
ishing, dish towels and bath towels that absorb
odors of cooking and the bodyhas been incor-
porated into recent installations or community
workshops associated with her exhibitions. For
example, Romeros use of jerga (made into the
long-sleeved pullover shirts called Baja Hoodies
sold in America) is emblematic of how she trans-
forms homely cloth into art. Cities That Go Away/
Ciudades que se van (2004) consists of four yel-
low-striped spans of jerga rising from carved tires
spaced apart on the floor. These converged at the
ceiling of the Havana Biennial, while local Cubans
were invited to bring a household cloth to be
printed as a souvenir.
A more elaborate variation, Caught in
Flight/Atrapados en el vuelo (2012) features six 60-
meter lengths of jerga printed with stylized birds
suspended from an atrium in the Kennedy Center
in Washington, D.C. The strips, gradated in red,
orange, and yellow like the sun, give the impres-
sion of the bars of a cage, the flight path of
migrating birds, and the underside of a warped
loom. Romero believes that although immigrants
cover lots of ground in their ambition for a better
life, they are likely to end up in the same low stra-
ta. They carry their culture along with them.
Last November, volunteers from the
Mattie Rhodes Center, a social service organiza-
tion, helped Romero create two altarpieces for
the annual Day of the Dead celebration at the
Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City,
Missouri. One was dedicated to Mexican novelist
and essayist Carlos Fuentes; the other, to the
popular folk singer Chavela Vargas. Hand-painted
sugar skulls, bread souls, and other offerings
were arranged on three-tiered and suspended
tables. Silkscreened tissue paper fashioned into
hot air balloons (globos de Cantoya) illuminated
this sacred space. According to tradition, dead
souls return and feast on the essences of food,
drink, flowers, candles, clothing, and smokes
offered on altars. Museum goers responded over-
whelmingly to an invitation to attach messages
and objects to a series of ribbons hanging from
massive columns. Such public engagement in
general, and outreach to Latin community mem-
bers, especially youth, has become an integral
part of Romeros art.
BETSABE ROMERO Remembered Ogives (circular arches)/Ojivas de la memoria Cut tissue paper, silkscreened, paint on wall,
dimensions variable, 2010. Installation view at Art Museum of Sonora, Sonora, Hermosillo, Mexico;
featured in the exhibit Almost Touching the Sky/Al ras del cielo. TOP: Artist BETSABE ROMERO.
11 Fall2013
Another workshop
with papel picado (the craft of
cut tissue paper, usually made
into tiny flags or strung as col-
orful banners in the street) was
taught in conjunction with
Black Tears/Lgrimas negras,
Romeros 10-year retrospective
of 83 pieces presented at the
prestigious Ancient College of
San Ildefonso in Mexico City in
2010. The exhibit included
Remembered Ogives (circular
arches)/Ojivas de la memoria
(2010), a symphony of tissue-
paper circles, riffing on color admixtures and
shadow, real and painted on the wall, as well as
patterns of silkscreened sailing ships. Birds
Scream/Aves en un grito (2010) contrasts stunning
beauty with a disquieting note of alarm referred
to in the title. Seven tissue-paper forms float par-
allel to the ceiling. Silkscreened on each surface
is a shower of leaves and petals, like drops of
blood, superimposed on a random pattern of
gold Aztecs in full regalia.
As a woman and a
Mexican, Betsabe Romero is
adamant that her artwork be
accessible through a multiplici-
ty of textures and meanings.
Her low-tech recycling of
materials and central themes
of the border, migration,
memory, religious faith, and
constant transformation
impact audiences from
Guatemala and Honduras to
Slovenia and Germany.
Refashioned cars, tires, and
cloth printed with tracks or
traces of cities left behind hold universal appeal
and a strong relevance today.
Romeros website is www.betsabeeromero.com.
Her next solo exhibition will be at Juan Ruiz Gallery in
Miami, Florida, (www.juanruizgaleria.com) November
26, 2013January 31, 2014 during the Miami Art Fairs.
Pamela Scheinman is a photographer, writer,
scholar and educator who divides her time between
New Jersey and Mexico City.
