I woke to the rumble of thunder and flashes of lightening, growing ever louder. I looked out the window and the tall pines swayed in silhouette against the flash of light. The flash revealed the angry lake and falling rain as if it were daylight, reflecting shades of deep blue-gray and the sky in pale turquoise under rolling gray-green clouds.
This image stayed with me, and I knew I had to capture it in my next woven series using woven shibori. Woven shibori is a resist technique (i.e. think of tie-dye where rubber bands and string resist the dye) where a pattern is hand-woven into a base layer of fabric. The pattern threads are pulled tight, the bundle of fabric immersed in dye, and when the pattern threads are cut, a pattern reveals itself; my intrigue in the experience is the surprise of it.
In addition, my travels to Ghana this past summer introduced me to Kente cloth, a cloth made of patterned strip cloth. Traditionally, the strips are sewn together to make a large cloth worn by the village chief. I used the grid-like structure of kente cloth as the structure for this design.