Chie Hitchner
Chie Hitchner
Chie HItchner is a Japanese-born textile artist who resides and works in the United States. Her work explores the interplay of color and movement with fabric as the canvas, and she likes especially to work with silk fiber and natural dyes. In Japan, the craft of handwoven textiles was never lost even as Japan industrialized and automated its textile industry. The textile arts were protected and nurtured by a vibrant industry and a thriving arts and crafts movement known as mingei The textile arts in Japan today divide between traditional craft textiles, which use the craft techniques and replicate generations' old designs, and contemporary textiles that often use the same craft techniques but apply them to achieve the artist's own artistic objectives. Chie's work falls in the latter category.
Today, even in Japan, the craft techniques that combine into handwoven textiles are known by fewer and fewer practitioners. Chie believes that an artist's freedom of expression is enhanced through the perfection of craft techniques, as such techniques are essential to helping the artist to realize her vision.
Chie first experienced hand weaving as an art form when she entered Joshibi University of Art and Design in Tokyo after graduating from high school. Joshibi University's education philosophy is strongly impacted by the Mingei arts and crafts movement. She later earned a Masters in Design from the Tama Art University, also in Tokyo, where she studied textiles from around the world.
Chie exhibits her work at juried art and craft shows in the US and Japan, and was recognized recently with The Balvenie Rare Craft Award of Excellence at the American Craft Council Atlanta Show in March 2018, Best in Show at CraftBoston Holiday in December 2017 and the Award of Excellence at the American Craft Council San Franclsco Show in August 2017. She maintains her artistic ties in Japan through participation in the artists' organization Kokugakai .
Digital imagery has given all of us an intimate appreciation and understanding of how color effects are expressed and managed by combining tiny dots of color. Textile design has long taken inspiration from similar appreciation of the effects of combining differently dyed, fine fibers on the warp and the weft of a traditional loom. A typical square inch of silk cloth will use about 60 threads in the warp (the vertical direction) and a similar number in the weft (the crosswise weave). The color and effect of the weave will be impacted by the dyeing of the silk and the way each thread is woven, e.g. placed, on the loom.
The exhibit will feature wall tapestries, bolts of cloth that have been sewn into kimonos for wall display, wearable shawls, and small framed textiles. Each textile is 100% silk and all colors used in the exhibit were dyed by the artist using natural plant and mineral substances. The works on display are colorful, beautiful, and wonderfully representative of increasingly rare craft techniques.