B E T S A B E R O M E R O
SILVIA PIZA-TANDLICH
San Rafael de Heredia, Costa Rica
Still In Time (double-sided, both
shown) Microfiber, handmade batik,
handmade beads, hand-dyed and
commercial yarns, cotton chains,
hand appliqu, couching, batik,
embroidery, crochet, hand quilting,
69 x 24 with extension, 2011.
This piece was included in the 14th
International Triennial of Tapestry
od 2013 in Poland.
Galera Octgono
www.galeriaoctagono.com.
CLAUDIA E. DOMINGUEZ
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
(Born in Mexico City, Mexico)
Hysteria Amate paper backed with cotton, silk, cotton
and gold threads, hand embroidery, 24 x 36, 2012.
www.claudiaedominguez.com
EVELISE ANICET RTHSCHILLING
Porto Alegre, Brazil
Textured Sunset
Black cotton tulle, yarn
residue from industrial
knitting manufacture
(made in southern Brazil),
textile collage processed
in a pneumatic heat
press, size medium, 2013.
Studio Contextura
www.contextura.art.br
E POSURE
X
LAURA FERNNDEZ
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Todos Juntos Installation view,
discharged textiles, paint and
applications, embroidery,
65" x 45", 2012.
MRCIA BERGMANN AND BIA LETTIRE (Designers)
Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
Turury (from the Tree of Life Rug Collection) Detail,
100% continuous filament of polyamide, hand-tuft-
ing, dimensions variable, 2009. Manufatured by
Avanti Carpets & Rugs, Brazil.
www.marciabergmann.com
Artists represented on the Exposure pages are members of the Surface Design Association (SDA).
This issue features the work of members who have populated their SDA profile pages with images
and information about themselves and their work. This free and easy online service adds to the
SDA Image Library and Member Directory; both are valuable research tools for curators, writers,
collectors, and artists from all over the world. To learn more, log into your member account and
follow the prompts, or visit the gallery at www.surfacedesign.org.
Fall2013 63
GABRIELA NIRINO
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Spinner II Linen, cotton, wool, handwoven on com-
puterized jacquard loom, 60.5" x 42.5", 2012. This
piece is included in Fiberart International 2013,
reviewed on page 54.
Fiberart International 2013:
Exhibition of Contemporary
Fiber Art
Pittsburgh Center for the Arts
The Society for Contemporary Craft
Fiberart International 2013, a triennial exhibi-
tion organized by the Fiberarts Guild of
Pittsburgh, opened at the Pittsburgh Center for
the Arts and the Society for Contemporary Craft
(April 19August 18, 2013) with simultaneous
evening receptions and an International Fiberart
Forum the following day. Jurors culled 79 pieces
by 63 artists from 10 countries, which were
selected from 1,259 proposals by 525 artists from
36 countries. Fifty-two artists are first-time inclu-
sions in this prestigious show. This years selec-
tion was made by jurors Kai Chan, fiber artist
from Toronto; Paulina Ortiz, textile artist from
Costa Rica; and Joyce J. Scott, an internationally
active Baltimore-based artist.
Over the course of its 21 presentations,
Fiberart International has matured. The exhibition
was established to celebrate innovative work
rooted in traditional fiber materials, processes,
and history and interdisciplinary arts that explore
their boundaries. These tenets are still examined
with great enthusiasm but perhaps with less of
an evangelical zeal. Over the years, the exhibit
and other fiber survey shows like ithas suc-
ceeded in raising the profile of fiber arts. Should
we continue to advance the field in form-specific
survey exhibitions, or is it time to start thinking
about different formats?
Surveys like Fiberart International can be
problematic and challenging. As collections of
individual artists works, some shows hold
together better than others. Many artists includ-
ed in the 2013 exhibit were represented by two
works, which helped its cohesion. Several excep-
tional pieces stood out.
Embroidery, the au courant hip and hap-
pening technique, was hard to miss in this
overview. Whether machine embroidered or by
hand, many pieces pushed fancy stitching to the
edge of innovative experimentation. While fabric
is hard to manipulate into exacting figurative art,
embroidery lends itself more readily to drawing
and painting. The best examples not only imitate
these traditional representative media, but also
54
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
i nr evi ew
STEPHEN SIDELINGER (US) Big Yellow Embroidery on cotton,
25 x 20, 2011. Detail TOP LEFT.
