Memory on Cloth: Shibori Now

For nearly thirty years, surface-design artist, curator, and textile researcher YOSHIKO IWAMOTO WADA has been teaching shibori, first in Berkeley, California and then around the world. Many who took her classes went on to become artists and teachers themselves, and thanks to Wada's efforts the field has expanded geometrically over the course of a single generation. In 1983 she also coauthored, with Mary Kellogg Rice and Jane Barton, the definitive book in English, Shibori: The Inventive Art of Japanese Shaped-Resist Dyeing. As Jack Lenor Larsen puts it in his foreword to Memory on Cloth, "Through her first book, Shibori, and through her exhibits, lectures, and personal persuasion in every communication medium, Wada has single-handedly changed our field and its language." Because of her commitment to keeping shibori traditions alive, the word "shibori" has now become universally accepted as the term for shaped-resist processes. Wada continues to travel the world searching for shibori innovations and outstanding artists.