Exhibiting Artist Karen Illman Miller Explains the Process Behind Her Work
By Will Lerner, Communications Manager for Portland Japanese Garden & Japan Institute
In March, Portland Japanese Garden debuted its new art exhibition, Natural Patterns: Katazome Stencil Dyeing, featuring the katazome artistry of Oregon resident Karen Illman Miller. Initially used to add elaborate patterns onto commonly used fabrics, like yukata (cotton kimono), katazomeis a method of using exquisitely cut paper stencils and resist paste to dye fabrics. Today, katazome-created designs can be stand-alone art pieces, or are often found on noren curtains, futon covers, and furoshiki gift wraps. Miller has been creating this extraordinary art for 30 years, making katazome artworks and incorporating her original pieces into art quilts. Her work will be displayed in two parts in the Calvin and Mayho Tanabe Gallery in the Jordan Schnitzer Japanese Arts Learning Center. The first will focus on her landscape and flower themes through June 7, and her nautical-themed pieces will be exhibited through September 15.
To learn more about this lesser known but remarkable Japanese art form, we traveled to Miller’s handsome craftsman home in Corvallis, Oregon where she creates her pieces in a basement brimming with her work, supplies, and ideas. If you want to learn more about Miller herself, you can read a profile on her here.
Get to Know Katazome
The origins of katazome have been traced to Japan’s Muromachi period (1336-1573), though elements of its production go back further. The stencils, called katagami, are believed to have been used since the nation’s Heian period (794-1185). While tools and materials have changed with the advancement of modern technology, it is an artistic process that has remained nearly the same for centuries.
“Katazome translates to ‘pattern dyeing,’” shares Miller. “Japanese stencil dyeing is a way of using a hand-cut paper stencil to apply resist paste [a substance that prevents the material from being dyed] to fabric, which can be then indigo-dyed or stretched like a hammock and painted. When you wash off the resist paste, you have this crisp edged beautiful pattern.”
“The materials are so simple,” Miller notes. “You can create katazome with supplies that sit tidily in a corner. They don’t involve any elaborate machinery or toxic chemicals. All the tools that you use in katazome have been refined and perfected from the simplest materials found in Japan. And yet you end up with this enormously powerful tool for producing your own patterned fabric. And I just think that’s magic.”
“Katazome involves dyeing, but it relates more to woodblock printing or cutting an engraving plate where you put a lot of your energy into the production of the image making tool. And then you’re able to use that tool repeatedly and in sometimes more creative ways over a long period of time if you care for it properly. That’s powerful. It’s not a one-shot process—it’s a durable tool.”
Explaining the Process
Miller is a dedicated teacher and advocate for katazome as an art form.“ I exhibit nationally and internationally in quilt shows in various places. I always have to explain my process. Very often, a piece will not jury in, because the jury may think my work was just printed on fabric. The more people I can educate the more they can understand all the work that goes into my katazome and the better off I’m going to be. And besides which, I truly do love teaching it. I’ll teach a two or three-day class, and the students will be exhausted, but I will be as high as a kite afterwards because sharing what I know and seeing people get it and have success is rewarding to me.”
We leaned on that love of teaching to have Miller give the broad brushstrokes of the katazome process.
Cutting Stencils
As Miller has noted, she’s deeply inspired by the natural world and both collects and creates stencils that reflect what she finds beautiful. Animals make regular appearances as do plants like “The Tree,” Portland Japanese Garden’s famous maple.
“Japanese stencils were traditionally made out of two or three layers of mulberry fiber paper that gets laminated with kakishibu, the fermented juice of green persimmons,” she notes. “When you paint the fermented juice on the layers of the paper, they wind up gluing the layers together and end up with a grain-free brittle paper that is perfect for cutting with a sharp knife. In the olden days the paper would then just be aged for a long time, but then they started to speed up the process by smoking it.”
Miller will then either photocopy her design directly onto the paper or onto tracing paper that is then adhered to the mulberry paper. Miller and other modern artists will often eschew traditional cutting tools in favor of modern X-Acto knives.
“Stencil cutting is truly meditation,” she says. “It is a deeply focused process like embroidery, knitting, or calligraphy. It’s good for your mental health, and it certainly is for mine. Anything where you have to breathe and move at the same time generates healthy vibrations in your body.” Because her work often features very fine details, Miller will attach a layer of silk mesh for added stability. Before using the stencils, they are typically soaked in water becoming a tough, leathery, and waterproof material.
Creating and Applying Resist Paste
The next step is mixing the resist paste, which is very much what it sounds like—an essentially impermeable paste that, when strategically applied, will prevent designated parts of a fabric from being dyed. “Resist paste is a magical ingredient,” Miller offers. “It’s made with sticky rice flour, or mochiko, finely milled, de-fatted rice bran from Japan, and water. After stirring it into a rubbery paste, it gets steamed. The finished product comes out looking like warm peanut butter and smelling like brown rice. It’s silky and velvety and stretchy and wonderful, but when it dries on the fabric, it is dry. If it dries on your counter, you have to chisel it off. But the beautiful thing is that when you’re finished dyeing, it’ll be gone after just 20 minutes in warm water. There’s no wax, no fumes, no toxic anything.”
The resist paste is then applied to the fabric through the stencil. “You apply it with a wooden spreader, lift the stencil off, and then let the paste dry.”
Adding Color
After the paste has dried, there are different ways to approach adding color. You can dye the fabric in a vat of indigo or stretch it like a canvas to paint it. “You can paint it with anything that is thick enough not to crawl underneath your resist paste. You can use thickened fiber reactive dyes, acid dyes, direct dyes, and so on. I tend to first apply a layer of fresh soymilk to the fabric and then use a mixture of the soymilk with powdered watercolor pigments. I do this because they don’t fade and because you can do perfectly graded washes from one color to another.”
“You then wash off the paste and then, pow! The pattern appears—a crisp-edged and beautiful design. The base color of the fabric, typically white, becomes immediately evident. It’s amazing. After 30 years of doing this, I’ll be amazed, ‘Oh, wow, look at that.’”
A Finished Work Reflecting the Serenity of the Process
As Miller notes, katazome can be applied to just about anything. “I make art quilts, silk and cotton garments, table runners, pillow tops, scarves, bowls, prints on paper,” she notes. “It’s a really powerful technique for producing your own pattern fabric.”
A common characteristic across all of Miller’s work is her special signature. “I have a stencil that gives my name and the name of my business, the same as any Japanese printmaker might,” she shares. “I chose the kanji [the pictographic Japanese characters] for that signature based on my name, Karen. However, in Japan, Karen isn’t a common name. So I went to my Japanese teacher at the university and I said, ‘How can I spell Karen with kanji?’ I chose 歌 (ka) for ‘song’ and 漣 (ren) for ‘lotus blossom’ because I have been singing with my husband for more than 60 years. We were married on my grandparents’ wedding anniversary, and my grandmother carried a water lily for her wedding bouquet. So for me, song and lotus blossom represent my long, happy marriage. The rest of [my signature] is a nautilus [a reference to Miller’s studio title, Nautilus Fiberarts] and script that spells katazome.”
“I can’t produce art that isn’t serene,” Miller concludes. “It’s the way I think, it’s what moves me, it’s what I need for my own mental health. The making of things has a kind of a serenity about it. The cutting of stencils and the application of color is meditative. I really like for the finished work to contain that same sense of serenity so that when people look at it, it draws calmness to them. Peace and harmony is really essential to my imagery, I think.”