Learn more about the fascinating art of katazome at this special talk by Corvallis-based artist Karen Miller, in celebration of the opening of Natural Patterns: Katazome Stencil Dyeing in the Calvin and Mayho Tanabe Gallery. Miller, whose artwork will be featured in this exhibition, has practiced katazome for the past 30 years. She infuses her designs with inspiration from the natural world and drawing from her background as a marine biologist.
About Karen Illman Miller
Artist Biography
Karen Miller was a marine biologist at Oregon State University and her art is often inspired by her scientific background. Her interest in textiles and Japan dates extends back to her childhood. In 1994, she was introduced to katazome and carved her first stencil, which was a turning point in her artistic life. She studied the craft with American katazome expert John Marshall. She began carving stencils using mostly traditional Japanese patterns. Now using her own hand-cut and personally designed stencils, Miller produces fabric for art quilts, silk garments, linen hangings, and indigo-dyed cottons. She is passionate about the patterns found in natural forms, detailed biological images like tree branches, leaf skeletons, or marine animals, and especially the abstractions nature produces.
Miller’s work has been exhibited twice in Japan and, numerous private and public collections,. Her art was hung in the Washington D.C. office of Jane Lubchenco, the head of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) during the first Obama administration. She has taught katazome nationally and internationally and has published several articles. She was featured on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Oregon Art Beat, in October 2007.
Artist Statement
I grew up in a home where both art and science were respected. My father was an organic chemist and my mother an artist, the daughter of one of the early naturalists in the Pacific Northwest. My grandfather traveled to Japan in 1910 and returned with an appreciation for the Japanese aesthetic as well as for their love of their own natural history as depicted in their art and textiles. He was a mentor for me as a child and his inspiration eventually influenced my choice of marine biology as a career. I spent 25 years as a research scientist at Oregon State University, studying Octopus oxygen binding proteins. I now realize I was always an artist as well, and my choice of career was made at least in part because of the beauty of the animals. I worked while raising three children but I always made time for art. My mother was a painter, and a good one, but I was genuinely drawn to textiles as my medium, first embroidery, then quilting and finally, my real artistic home, katazome 型染, Japanese stencil dyeing. I had adored traditional Japanese stencil designs for nearly 30 years. Carving my first stencil in a class taught by a Japanese indigo dyer was a turning point in my artistic life and I have never looked back. Although I studied briefly with American katazome expert John Marshall, most of my work over nearly thirty years has been independent, carving hundreds of stencils and using them to make traditional and experimental textiles for art quilts, garments and interiors.
Katazome allows me to separate the production of the image from the application of color, a process more akin to printmaking than to painting. The stencil katagami 型紙 is made from shibugami 渋紙. Several layers of thin mulberry fiber paper, kozo, are laminated with persimmon juice, kakishibu 柿渋, and smoked, yielding an aromatic brown paper. It is brittle and easy to cut when dry, but leathery and tough when wet. A layer of silk mesh, sha, lacquered on the top surface protects even the most intricate stencil from damage when the rice paste resist, nori, is spread through it onto the fabric. Then the fabric is either dipped into the indigo vat, or stretched like a hammock and dye painted. The pattern emerges when the resist is soaked off. I began carving stencils using mostly traditional Japanese patterns and they taught me much about cutting techniques and the layout of the design. I consider this time spent my apprenticeship, in time enabling me to design my own original stencils, inspired by the images which speak most deeply to me.
Combining art and science in my work, I care deeply that what I depict is biologically accurate as well as beautiful. Although I am not an abstract artist, pattern is my passion, pattern found in natural forms, detailed biological images like tree branches, leaf skeletons, or marine animals and especially the abstractions nature produces. Why invent when nature supplies such a wealth of beauty to use in my art?
Portland Japanese Garden would like to thank The Miller Foundation for their support of arts and culture programming.
