Southern Crossing Three (Primary Title)
Kiyomi Iwata, American, born Japan, born 1941 (Artist)
Fabric itself can become more intellectually challenging and I like that kind of surprise in human beings too, when you get to know each other. It is kind of nice to have layers and layers of human experience come out. That is what I enjoy very much about life and cloth. —Kiyomi Iwata
Kiyomi Iwata began her career in the arts after taking a batik dying class at VMFA’s Studio School in 1967. In the early 1970s she moved to New York, where she studied weaving and textiles at the New School of Social Research. This work comes from the artist’s Southern Crossing series, which is characterized by her use of woven kibiso thread, the rough, thick silk first produced by silkworms before they begin to make the much more familiar, smooth thread traditionally used in textiles. In this work, the kibiso also contains the empty cocoon casings where silk originates. The title alludes to observations of the natural world; Southern Cross is a constellation found in the southern hemisphere, centered on four bright stars in a cross-shaped configuration that points to the South Pole
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