Judith Content

Like the haiku, my work explores the essence of an image, a memory, or a moment in time.  I find inspiration in nature’s waterways from estuaries to desert pools.  I am especially drawn to the haunting beauty of coastal marshes and the relationship between shadow and light as fog abstracts the landscape.  Just as haiku often have different interpretations, I hope that the meditative quality of my pieces encourages viewers to draw upon their own memories and experiences when contemplating my work.

I construct my quilts intuitively with a palette of silks created using a contemporary approach to the traditional Japanese dye technique arashi-shibori.  Traditionally arashi-shibori involved wrapping and compressing fabric on long polished wooden poles.  The threads used to secure the fabric to the pole as well as the manipulated pleats resisted the penetration of dye.  Patterns reminiscent of wind-driven rain resulted from this process and perhaps explain the literal translation of arashi as “storm” in Japanese.

Over the years I have refined a unique interpretation of arashi-shibori that depends as much upon subtracting color as adding it.  Starting with black silk, I work origami-like pleats into the fabric with an iron and secure the pleated bundle of silk to glass bottles with fine thread. The fabric is then submerged in a bleaching (discharge) solution. By varying the pleats, the tension of the thread and the duration of time in the discharge solution, I can achieve innumerable variations of distinctive resist patterns on the silk.  When the silk is over-dyed, an inner luminosity can be achieved that is unique to this process. Although I can control the results to a great extent, the element of surprise when the silk is unwrapped and the patterns are revealed never fails to excite me.

My background in watercolor painting and my love of building things led naturally to the construction of quilts. Every aspect of my work, from the dyeing, to the piecing, to the quilting and appliqué, relies on intuition as well as experience.  As I prepare my palette of silks, I don’t take notes or record the results - but allow each dye session to enlighten the next. A collection of diverse silks are strewn on the studio floor, torn up, arranged and rearranged until they resonate. The composition of fragments is meticulously secured to the design wall, studied, refined and finally sewn together. Quilting defines portions of the design and appliqué is often applied to accentuate depth or movement in the piece.

I am passionate about the processes involved in my work and relish the labor of its creation.  The unique effects I can achieve from these processes continue to challenge my creativity and imagination. By integrating technique and vision I hope to evoke a mood, create a feeling or stir a memory that resonates in a deeply personal way with the viewers of my art.