I work on a five-yard painting rack, layering dyes and paints in eight to ten stages, to build unusual color transparencies and textural interest over jacquard and crepe de chine silks. Rather than using resist, which corrals the dye within an outline, this intensive layering process builds a more nuanced and multi-dimensional sense of color and shape. Because the fabric weave is integral to surface design, I have begun designing my own jacquard patterns to be woven for the Sea Silk line before I begin the painting process.

My fabric designs often have a narrative line which uses the traditional Asian calligraphy and nature motifs filtered through a distinctly contemporary Californian style, sensibility and craftsmanship. My aesthetic sense is probably influenced by the period I spent living and traveling with my family in Southeast Asia as a child, and later, in my studies for my undergraduate degrees in Anthropology and Religious Studies. Art was never a matter of formal study, but a form of play throughout all stages of life.

Some of my fabric designs incorporate 12th century Buddhist text and traditional Chinese blessing ways. Rendered in Japanese calligraphy, the Haiku Collection is a design series drawing on the work of Issa, an 18th century poet. Exquisitely simple, the haiku form distills and frames a moment of quiet observation of the natural world, and at the same time, alludes to the transitory nature of the moment.

Continuing in the Japanese “Gyotaku” tradition, I use botanical blockprints taken from leaf rubbings. These multi-layered designs may use 19th century British etchings of dragonflies, butterflies and moths in flight over Issa’s poems and falling leaves.