-Miriam N. Omura-
Facing America, No DAPL (Clementine Minnie Bordeaux)
handwoven dye painted tencel warp and weft
2017
I first heard about the water concerns and protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) from my friends in South Dakota and from Native American news sources I follow. This was months before the story hit the mainstream media in the United States. I was unable to travel to Cannon Ball, North Dakota to show my support for the water protectors, but I felt very strongly for their cause and wondered why it wasn’t making more news in the rest of the country. From my time living in South Dakota on the Pine Ridge Reservation, I knew a few people who were able to stand for their beliefs and speak out for the protection of water and Native American rights; my friend Clementine was one of those protectors. She is Lakota, and her middle name, Minnie, also happens to be the Lakota word for water (“minì”). She and her family are some of the most amazing people I know, and they treated me like a family member during the time I worked in Pine Ridge. For me, this portrait is about the many things this country stands for, including standing up against the odds for what is right and just. The flag is, for me, both a symbol of this country’s injustices and the potential for freedom of expression.
My friend Clementine, a strong advocate and activist for all Native people’s issues, has a long family history of military service for this country. I believe she experiences a conflicting relationship with this country and what the American flag symbolizes. For both the union and stripes of this piece, I wove, dye painted, and then unwove the fabric before reweaving it. This created the shift in the stars of the union and the portrait on the stripes of the flag. The time-consuming process of making the flag, instead of using a commercially made one, allowed me to consider what this country views as priorities: water or oil, and existing treaties with Native tribes or profits for corporations. I intend the unraveling of the flag bottom to reflect the tangled conflicts between the fractions of diverse people and viewpoints in the United States. It also reflects the unraveling of the country on a political level.
2017
tencel, plain weave painted warp and weft, fiber reactive dyes, cotton, brass hardware.
25 x 50”
2017
tencel, plain weave painted warp and weft, fiber reactive dyes, cotton, brass hardware.
25 x 50”
2017
tencel, plain weave painted warp and weft, fiber reactive dyes, cotton, brass hardware.
25 x 50”
2017
tencel, plain weave painted warp and weft, fiber reactive dyes, cotton, brass hardware.
25 x 50”
Ghosts and Strangers was an exhibit of work created from 2014-2017 that showed at both Lowe Mill Arts and Entertainment in Huntsville, AL and The Galleries at CSU, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH. Below are exhibit photographs and text from The Galleries at CSU.
The same image can tell different stories.
Materially, my pieces involve weaving, cloth, and the nature of layers. Most of my current body of work deals with what gets lost in translation or interpretation of a family’s history. Family photographs have a place in recording history and previous generations, which leads to one’s own understanding of reality. Over time, we are separated from knowing the person or people photographed, and we become more speculative about our understanding of those photographs.
The process of weaving inherently holds a linear and mathematical grid, but dye work can be free-flowing, and it does not hold to a grid. My process is influenced by the visuals produced by the Japanese techniques found in ikat and kasuri textiles. The development of my dye painted warp and weft process comes from the Cleveland-based artist Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson. I modified the process I learned from her as a studio assistant to produce the particular effect of a ghosting print or a trace shift. The process is both time-consuming and reflective. It involves weaving, unweaving, and reweaving fully dye painted cloth. There is a simultaneous allowance for both full control of the threads and disorderly overlayed patterning in the way the image comes together in its final form. This process causes the woven grid to shift, and the portrait to become pixilated, while holding the familiarity of the face. The result is a translation of a photograph, which, in turn, is an interpretation of the memory of a person.
Ghosts and Strangers is, for viewers and myself, a collection of varying truths and fictions seen through differing layers. Each viewer internally overlays and creates a relationship that may or may not exist between the image and themselves.
Ghosts can be the echo of a person we have known or been told about by those who knew them. What we understand about a person is only a memory or ghosting of who they were. Similarly, the impression of someone known to us is most strongly created only by the time our lives have overlapped. Knowing a person in their older age influences how we imagine them as they were in their youth.
Strangers can be both known and unknown to us. One may know as much or as little about a family member never met as one may know of a stranger pictured in a found photograph. What the viewer believes they are seeing creates a story of what that person’s life was like through interpretation and projected emotions.
Who and what are forgotten can be intentional or accidental. The memories we recall can be intentionally or accidentally distorted, changing without our realization. Our memories, when we recall them, can bind with other memories, producing an unclear view that sits between truth and fiction. As a memory is recalled, it becomes layered and modified by the process of retrieving that particular memory, and combined with the current memory creations, it is my hope to visually capture these ideas within my work.
2017
tencel, plain weave painted warp and weft, fiber reactive dyes, silk embroidery.
36 x 24”
2017
tencel, plain weave painted warp and weft, fiber reactive dyes, cotton, brass hardware.
25 x 50”
2017
34 x 30”
This piece is constructed from indigo dyed cotton. The quilt is not only hand quilted with white and pale blue cotton thread, but also hand pieced together without a sewing machine. The hand embroidered words relate to various water concerns revolving around pollution and privatization. The labor intensive choices to dye, hand sew, and embroider the work let me ponder and reflect on the many ways we are not taking care of our resources; taking the most basic of those, water, for granted.
