Autumn Leaves

 
In autumn, the mountains seem to dress themselves in colour.
Red, yellow, green, purple and soft brown spread across the landscape, while leaves of many different shapes overlap and mingle beneath the changing light.
 
These rich colours were created using natural dyes: lac, gardenia and logwood.
The warp threads are patterned using the traditional warp-kasuri technique.
Because the threads are resist-dyed before weaving, subtle shifts and softly blurred edges appear throughout the cloth.
 
As the coloured warp threads cross the differently coloured weft threads, new and unexpected shades emerge.
A red warp may deepen into burgundy; yellow may soften into green or warm orange; purple may become shadowed grey.
These delicate variations cannot be created by either the warp or the weft alone.
They arise only where the two meet within the woven structure.
 
Rather than depicting individual leaves, this work seeks to capture the richness of an entire mountainside in autumn: trees dressed in countless colours, leaves differing in shape and tone, and light moving across the landscape.
 
Each small field of colour becomes part of a larger rhythm, evoking the fleeting beauty of the season before the leaves begin to fall.

Harvesting Kudzu

Kudzu threads dyed red with lac

Dyeing the Threads Green