The main force that propelled the development of shibori from a handicraft to an art form in the West was the vibrant interest that North American artists took in the dyers’ art from various world traditions while pursuing their own creative expressions using alternative media and materials. Mainstream visual artists embraced a similar approach during the 1960s—making marks with paint and pigments on a unprimed canvas, staining the cloth canvas, or permeating its surface. The works of Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, and Sam Gilliam, for example, parallel the sensibility of textile art. The fiber art movement born out of the milieu of the 1960s and 70s gained force, expanding art education in the universities, which resulted in the establishment of textile or fiber art departments across the continent. Artists:Junco Pollack Hélène Soubeyran |
