Imagine a Japanese kimono and most of us envision a long, boxy silk robe pulled in at the waist by a wide swath of fabric. If you are an admirer of traditional Japanese prints, in your mind’s eye you probably see the kimono worn by a young woman who is gracefully gliding along a garden or mountain path. Perhaps there are cherry blossoms on the trees or a delicate veil of snow on the mountains. The kimono she wears may be decorated with flowers or delicate birds. However you visualize a kimono, one thing is certain: the kimono is a symbol of traditional Japanese culture.

Therefore it is both startling and delightful to see the contemporary kimonos now on view in two related exhibitions at the Bellevue Arts Museum in Bellevue, Washington. Three kimonos are part of a traveling show of textile-based art called Rozome Masters of Japan. Organized by the Massachusetts College of Art, the show includes screens, paintings and kimonos by numerous contemporary Japanese artists who are masters of rozome, which is Japanese wax-resist dyeing. Many cultures practice this type of dyeing and in the United States it is more commonly known by its Javanese name, batik.

Glory of the Tree kimono by Tadayoshi Yamamoto Photograph courtesy of Bellevue Arts Museum.

The three kimonos in this show were made in the last six years. The silk for all three was decorated and dyed by the rozome method and the results are anything but traditional. The most electrifying of the three is a kimono by Tadayoshi Yamamoto. Called Glory of the Tree, Yamamoto has created a blazing orange/red silhouette of a tree against a golden and deep brown background. The tree seems ablaze against a dazzling shaft of light. If you do not read the name of the piece it is easy to interpret the image as a close-up of a human blood circulation system pulsing, nearly throbbing with life.

As lovely as that kimono is, the most extraordinary garments on view at the Museum are in a smaller, breathtaking show of work by the Americans Tim Harding and Jon Eric Riis. Called Wrapped in Color: Kimonos by Tim Harding, Jackets by Eric Riis, the show was organized by the Bellevue Arts Museum. Included are four waist-length jackets by Riis made of tapestry materials and decorated, lavishly, with fresh water pearls, tiny bits of coral and seed-sized bits of turquoise. Also included are four full-length kimonos by Harding, who is widely known for his signature “free-reverse appliqué” process, which involves dyeing silk, cutting it into small pieces of about three-inches by two-inches, then layering the small pieces onto another length of silk to create a piece of fabric that appears nearly three-dimensional.

Riis’s background as a scholar of historical textiles comes through in the jackets. At first glance, they look like they might have been worn by Asian royalty in a period long ago. The four on display have a straight cut, simple lines, no collar and an opening at the front. But his painstaking decoration of the jackets with tiny seed pearls and other materials makes them lavish. And his clever visual reference to the human body suggests an intellectual sleight of hand that would have appealed to the legendary surrealist fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli.

Hearts of Gold, Male by Jon Eric Riis

In Hearts of Gold, Female, and Hearts of Gold, Male, the exterior of the jackets are woven in tiny stitches of rich, golden silk tapestry thread. The glittering metallic color makes them look like armor. But on the left hand breast of each jacket, hardly visible, is the faintest outline of an anatomically correct human breast and nipple. On the female version of the jacket the breast is full and womanly. On the male version the breast is taut and lean. In the interior of each jacket on the back—the part of the jacket that would hang against the wearer’s spinal column— is an embroidered spinal column attached to embroidered ribs. Like the outlines of the breasts on the exterior, the spinal cords are so delicately and subtly rendered in tapestry thread that at first you do not realize what they are. They seem merely to be elegant decoration. On the front interiors of each jacket Riis continues the Schiaparelli-like trompe l’oeil by embroidering the outline of lungs. Considering that he has named these jackets Hearts of Gold, perhaps these beautiful coats are indeed body armor for a pair of Good Samaritans. Certainly the jackets deserve to be worn by people with hearts of gold.

Riis’s other two jackets are also tour-de-force examples of his skills at tapestry and draftsmanship. Frogs in Caviar is decorated on the exterior with realistic-looking embroidered frogs about eight-inches-long by five-inches-wide all hopping about in a pond of tiny freshwater pearls and bits of coral. In another jacket called Flight, lovely embroidered butterflies seem to take flight from a sky of tiny white pearls. Though the design ideas behind these two jackets are more traditional than the Hearts of Gold jackets, there is a playfulness about them that is altogether contemporary.

Spectra kimono by Tim Harding Photograph by Larry Stesson.

Harding’s full-length, cloud-like kimonos are diaphanous and lighter-than-air next to Riis’s jewel-encrusted jackets. Harding is a master not only of his specialized appliqué process but he is a colorist who can create spectrums of color within a single kimono. In several kimonos he moves through subtle gradations of color from one part of the garment to another. He uses the kimonos like a painter’s canvas to work through abstract and very beautiful exercises in color harmony. In Koi Kimono a splash of hot orange glides through a background of watery turquoise and blue just exactly like a sleek koi gliding through a shimmering pond. Since Harding attaches each small bit of frayed, unfinished silk to the background garment only on one edge, his kimonos seems to ripple, even when they are hanging in a display.

Harding’s other kimonos in this exhibition include one called Cloud Wave, which has a frothy puff of eggshell silk and gold against a cobalt background, and one called Jade River Kimono, a study in elegant gradations of green and blue. Both kimonos are extraordinary and seem full of movement as well as color. Unfortunately, Wrapped in Color will not travel after it closes in Bellevue. That is a shame since it is an example of how some of today’s most innovative textile artists are applying their contemporary aesthetics to traditional textile crafts. The results are spectacular.

The Bellevue Arts Museum is located at 510 Bellevue Way, N.E., Bellevue, Washington 98004; telephone, 425.519.0770; website, www.bellevuearts.org. Rozome Masters of Japan and Wrapped in Color: Kimonos by Tim Harding and Jackets by Jon Eric Riis continue through June 18, 2006. Rozome Masters of Japan is accompanied by a catalog written by Betsy Sterling Benjamin, exhibition curator, with an essay by Fukumoto Shigeki.

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