Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada


Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada is a Japanese textile artist, curator, researcher and author.
She has received international recognition for her scholarship and expertise in the field of textile art. In 2010, she was named a "Distinguished Craft Educator - Master of Medium" by the James Renwick Alliance of the Smithsonian Institution, who stated: "she is single-handedly responsible for introducing the art of Japanese shibori to this country". In 2016 she received the George Hewitt Myers Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Life

Yoshiko I. Wada is the granddaughter of a family of kimono makers in Tokyo. Her paternal grandmother studied European dressmaking in Europe and encouraged her granddaughter through her love and knowledge of European art. As a child, Wada grew up in Kobe and Tokyo, Japan.
After graduating from Hyogo Kenritsu Kobe High School in 1963, she studied textile art and Museum Sciences at Kyoto City Fine Arts
University, Kyoto, Japan. She moved to the United States, and received a MFA from University of Colorado, Boulder in 1971. Wada returned to Japan for postgraduate studies of ikat weaving and indigo dyeing with Tsuguo ODANI, Kyoto, in 1972 and traditional Japanese silk embroidery at Daihiko Studio, Tokyo, 1980-1981. She lived in Kyoto under the Japan Foundation Fellowship to conduct research on shibori in Kyoto and Arimatsu/ Narumi in Naogya city. During this period she began to specialize in the study of traditional Japanese crafts.

Work

Her Japanese background, education and early experience are the basis for the techniques she uses for her artwork, while she gets her inspiration from global cultures, with which she has had extensive contact in her academic endeavors.
An example of cultural mergers is her Coca-Cola Kimono. The hand woven cloth is patterned with the Coca-Cola logo, using the labor-intensive e-gasuri, technique which is commonly used to pattern Japanese folk weaving.
Seeking to share her knowledge of Japanese textile techniques and kimonos she co-founded Kasuri Dyeworks, a gallery and shop in Berkeley, CA.
"Perhaps more than anyone else, Wada caused the evolution of fiber focus from cloth structure to the dye patterning that we now recognize as surface design".

In 1983-1984 she lived in Ahmedabad, India on an Indo-US Sub-commission Fellowship for Education & Culture and traveled extensively to research resist-dyed textile traditions in India and to visit cultural heritage sites and museums in India.
In 1979 and 1996 she received the Japan Foundation Fellowship which resulted in two books:
Shibori: The Inventive Art of Japanese Shaped Resist Dyeing and Memory on Cloth, Shibori Now. Based on her knowledge of kasuri, she co-authored Ikat: An Introduction in 1973.
In 1996 she co-curated an exhibition and co-authored the catalog at The Textile Museum Washington D.C. The Kimono Inspiration: Art and Art-to-Wear in America.
Wada has co-organized and chaired all International Shibori Symposia, including the 2014 symposia, at the China National Silk Museum, Hangzhou. The first one took place in Nagoya in 1992
, and led to the foundation of the World Shibori Network, which she co-founded with Kahei Takeda, of Arimatsu.
Wada is president Of the World Shibori Network.
In 1998/1999 a grant from the Matsushita International Foundation enabled her to study pre-Columbian textiles at the University of California, Berkeley and at the Smithsonian Institution.
She has acted as consultant to costume designers such as: Colleen Atwood for the movie Memoirs of a Geisha, Miyake Design Studio, Kuno Dyeworks, and Eleanor Coppola.
She lectures and teaches workshops on textile-related subjects including shibori, dyeing, and the recycling and transformation of fabric.
Exhibitors of her artwork work include the Smithsonian Institution's Renwick Gallery and the International Textile Fair in Kyoto.
Since 2010, Wada has been Adjunct Professor at the Institute of Textile and Clothing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Personal life

Presently she lives in Berkeley, California and was married to Hercules Morphopoulos. They have one son.

Grants, awards, honors