43: Marilyn Robert (Transcript)

43: Marilyn Robert (transcript)

 

Where warp meets weft, this is WeaveCast with Syne Mitchell

 

Musical interlude

 

Hello and welcome to episode 43. This episode ensemble member Jennifer Jordan brings us an interview with Marilyn Robert. 

 

Marilyn Robert has a Master of Fine Arts in fibres and has been the recipient of many study grants and awards, including a recent Japan Foundation Grant to research traditional indigo dyed textiles and contemporary fibre arts.

 

In addition to teaching she is also the co-owner of the Eugene Textile Center with Susie Liles.

 

If you’re not familiar with the Eugene Textile Center, it is a wonderful resource for fibre artists in the Eugene area. They teach classes, they sell equipment and supplies. I’ve never been there but looking at the website was quite interesting.

 

There’s an intermediate tapestry weaving class that makes me wish Eugene was not a five hour drive away.

 

Musical interlude

 

JJ This is Jennifer Jordon. I’m a WeaveCast ensemble member and I’m here in Eugene, OR with Marilyn Robert in the Eugene Textile Center.

 

Thank you Marilyn for agreeing to do this interview.

 

MR My pleasure.

 

JJ You were a textile artist and surface design is your strength, is that right?

 

MR Yes, although I started out as a weaver.

 

JJ Oh.

 

MR In around 1970 and so for many years I was a weaver, primarily, and my MFA is in fibre arts and that’s when I started moving toward more surface design.

 

After I got my masters degree I got a job at Lake Community College teaching weaving. So for 13 years there I taught the weaving program there and introduced surface design techniques.

 

JJ Can you tell me what surface design is?

 

MR Yes. If you look at cloth in terms of structure and surface you can get a better idea of it, I think.

 

So structure of cloth would involve weaving cloth, knitting, felting, crocheting, any kind of process that involves the actual construction of the basic cloth.

 

Surface design addresses the surface of that cloth. So that could include things like dyeing on cloth, printing on cloth, stitching, chemical/mechanical manipulation of cloth. Just a variety of things that change the surface or the texture of the cloth.

 

And a lot of times the two are combined.

 

Someone might weave a cloth and then embellish it with surface design techniques.

 

JJ So of the surface design techniques that you’ve explored, which is your favourite or which do you tend to come back to all the time?

 

MR I probably come back to dyeing with indigo.

 

JJ And you have a pot here, too, right?

 

MR  Yes. We have. We have on-going indigo vats here. Different types of vats from time to time but we always have an indigo vat going and we have two days a month where people can just come in and do a drop-in indigo dyeing session here in the surface design area.

 

JJ Are there different kinds of indigo that give different results?

 

MR Yes. There’s natural indigo and synthetic indigo. That’s two broad categories. Within natural indigo there are many species of the plant that makes the dye. In just one of the, I think it’s the genus, one indigofera tinctoria there are over 800 species of the plant.

 

But for our dyer, or the home dyer, we buy the indigo generally in powdered form, although you can get it in other forms, either synthetic or natural and then the vat is sort of a complex vat.

 

Indigo doesn’t become soluble in water, it has to be in an alkaline solution and there has to be bacterial reduction of the indican, which is the precursor of the indigo, found in the leaves.

 

So you have to kind of balance the alkalinity and the fermentation and then the dyeing can occur.

 

JJ So it’s a vat you have to tend.

 

MR Yes.

 

JJ But it’s long lasting?

 

MR Yes.

 

JJ You can use it over and over.

 

MR Yes. You can feed it. You basically feed it and there’s different kinds of vats, too. There are vats with different additives to make the same result.

 

The most labour intensive is the organic indigo vat and that gives us all organic materials, takes the longest amount of time to reduce…

 

JJ Kind of smelly too?

 

MR Yes. It’s the one that smells the most. There are a lot of indigo vats that don’t really smell, but um, yes, it does smell.

 

I think it’s a lovely smell but other people disagree.

 

(laughter)

 

JJ Probably not something you want to have in your back hall cooking away.

 

MR Uh – well a lot of people don’t. 

 

JJ So with the indigo, I’ve just seen a few types of dyeing around here. The shibori resist dyeing. What are some other techniques you like to use with indigo?

 

MR Weavers often use a technique called ikat. Or in Japanese it’s called kasuri. It is a technique where you bind the threads, either in the warp or the weft or both. You bind them with a tape that resists the dye. 

 

You have a pattern in mind. You bind off the threads, put it in the dye. When it comes out of the dye the threads are removed and where the threads were, is still white, or the colour of the thread.

 

And then the other part is blue and then it’s woven together to create a patterns.

 

I had a Japan Foundation Fellowship grant to study traditional indigo textiles in Japan and contemporary fibre art. So I timed my visit to the harvest of the indigo in Tokoshima on the island of Shikoku in Japan.

