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| Detail of Nocturno |
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| Nocturno |
Yesterday I received these images by email from the extraordinarily talented Eduardo and Maria Portillo, and they quite frankly, made my heart skip a beat. The images show their work that is in a current exhibition 'Azul Indigo' in Caracas celebrating their exquisite use of indigo dying. But its not just about dying: the weave structures and dramatic yarn combinations take the colour exploration to another level. The work is utterly absorbing both from afar and up close: I love the way the ordered grid structure ripples, undulates and surprises as a result of the different yarn characters.
The artworks aim to capture the various shades of blue that take us through the day; from the inky midnight blue sky, to a sky laden with rain, to the transparent air of the afternoon tinged with golden sunlight.
The exhibition is on until the 27th January. Sadly I won't be able to indulge myself with a trip to Caracas, but should you be nearby, you must go and savour this exhibition....
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| Detail of Nubes |
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| En la Noche |
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| Detail of En la Noche |
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| Al Amanecer |
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| Detail of Al Amanecer |
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| Detai lof La Noche |
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| The artists image reflected in an indigo dye vat |
UPDATE, 15th March 2013
Here is some text that Eduardo and Maria have sent me translated from the catalogue that accompanies the exhibition. Enjoy.....
A
Blue Journey
by María
Dávila & Eduardo Portillo
Blue, color of multiple meanings, is also the color of hope. Every
day dawns and the blue accompanies us in the sky, in the sea and in the distant
mountains.
We see the blue in the morning but in the
afternoon shows transparent with yellow and white. At night it darkens
and with the moonlight follows a blue air. With the stars, in the morning, when
it's almost dawn, the blue is still there.
Ten years ago, in 2002, when we found the indigo blue and draw travel
lines to see the color of the peoples of Southeast Asia, of the desert´s blue men , the Andean textiles
and blue jeans, the eternal blue.
Indigo is obtained from various plants containing
"indican" and Indigofera
tinctoria L is the most used. As it is
insoluble in water, requiring an alkaline medium and a reducing agent to
become soluble. When the vat takes an amber appearance, the fiber is immersed
there, extracted and with the air
contact indigo oxidize to become blue
color.
In ancient times, due to its complex preparation process, the
indigo vat was restricted to the hands of specialists. Its transformation from
yellow-green to infinite variety blues was full of magic and rigor.
In Venezuela still grows wild the indigo plant which was the base of
an important industry for the country in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries.
In the highlands of Mérida there remains the memory of using this
dye in wool blankets.
The discovery of synthetic indigo in 1880 revolutionized the way
to obtain the blue in the world, in a few years replacing the use of natural
indigo.
Today indigo culture remains in
traditional communities in Asia, Africa and Latin America and in a wide universe of contemporary artists who
see in its process a synthesis of history, culture and life.
In the mountains of southwest
China, where the golden evening light bathes their endless and steep terraces planted with rice, Dong
people wears blue, almost black, their cotton fabrics dyed in indigo that seems
to become waterproof paper after going through a slow and fascinating process
of immersion in the juice of some plants and systematic exposure to the sun.
In northeast Thailand, indigo
is full of superstition and alchemy. In every home the recipe for its preparation
is different, secret ; add brown sugar, pineapple, tamarind, liquor, prove it,
smell it, they keep it "alive". There all hands are blue; for a
moment everything is blue.
In southern India still there
are some indigo plantations, where the rhythmic "dance" of blue
bodies in pools of indigo oxygenates the obtained extract , which should be
processed until the dye is achieved.
In the Andes, in Africa and
Japan, the art, study, research, trial and error are present in every indigo vat.
To travel in search for Indigo could be
itself a motive for a lifetime, every
"vat" is different, each vision is unique, we decided to try to find our own blue. After
this intense experience, we interlaced the blue with our searchs and then brought
them into the loom.
After a necessary pause we have
resumed the pleasure found years ago, exploring the art of indigo dyeing,
immersed in their vats again and over again, and we brought it to textiles structures
that move us to get closer to blue moments of everyday: the night, the moon, the
sky, the clouds, dawn, dusk, moments of everybody, moments filled with blue.
We have tried to fuse into the
blue the silk from Mérida, moriche palm
from the Orinoco river´s delta, the wool of the Andes, and cotton, dyed in
indigo and complementing it with other natural sources of color (cochineal,
eucalyptus and onion) and with metallic yarns.
The space is constructed using
blocks and mosaics born from triple weave
, which is based on the interlacement of three layers of warp yarns advancing
simultaneously and independently while
is weaving each one of them, therefore it should be weave three times the
length of the fabric obtained.
The various combinations of
blues are revealed by Taqueté, an
ancient textile structure , based on the sequences of three or four colors yarn groups in the weft
or in the warp
Today we celebrate the encounter,
a blue vision of the world, a vision about the universal indigo blue, navigating
the collective imaginary of some moments of the day and we endevour to get them
into the space of the wide textile
world.-
Dec 2012
