Shibori Treasures, at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Massachusetts, is the latest exhibition of Carter Smith’s extraordinary work, and it focuses on his fabric alone. The gallery is awash in color; yards and yards of silk are hung on the walls or in vertical columns like tapestry, and draped on beams so that the play of light and shadow highlights the colors and patterns in unexpected ways.

Smith is one of this country’s most innovative and celebrated textile and clothing artists. He is known as perhaps the foremost American master of shibori, traditional Japanese methods of dyeing cloth by wrapping, binding, pleating, stitching, folding, twisting, and compressing fabric. Smith’s lyrical, color-saturated garments have been carried by such exclusive boutiques as Halston and Christian Dior, worn by icons Aretha Franklin and Elizabeth Taylor, and have been shown in numerous galleries and museums in the United States and Japan.

“The pieces in the show are selected from around two hundred treasures that I have collected from pieces I have dyed over the past forty years. They were just too powerful to cut into clothing and thus they remained treasures. The theme for me of this exhibition is how textiles transform into feelings, or better yet how feelings transform into textiles,” explains Smith.

The intensity and emotions behind these pieces are palpable, and, in fact, it is difficult to describe them without reaching for a musical metaphor. Viewers are greeted at the doorway by Brazilian Butterfly, which hangs canopy-like overhead. It is a gorgeous samba of subtle oranges and pale reds, set off by electric blue; as the light plays off it, the colors become luminous. All that Jazz is a silky smooth, pulsating portrait of sound, in deep reds, purples and greens with electric flashes of blue and aqua. Dance of the Impalas, rendered predominately in browns and golds, is full of staccato movement, like drumbeats. By contrast, The Blues evokes a more contemplative mood with its gentle blues, greens and golds.

Smith says, “I look at the pieces and see and hear a symphony of color and sound. There is an amazing harmony to them that begs to be embraced with music that dances along with form and color. Music comes from nature, and these pieces follow those random patterns of creation.”

The two pieces that Smith says “anchor down the show” are his Dahlia Temple Carpet and Tiger Tree Carpet. They are, he says, his “magic carpets—one must lay upon the magic carpet to experience its uplifting power.” The luxuriousness of the carpet form perfectly amplifies Smith’s already lush, intricate designs. Dahlia Temple Carpet is a complex, velvety panoply of color—raspberry, peach, ochre, aqua. As your eyes go up the piece, the colors look richer, deeper and more evocative. Tiger Tree Carpet is a shimmering tiger skin unlike any you might have imagined. Exquisite black, gold and yellow bands cascade along either side of the “trunk” or “backbone” of the piece.

To make these incredible rugs, Smith first creates his usual silk pieces and then gives them to a patternmaker to map out a copy of the silk piece onto a rug pattern, including where the colors will go. The pattern also maps out every tie. The silk that goes into the rug is dyed by hand to match the original shibori pattern. Two women sit at a loom and follow the pattern. Each rug can have up to two and a half million ties. In this exhibit, the carpets are hung next to their silk originals, and it is fascinating to compare them.

Smith says that the carpets are also an attempt to help people recognize the value of the images of the shibori textiles. “Sometimes only a high price tag justifies the value of something. The carpets are an attempt to overcome a basic prejudice of what the value is of contemporary textiles produced in this country. While fifty thousand dollars sounds like a lot of money for a textile work of art, it pales in value and comparison to a painting done by a major contemporary artist. When you look at the scale of the carpets and experience the impact, and realize that two to three years of labor goes into each one, they are amazing bargains,” he explains.

The Fuller Craft Museum, formerly the Fuller Museum of Art, is a magnificent place to see Smith’s work. The high ceilings and exquisite light allow the viewer to fully appreciate the sweep, vibrancy and the nuances of Smith’s textiles. The museum, led by director and chief curator Gretchen Keyworth, is a visual oasis, showcasing truly exciting and dynamic contemporary craft. Carter Smith: Shibori Treasures shows through May 6, 2007 at the Museum, 455 Oak Street, Brockton, Massachusetts 02301; www.fullercraft.org. Photographs by Donna Eleyi.

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