SANDY SHELENBERGER (US) Textures 3 Encaustic, Japanese rice paper on
cradled boards, encaustic medium, 32 x 24 x 1.5, 2012.
Reviewed by Petra Fallaux
Surface Design Journal
remain true to what makes fiber an art form with a character and
language all its own.
A work that intends to blur the line between painting and
embroidery is Elodie Sabardeils Palpatations. The vulnerability of the
naked figure and loose ends of thread dance in unison, beautifully
expressing form and figuration in one idea.
Stephen Sidelingers Big Yellow, an embroidered reinterpre-
tation of one of his existing paintings, won the award for excellence
in needlework. By staying true to the strong mark-making and lay-
ered qualities of his expressive original, the stitching seems entirely
fresh in its voice: gestural and decisive.
Sandy Shelenburger embroidered a square cloth with four
squares, leaving an open diagonal cross pattern. Her encaustic Textures
1 and Textures 3 each use 12 repetitive black and white images of this
square cloth organized in a quilt-like patchwork. With no actual stitch-
es being present, the pieces raise awareness of how our experiences
are most often mediatedreal tactile experience versus its mere rep-
resentation. Following Magrittes 1928 painting of a pipe accompanied
by the text ceci nest pas une pipe (this is not a pipe), Shelenburger
could have added the text this is not embroidery.
Liz Aston also manipulates photographs of her own textile
work in Exploding Lace View. She pushes perceptions of her lace as
she digitizes, scales up, and abstracts the original in hand-cut,
starched, and dyed linen, taking it out of a traditional size and con-
text and into the realm of contemporary art. A similar transformation
occurs when Carol Milne kiln-casts her knitted wax socks with lead
crystal glass and lost-wax casting technique to reveal socks that are
fine art objects first and transformed textiles second.
These inspired and compelling works actively probe the
boundaries of textile art and challenge preconceived notions. As in
any survey, these works are juxtaposed with more straightforward
fiber pieces: weaving, felting, knitting, crocheting, knotting, beading,
Fall2013
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CAROL MILNE (US) Fire & Brimstone Knitted wax (stockinette stitch), kiln-cast lead crystal (glass),
lost wax casting technique, 7 x 5 x 12 each, 2011.
lace, and paper. While Fiberart International 2013
felt complete and well-rounded, many pieces
remain in the comfort zone of traditional materi-
ality and techniques. Audiences may contemplate
and admire their technical prowess, but the real
excitement comes from the art that explodes our
expectations.
In conjunction with Fiberart International
2013, social medias darling event of the summer
was Knit the Bridge. The yarn-bombing of
Pittsburghs Andy Warhol/7th Street Bridge
basked in glorious blankets made through acces-
sible crafts (August 10-September 6, 2013). The
colorful textiles were appealing to many con-
stituents from the passerby to the participating
folks from all walks of life. The Herculean effort to
organize the project (conceived by Fiberarts
Guild of Pittsburgh members and led by artist
Amanda Gross) took over a year of preparation,
gathering much momentum and support along
the way. It was clearly a huge success when mea-
sured as a community-led and based art project,
claiming to be the largest yarn-bombing to date.
Aesthetically, it was also a sight to
behold. The dressing of the bridge was cleverly
thought out: the 580 blanket-size panels left lots
of room for participants individual contributions.
Black sleeves that encased the railings and pillars
unified and anchored the diversity. Machine knits
dressed the towers. There were so many fantastic
vantage points: from your car or bus on the
bridge or from underneath in a boat or kayak.
Observing people interact on the bridge was
another treat. They very animatedly pointed, dis-
cussed and investigated. There is no doubt that
the Summer of 2013 will be forever known as the
Summer of Knit the Bridge.
Fiberart International 2013 will travel to the San Jose
Museum of Quilts & Textiles in San Jose, California
(November 6, 2013January 19, 2014), www.sjquilt
museum.org; and the Franklin G. Burroughs - Simeon B.