The text contains a geographic location and words that relate to a specific water based issue. It is my hope that the viewer’s curiosity will be piqued by the words, and they will further look into the issues for themselves. I have not included the Flint, Michigan water crisis or the California and Colorado River water rights issues yet; it is my plan to continue adding to the quilt over time. Depicted in text on this work are two global issues and one that hits a little closer to home here in Alabama. The Cochabama Water War in Bolivia saw a seventeen year old protester, Victor Hugo Daza, killed by the Bolivian government. This event was the focus of previous artwork of mine a few years ago. The second event is the pollution of a river in Sri Lanka, which is the main water source for the capital and surrounding area, by the Coca-Cola Company. Some of the chemicals listed are used in creating the caramel color for the drink. I have a personal connection to the Sri Lankan water pollution issue, because my maternal family lives with the consequences. The closer to home issue for most of my audience is the pollution of the Tennessee River near Decatur, Alabama, which is currently (2017) under legal litigation.
2016
tencel, plain weave, fiber reactive dyes, handwoven silk, dyed silk thread, glass beads, found photograph.
17 x 13” (23 x 17” framed)
2016
tencel, plain weave, fiber reactive dyes, handwoven silk, cotton thread, glass beads, found photograph
17 x 13” (23 x 17” framed)
Possibly a layout photograph for a school year book, the dates set a time, but the subject remains anonymous. The color choices in recreating the photograph prompt and influence the viewer to see the person more subjectively than objectively. Similarly, what one is told about a person can effectively color a memory of a person or event.
2016
tencel, plain weave painted warp and weft, fiber reactive dyes
18 x 13” (23 x 17” framed)
2016
tencel, plain weave painted warp and weft, fiber reactive dyes
26 x 19” (34 x 23” framed)
Based on a single found photograph from a photo booth strip, this image is one from a series of four. Not having seen the other three, and not knowing what they pictured, I do not know why this one was separated from the rest. The relationship between the two women and who they are is unknown to me.
2016
tencel, plain weave painted warp and weft, fiber reactive dyes
17 x 13” (23 x 17” framed)
Weraniyagoda is my maternal grandmother’s maiden name, and she was the youngest of six children by her mother. Edwin was the oldest of those six children. He and his brother were raised by family after their mother’s death, while the girls, including my grandmother, were raised in a Christian orphanage.
2016
tencel, plain weave painted warp and weft, fiber reactive dyes, silk embroidery
26 x 19” (34 x 23” framed)
In titling this piece, I gave my grandparents a singular heart. I imagine they made each other whole, where once they may have previously felt incomplete. They both experienced the tragic death of a parent at a very young age, which must have been a bonding point for them.
2016
tencel, plain weave painted warp and weft, fiber reactive dyes
17 x 13” (23 x 17” framed)
When You Were Younger is a companion piece to When You Were Older. The images are taken from passport photographs of my maternal grandmother in 1952 and 1991. There is an apparent happiness in the photographs of her when she lived in Sri Lanka and her husband was still alive. In later photographs, that smile was replaced by a weary look after his death. I hope to have captured the contrast of these two times in her life.
2016
tencel, plain weave painted warp and weft, fiber reactive dyes, silk embroidery
17 x 13” (23 x 17” framed)
2016
tencel and silk, plain weave and 4 harness weave, painted warp and weft, fiber reactive dyes.
24” x 55”
Undated and unlabeled, the photos that this work is based on show a young girl in two different images: one plain-faced and stoic, and the other more animated and smiling. At the corner of one image is a dark blur of hair, possibly the mother trying to duck down out of sight of the shot. The contrast between the two poses is intriguing, creating a story and letting the viewer peer past the curtain of a photo booth.
2016
college: paper, thread, watercolor, photograph
12 x 8”
2016
collage: drawing- indigo dyed paper, ink, thread, found photograph
7.5 x 7.5”
2015
tencel, plain weave painted warp and weft, fiber reactive dyes, silk embroidery
18 x 13” framed
The title is both a play on the Holy Trinity and a reference to family relationships and occupational choices. My grandfather became a vicar in the Anglican Church and served for many years in Sri Lanka. I created an internal story that his choice to become a vicar and not serve in World War Two was partly due to his own father’s death in World War One. The truth may be different, but I still wonder how the ghost of his father may have influenced his life choices.
2015
tencel, plain weave painted warp and weft, fiber reactive dyes, silk embroidery
19 x 15” framed
2015
tencel, plain weave painted warp and weft, fiber reactive dyes
9 x 17.75”, 11.5 x 20” framed
With no body recovered from the Battle of the Somme, my great-grandmother hoped her husband was wrongly recorded as DIA, and that he was actually MIA and would one day walk in the house to explain the mistake.
