SHIOKA OKAMOTO

TEXTILE DESIGN | WEB PORTFOLIO


Color of attitude





This experimental dyeing project has been a journey to introspect myself over a year of 2021. Pieces of fabric were dyed weekly with food waste such as inedible part of vegetables from everyday life. For this project, I have challenged to keep "my waste" to use them as dye stuff and record each of the dyed pieces of fabric as an individual color instead of dumping them soon after each meals. I expected a pile of color library from the waste which is collected throughout the year, questioning conventional natural dyeing which requires to consume specific resources to use it as dyestuff. I looked for "natural" making process and create artworks in that manner as much as possible, and accepted the colors of waste as it is. It was a great journey to see what color will appear and felt it may mirror my attitude.





Plain woven fabrics of cotton (medium thickness), cotton (thin), silk, and wool are used for this project to see the various result. As the whole dyeing method followed basic natural dyeing process, mordants; alum and iron are used to fix the color. Those are regarded as environmentally safer option among metal mordants.



600 x 600mm



While building the color library week by week, I had collected the all the remaining dye bath and eventually fermented it to reuse as another dye bath. The deep and thick dye bath were able to dye larger pieces of fabric several times. I experimented printing method using mordants to dye pattern on them, and eventually created series of textile design. Various concentration of iron paste for direct print and citric acid paste for discharge are printed and layered to create the shades. With screen printing thechnique, the stripe stencil is used to enhance the contrast of color of the dyed parts, mordanted parts and discharged parts. The one is pre-dyed by tannin bath and iron bath makes the color sadden.



Color library by week



from top to bottom by material: thinner cotton, thicker cotton, silk, wool

from left to right by mordant: none, alum, iron



week1



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data



dyed textile



​2021-2022

Designed and made by Shioka Okamoto


Material: wool fabric

Technique: dip dye, block print, hand screen print


Exhibition

"Square SOME 8"

13.03.2022-19.03.2022

at gallery Hinoki e.F


Research funding, independent

by Wesco Scientific Promotion Foundation

‘Dyeing with waste of inedible parts of food from household’






(c) Shioka Okamoto