 

I was really fortunate to be able to travel around and look at different indigo processes and some really wonderful…

 

JJ What part of the plant is it? Is it the leaves?

 

MR Yes. It’s the leaves.

 

Primarily.

 

JJ What season do they harvest in? 

 

MR Well, they harvest in the summer but in the southwestern part of Japan the seasons, the summer season is so long and so hot that they get two harvests and sometimes three per year.

 

JJ Is it a tree, a bush?

 

MR It’s a bush and it grows to about 3 feet tall. When the first harvest comes they just cut off the stem close to the ground and then it grows up again, not quite as big as the last time. They usually save the seeds from the last harvest for the planting the next year.

 

JJ So it’s not a perennial, so they have to plant every year then.

 

MR Right.

 

JJ How interesting.

 

So if somebody were just interested in beginning with surface design, what route would you suggest that they take?

 

MR Well, we started a new class here last month called Introduction to Surface Design because, like you asked me, there’s a lot of questions about you know, what is surface design.

 

And the thing is, it really is a broad range of activities and people might like some and might not like some. I mean it’s like anything else.   So, we’ve done this introduction to surface design. It’s a two week class and it’s kind of a survey class. People can try out dyeing on cloth and we use different dyes for different cloths so there’s a variety of dyes that people use.

 

And printing on cloth and that printing might be stencils or blocks or using a heat press or screen printing, and then some resist techniques. You mentioned before shibori. We’ll use some of those techniques to pattern cloth when we’re dyeing it.

 

So we try to pack in as many possibilities for surface design in two days. Then somebody goes away with the idea of “Gee, I really like this technique and I’d like to learn more about it.” And then they can sign up for one of those classes or study that further. Some things they’re just not going to care about.

 

But they have an appreciation for it after that!

JJ How much work it is or how difficult it is.

 

MR And that’s really a fun class. A lot of people are enjoying that one.

 

JJ So I know that you’re still an active artist. What are you working on now? You have an exhibit coming up.

 

MR I’m kind of working on two things. I’m going to teach a dye class, actually ikat class in Taos, NM in September. So I’m working on some natural dye pieces that will be in the gallery in conjunction with that.

 

And then I’m working on a show at the Jacobs Gallery in Eugene which is a three person show.

 

There is a printmaker, a painter and myself and our show, the theme of our show is Black and White.

 

So I’m working on that.

 

JJ And when will that be?

 

MR That’s next May, so it’s a year. It takes a long time to get a lot of work together.

 

JJ Yes! Especially when you’re so busy here.

 

MR And I like taking my time with things. Letting them evolve.

 

And I’m finding that it’s a little bit hard not to use colour. I wouldn’t have thought that before but it is.

 

JJ It’s been a challenge for you.

 

MR Yes.

 

JJ One thing you mentioned was that you do a lot of dyeing and I think I have a lot of interest, and I think there’s in general a lot of interest about natural dyeing. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

 

MR Yes. It’s true. It’s very popular, natural dyeing is very popular in this community. I think because it’s, it is very accessible. There’s plants growing round everywhere right? Or you can save onion skins in your kitchen or go to the grocery store and ask if you can collect their onion skins.

 

There are a lot of books about natural dyeing with directions and recipes and my favourite is Wild Color by Jenny Dean. But there are many others as well.

 

We sell a lot of natural dyes that don’t grow around here. For example cochineal, which is a red dye that comes from an insect that grows on a cactus down in Peru and Mexico.

 

We obviously don’t have that here so we purchase those. 

 

It’s also possible just to take a little walk and go after, for example, walnuts. Black walnuts, in the fall, when they fall to the ground. They can be collected and made into a wonderful dye.

 

JJ That outside covering?

 

MR Yes. They get soaked and then the water gets drained off.

 

So you just collect the whole composting part of the nut that falls.

 

JJ What colour does that make?

 

MR That makes a range of tans and browns. So it’s a very nice colour.

 

But there are other minerals that modify the colours and set the colours of natural dyes. Actually there’s just a handful of them. But you could experiment with the same natural dye many times over and get different results depending on whether you use iron to darken it or alum to brighten it. It’s very easy and satisfying to work with those.

 

JJ Thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us. I know the listeners will really enjoy this.

 

MR Thanks Jennifer.

 

Musical interlude

 

Today’s WeaveCast interview was recorded and produced by Jennifer Jordan, a member of the WeaveCast ensemble.

 

If you’d like to get involved in recording interviews in your area of the world – and I would love to have somebody doing recordings in Europe, in Australia, and all of the other wonderful places I can’t afford to fly to – please drop me an email at editor@weavezine.com

 

Musical interlude