My work evokes idiosyncracies in the landscape at large. The unpredictable and serendipitous effects that my fabrics reveal are turned to the act of communicating my feelings about place. The fabrics are marked by the same kinds of weathered and abraded textures that give character to the rural topography.
I create groupings of manipulated fabrics and then join and layer them through careful and often concealed hand and machine stitching. The compositions build naturally and organically, each fabric responding to its foundation and the foundation, in turn, adjusting to the overlay. Often, the ground surfaces are delineated by grids, sometimes wide, sometimes narrow, and these mark off the surfaces of my works as pastures and farmland mark off the rural landscape. Thread makes its way tentatively through these fabrics and these grids, marking pathways not unlike the random progress of a creek or stream.
I play with edges and boundaries, bringing multiple terrains together in ways similar to how cultivated and uncultivated land, and the patterns of development or neglect that condition it appear when viewed from 5,000 or 10,000 or 20,000 feet.
These pieces use centuries-old Japanese shibori processes as well as the related African resist dyeing methods used to create adire and other cloths. I experiment with different ways of folding and stitching the fabric in response to what's happening in the dye and discharge baths. These experiments often lead to unexpected and one-of-a-kind effects that I can't ever duplicate in quite the same way. In this sense the works are partly accidental, partly intentional.
One feature of these discharged fabrics is the after-image of the stitched line that held the folded or pleated fabric before it went into the discharge solution. I especially enjoy these "ghost" lines, and the additional hand embroidery and stitching that I work into and through the fabrics after they've dried plays off or with these faint traces in a kind of quiet dialogue.
The stitched resist dyeing techniques that I've been using often produce soft, slightly out-of-focus effects. These sometimes result in a kind of luminosity, or a kind of hazy glow, that suggest to me the first light of dawn or the waning light of late afternoon. This kind of light lowers visibility and softens the landscape. There's an intimacy to even the broadest landscape in these moments. For me this connects with the intimacy of the processes and materials I use in creating these textile constructions.
Fabric has been my means of expression ever since I was a young child. I made it the focus of my professional business life for nearly twenty-five years, and now it's the focus of my creative life. It interacts with all of my senses, so it's not only its tactile appeal that entices me to return again and again, but the expressive magic that it promises. - Judith James

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