SETSUKO JIMBO

I currently live in Kobe (near Osaka) in Japan. I grew up in Nagoya (the middle point between Tokyo and Osaka) until I graduated from college.

After graduating from Nagoya University, with a degree in agricultural chemistry, I worked at the Food Research Institute in Osaka, the Pharmaceutical Research Institute in Kobe, and many places. Ten years after graduating, I happened to attend a workshop to learn to dye wool yarn with plants, and I was impressed by the beauty of the colors. I had lived a life unrelated to art, including my childhood, but I was strongly attracted to dyeing. Silk and wool can be dyed easily and beautifully with plants. I have now dyed a lot of wool yarn with a variety of plants. The threads dyed with plants are so beautiful!

I felt that the life of the plant was revived in the beautiful colors, and I very much wanted to make something with these important threads, so I decided to try hand-weaving.

I was immediately drawn to the charm of hand-woven fabrics. The woven fabrics which use weave diagrams have beautiful and orderly patterns. On the other hand, it is also interesting to more freely express oneself with hand techniques that do not require the use of tools such as looms. At first, I enjoyed making mufflers, table runners, and wall hangings. A few years later, I realized that expressing the beauty and grandeur of nature using plant-dyed threads would express sources of life itself.

When I wanted to expand my work further in 3D, I became interested in fiber art. I studied design and color sense at Musashino Art Junior College, and I started participating in various group exhibitions in 1999. I think my work is progressing as I learn more about the works of other artists. Recently, I am also entering fiber art competitions.

I have come to think of "nature" not only as a beautiful landscape but also as a universe that includes humans. How can I express such magnificent nature? While trying various techniques, I continue to try to meet this challenge.

I'm currently working on three series.

The first is a series of double weavings. I designed SHO in 2019 with motifs of Japanese hiragana. It was exhibited in TSGNY’s The Gold Standard of Textile and Fiber Art show in New York in 2020.

The second series is of hand-woven work with slits.

This series includes Feast of Color and Forest Symphony. Forest Symphony is composed of small pieces of more than 100 kinds of plant-dyed yarn, and I felt that many lives were thus revived. This work became a forest where the resurrected plants sang happily.

The third series is of felted hand-woven cloths.

Arimatsu is a town in Nagoya City. In Arimatsu, the art of tie-dyeing of cotton using indigo began in 1608. This technique  is called Arimatsu shibori.

There are more than 100 types of patterns depending on how the thread is tied, and in 1975 Arimatsu shibori was designated as a traditional Japanese craft. Recently, various techniques using tie-dyeing have been developed such as heat setting and felting

It was a great experience for me to learn about shibori in Arimatsu. I was able to expand my repertoire of techniques for making works. By felting hand-woven cloths, I not only diversified the expression of my work, but also learned a new process of heat setting. Polyester is the only fabric that can use heat setting technology. In the future, I would like to use materials other than wool yarns and create original works that combine the various techniques I am currently using in these three series..

Recently I started learning the Japanese art of kumihimo, a kind of traditional braiding. Kumihimo is the word for the cord used for fixing Japanese women's kimono and obi.

Shellfish Say is my first work that combines hand-woven fabric and kumihimo.

I would like to actively incorporate kumihimo into my work in the future.

jimbosetsuko@gmail.com