2015
tencel, plain weave painted warp and weft, fiber reactive dyes
15 x 10” , 17.5 x 12.5” framed
2015
Jacquard woven- tapestry loom, hand embroidery
2014
tencel, plain weave painted warp and weft, fiber reactive dyes
11 x 11” , 13 x 13” framed
2014
9 x 7.5”, 13 x 13” framed
tencel, plain weave painted warp and weft, fiber reactive dyes
Widowed by World War One, she raised an infant son and working as a school teacher. Her husband is the subject of the work titled William.
2014
tencel, plain weave painted warp and weft, fiber reactive dyes
14 x 12”, 14 x 16” framed
2014
tencel, plain weave painted warp and weft, fiber reactive dyes
12.25 x 10.25”, 14 x 12” framed
2014
indigo dyed cotton, sewing thread
6.5 x 6” (13” x 13” frame)
2014
indigo dyed cotton, sewing thread
6.25 x 5.75” (13 x 13” framed)
2014
indigo dyed cotton, sewing thread
8.5 x 7.75” (17 x 13” framed)
2014
mixed media: weaving, embroidery (silk and cotton)
7.25 x 4.5” (17 x 13” framed)
2014
warp painted handwoven silk, silk and polyester embroidery, found velvet ribbon
4.5 x 8.25” (13 x 17” framed)
The title of this work come from Carl Sansburg’s 1920 poem Buffalo Dusk:
The buffaloes are gone.
And those who saw the buffaloes are gone.
Those who saw the buffaloes by thousands and how they pawed the prairie sod into dust with their hoofs, their great heads down pawing on in a great pageant of dusk,
Those who saw the buffaloes are gone.
And the buffaloes are gone.
2014
wood, acrylic paint, cotton thread, sea glass, glass bottle, found photograph, found sari, transfer letters
6.5 x 6.5 x 2” framed
2014
indigo dyed paper, ink, found photograph
7.5 x 7.5” (13 x 17” framed)
Past work has visually taken cues from a variety of influences including folk art and religious art.
2013
warp painted weaving, sewing thread, found linen napkin boarder
5 x 4”, 12 x 12" framed
2013
hand woven silk, trimmings, ribbon, beads, thread embroidery
4.25 x 4”, 10 x10 framed
2013
found lined napkin, silk/cotton warp painted weaving, sewing thread embroidery, buttons
6 x 6”, 12 x 12" framed
2013
Jacquard woven, hand embroidery
9 x 6.5", 21.5 x 15.5 framed
2011
Jacquard woven cotton, spun sari silk remnant yarn, cotton embroidery thread
19 x 16" framed
2012
mixed media, embroidery (cotton, sewing thread, found stamp)
6.25 x 3.5” ; 10.5 x 10.5” framed
2012
hand painted warp-cotton and nylon line, sewing thread embroidery, found linen.
3 x 3.5"; 12 x 12" framed
2012
hand painted warp-cotton and silk, sewing thread
3.5 x 3”, 10 x 10" framed
2009
mixed media, embroidery (cotton, sewing thread, beads, found stamp)
7.25 x 7.25" framed
2008
warp painted woven silk, sewing thread
3 x 2"
2011
painted warp weaving, embroidery
5.25 x 5.25" framed
2008
painted warp weaving, embroidery, (silk and cotton)
5 x 5" framed
In these works I was thinking about the way religion can be imposed upon a person or group of people.
2012
embroidered weaving (painted cotton warp, cotton and silk sewing thread, found linen doily)
3.25″ x 3.25″, 9″ x 9″ framed
Lee Kyoung-Hae (1947-2003) committed suicide by stabbing himself in the heart at a protest outside the 2003 WTO meeting in Cancun, Mexico. Lee Kyoung-Hae was a Korean farmer dedicated to protecting the interests of farmers in developing countries. The text across the top of the work is the Korean word for saint.
2012
mixed media (hand painted warp- cotton and silk, sewing thread, rabbit skin glue, acrylic paint)
5 x 5”, 6.5 x 6.5 framed
Victor Hugo Daza died in the 2000 Bolivian water protests, shot in the head by a military officer. Protesters were protesting the privatization of the countries water, causing high tariffs the people could not pay. Vicotr was 17 when he died.
2012
mixed media (hand painted warp- cotton and silk, sewing thread, found photograph
4 x 4”, 9 x9 framed
2011
mixed media, embroidery (hand woven silk, silk and cotton sewing thread, found photograph, false teeth)
9.25 x 9.25" framed
2011
mixed media, embroidery (cotton, found photograph, sewing thread, buttons)
3.75 x 3.5”, 9.25 x 9.25" framed
2011
mixed media, embroidery (hand woven silk, sewing thread, found photograph)
9.25 x 9.25" framed
2011
mixed media, embroidery (cotton, sewing thread, found photograph, buttons)
4 x 3.75”, 9.25 x 9.25" framed
2011
mixed media, embroidery (cotton, found photograph, cotton and silk thread)
9.25 x 9.25" framed
2011
mixed media, embroidery (cotton, sewing thread, found photograph)
9.25 x 9.25" framed
2011
mixed media, embroidery (hand woven silk, sewing thread, found saints card)
4.5 x 3.5”, 9.25 x 9.25" framed
