Mood indigo

I’m currently working on a body of work inspired by indigo. When I did my fiber arts program many years ago, we had an indigo vat in the fiber studio. My teacher, Catharine Ellis, studied indigo and shibori dyeing in Japan and passed her knowledge on to us.

Shibori is a style of resist dyeing done in Japan, typically with indigo dye. There are many styles of shibori, depending on how you create the resist - stitching, binding, folding, pleating, etc.

I knew that I wanted to incorporate some sort of shibori element into my paintings but in a way that is more aligned with my current creative process. I’ve already been making collage papers using Japanese rice paper for some time and decided that it would be perfect for this experiment. It’s thin and translucent and tends to tear when wet, but is strong when it’s dry. I use the Yasutomo brand of rice paper that comes on a roll.

I first taped pieces of the rice paper to cardboard, then applied watered-down acrylic paint. The next step was to stamp into the paper while it was still wet to create a pattern.

For the stamping, I used a variety of implements I had handy, including the head of a screw, a furniture leg protector, and a mesh drain cover. Sometimes I spritzed the stamped areas to make them bleed more, to get the organic effect that you often see in typical shibori-dyed fabric.

I’m really thrilled with the effect and have already started using these papers in some of my paintings!

To get early access to all the paintings in this series - as well as hear about special studio sales, shows, and get more glimpses into my process - be sure to sign up for my email list.

Update . . . you can now view and shop the entire Indigo series, Many of the paintings in this collection incorporate collage papers made using this technique.