Interview with Christine Zavesky (School of Art), Summer 2017 CEAS Research Grant Award Winner

Christine Zavesky (School of Art, Graphic Design) received a Charles Kao Fund Research Grant to help support three months of research in Japan for her project, “Resonating Gestures: Merging the Hand with Technology in Textile Production”

To begin, could you please provide a brief summary of your research?

The handmade object, through its very process of becoming, reveals a connection between the mind and the body. Inconsistencies leave imprints that tell stories about a particular pace or hesitation; a history of its making. This dimension often becomes flattened through digital production.

Mechanized and manual weaving are akin in that they share a long-rooted tectonic process, yet speed and materiality draw distinctions in their inherent character. Digital technology in textiles offers a uniformity in production, but also a potential distancing through its homogeneity. Does consistency equate to material longevity, or is it another, more haptic quality that compels us to preserve things? At what scales of production can handmade and digital technologies overlap and inform each other as a lasting practice?

My research through the grant was two-fold, where first, I learned the process of Kasuri weaving through a ten-week workshop in Kyoto. Kasuri is a graphic form of weaving, where lengths of thread are systematically resist-dyed before entering the loom. As the perpendicular resists become aligned through the weaving process, the visual compositions are revealed. The resulting forms within the textile have a combination of sharp and dithered edges, sharing similar possibilities of image-making with durational web-based computations.

In addition to the workshop, my research included visits to facilities producing textiles with automated technologies, traditional practitioners in weaving and natural dying, as well as those adapting older machines for a newer purpose.

How did you first get interested in your topic of research?

My interest in textile production stems from a connection to material stories through my practice in design and manufacturing at the scale of architecture, while engaging in drawing, print, and web-based media work in the arts. Kyoto, Japan, has a multi-layered history in textile production where handcraftsmanship is celebrated in the midst of advancing digital technologies. The endurance of traditional methods of weaving and dying has been sustained through educational programs and cultural institutions facilitated by both the prefecture and local textile manufacturers.

Simultaneously a surface and an object, textiles contain the history of a process that tells a visual narrative through the organization of their fibers. I had wanted to draw from the focused textile workshop in Kyoto as a way to further inform the materiality of my practice, while testing the relationships between tools and technology, between physical acts of making and duration. Understanding how a material behaves through different methods of production reveals its potential for adaptation in the making process.

What did you do for your summer project?

I made a series of seven textile works ranging in size and technique using a counterbalance floor loom. I colored all of my yarn prior to weaving, using a combination of natural and synthetic dying in a laboratory. For my largest woven work, I set out to make a textile that exposed the duration of its weaving through handmade typography. Using the stencil-dying technique of Nassen Gasuri, I applied the date of each eight hour day I worked on the loom over the course of two weeks. This process of dying involves making stencils from Ise-Katagami paper that define a perimeter for where dye can enter into the fibers. The textile dye is gradually worked through the warp yarn by applying pressure with a brush against the back of the hand positioned underneath the material. Once the dye has set, the weft yarn is woven through on the loom.

What would you say were the most interesting findings of your summer research? Were there any surprises?

Working with Indigo had become an interest through my investigations into natural and synthetic dyes. I participated in several hands-on workshops focusing on the pigment itself, extracting it directly from fresh, oxidizing plants. I had been captivated by how the liquefied plant matter changes from green to blue in a matter of moments when exposed to air. Indigo dye has a long past in textile production, with a resurgence of interest as a sustainable dying practice.

I had the opportunity to visit a small manufacturer in Nishiwaki, who specializes in a modern form of Banshu-ori weaving. The company had recently acquired a dying facility along with a handful of mid 20th century belt-operated looms originally used for weaving denim. Both the machines and facility went through a performative transformation. The second-hand looms were modified to make a loose, almost transparent weave structure akin to the texture of traditional Banshu-ori fabric. Although these textiles are machine-made, they are continuously tended to by caring technicians, where the nuances in the texture made by subtle blemishes and shifts in tension give the impression that they were made by hand.

What was the most challenging part of your summer research? Were you able to overcome these challenges?

Knowing that there are instrumental resources beyond my initial points of research. I actively sought recommendations through the practitioners, instructors and textile artists that I had met while in Kyoto to align additional facilities to visit, as well as ancillary workshops.

Now that you are back on campus, what is the next step for your research?

For two weeks during the fall semester, I installed a floor loom at Yale School of Art’s Sculpture Department and invited students to participate in the weaving of a continuous textile work. This project was a part of a broader focus in interactive design that involved a time and web-based component. While working on this type of loom, the tension of the weft yarn is manually controlled at the edges. I installed two cameras that focused on the interaction of the hands on each edge of the textile and filtered the camera feeds through JavaScript. The live videos were combined on a website that I had coded to be projected onto an adjacent concrete wall; showing the point of view of the current weaver for others to watch. Each time a new person participated in the project, a black weft yarn was woven into the textile to mark the transition.

Do you have any words of advice for graduate students who plan to do research abroad next summer?

Start the groundwork in the fall. Look for seminars and workshops in the locations abroad that can aid your research.