Chapin Art Museum in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
(January 19April 24, 2014), www.myrtlebeachart
museum.org; www.fiberartinternational.org;
www.knitthebridge.wordpress.com.
Dutch native Petra Fallaux is a writer, curator, quilt
maker, and creative director at Springboard Design,
based in Pittsburgh, PA. www.petrafallaux.com
Surface Design Journal 56
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
i nr evi ew
(continued from page 55)
Knit the Bridge Andy Warhol/7th Street Bridge in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania yarn-bombed by dozens of participants with handknit
and crocheted panels (August 10 - September 6, 2013). Photo: John Polyak. Detail TOP LEFT.
i np r i n t
Indigo:
The Color that Changed the World
By Catherine Legrand
Thames & Hudson, London and New York, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-500-57660-7
Long before Levi Strauss stitched up his
first pair of jeans in the 19th century, blue
dye was among the worlds most coveted
commodities. While other sources of the color,
including woad, became well known in the West,
India is believed to have first developed the pro-
cesses that yield a deep vibrant blue from the
indigofera plant. Since its green leaves contain no
hint of the dye that for centuries played a historic
role in international commerce, its development is
close to a miracle wrought by human ingenuity.
Gradually, it found its way around the
world and was adapted to serve the specific
needs of particular cultures. Although the majori-
ty of blue dyes today are synthetic colors pro-
duced by industry, there are pockets on the plan-
et where people still produce indigo as in past
ages.
Catherine Legrand, proprietor of an eth-
nic clothing store in Paris, circled the globe in
search of people working with indigo in tradition-
al ways and who remain conversant with the lore
and rituals surrounding its production. She
records that journey in a visually seductive vol-
ume, Indigo: The Color That Changed the World. Her
high-resolution photographs that make cloth sing
should convince the most indifferent browser
that the color known as blue gold merits what-
ever it took to obtain it. Among the examples the
reader encounters are the richly varied blues of
worn fabric in Japanese boro, the contrast of bril-
liant blue and white in resist-dyed African fabrics,
the lacquer-like shine of blue-black clothing worn
by the Miao people in China, blues enriched by
constellations of tiny patterns in India, and dark-
est blue as a ground for brilliant embroidery in
Guatemala. Diverse images of people at work
convey the enormous range of conditions in
which indigo dyeing takes place, from women
dyeing at home with clay pots scaled for individu-
al use to men working communally in vats that
occupy prominent places in their villages.
The books 300 pages in a horizontal for-
mat could strain muscles accustomed to e-read-
ers. Still, Lagrand correctly describes her approach
as modest, not exhaustive. She provides a brief
introduction to indigos history and the complex
sequence of processes that extract the dye from
the plant, leaving other technical aspects for
chapters on particular geographical areas. There
are references to dyeing processes, such as ikat
and shibori, but no detailed information on those
or on the looms that are mentioned in passing.
However, there is a full explanation of calendar-
ing, a method of beating fabric to make it shiny
and water-resistant, that is used by the Miao.
Occasionally supplementing the copious
photographs are painted images of garments, but
these seem incidental. The authors voice comes
through most authoritatively in her reports on
personal encounters. I was disappointed that, in
the section on Horiyuki Shindo, his rectangular
dyeing tub is depicted but not one of his contem-
porary indigo sculptures. That omission, I assume,
was to keep the focus on traditional artifacts.
This is not a book to read from cover to
cover but to take in a piece at a time. Moving
through the chapters, I kept thinking of a National
Geographic special in which a subject is covered
by selective anecdotes that send one elsewhere
for the whole story. For that, one can start with
the extensive bibliography on the final pages. An
index would have been helpful. I wanted to cross-
reference information in different chapters, but
that meant flipping back and forth through the
book. I tended to lose my way and surrender to
blueness. www.thamesandhudson.com
Patricia Malarcher, a studio artist and writer, was
formerly Editor of the Surface Design Journal.
Reviewed by Patricia Malarcher
History
Founded in 1977, the Surface Design Association is an interna-
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