KAMI-ITO: JAPANESE PAPER YARN and BEYOND

I’m excited to share with you that my next book, WASHI and KAMI-ITO: JAPANESE PAPER YARN and BEYOND will be released in early 2024 by Schiffer Publishing!

If you’ve never heard of washi or kami-ito – and especially if you’re an artist, crafter or a lover of art and craft – you will be THRILLED to read this book! Filled with photos of art created by long-time paper-based artists, and 12 How-To projects for knitters, weavers, crochet aficionados, quillers, and others who like to create, you’ll learn the origins of this ancient technique and how to use it in your own work and play.

Washi refers to exquisite handmade paper and kami-ito refers to yarn made out of washi. In the distant past, such yarn was used to make garments. A sheet of paper was cut into very narrow strips, zigzagging back and forth across the sheet to create a single long strip, which was then spun into paper yarn. To make cloth, these papers were woven, either as the warp or weft or both, and painted with a substance that made it waterproof and strong.

Nowadays, fine washi is primarily used by artists either as a canvas or for sculpture. My favorite work is the knotted, lacquered sculptures created by Kakuko Ishii, an artist whose pieces have been shown in fiber art exhibitions around the world since 1978. She makes her sculptures of twisted stiffened cords called mizuhiki.

Dimensional Cloth: Sculpture by Contemporary Textile Artists

Sculpture is no longer limited to materials like stone or metal. Sculpting in fabric is shown in ingenious detail here, with more than 350 lavish photographs of 3-D cloth configurations along with insightful profiles of the 78 artists who created them. The images and text capture the currents that are powering these works, like the do-it-yourself (DIY) movement established in the 1990s and the current revival of the revolutionary sculptural cloth of the 1960s. Works are approached through five themes: investigating nature, capturing the ephemeral, playing with space, telling a story, and “Take Heed.” In her foreword, renowned fiber art expert Josephine Stealey helps us put this art form in context, from its origins in 1880 England’s arts and craft movement to today. This is essential reading and inspiration for collectors, students, home artists, and anyone who appreciates innovative artwork.

How Art Heals: Exploring Your Deep Feelings Using Collage

Use this compassionate guide to access your deepest emotions, express them through art, and transform them into tools for healing and understanding. Former psychotherapist turned artist Andy Stanton offers guided meditations, imagery techniques, and collage prompts to open a safe space for not only grief and brokenheartedness, but celebration and thankfulness. First, follow relaxation and imagery techniques to access your feelings; next, use the simple guidelines for making collage art. Inspiring us by example, dozens of contemporary artists offer photographs of their most personally transformative artworks and share heartfelt stories about how those pieces helped them alleviate their difficult emotions. Focusing on the emotional-artistic process rather than specific skill, Stanton offers lessons for artists of all experience levels and mediums. An exclusive online bonus feature offers dozens more artworks and stories.

Zapotec Weavers of Teotitlán

The Spanish introduced wool yarns and the fixed-frame pedal loom of a type still in use today. The Mexican Revolution saw a celebration of indigenous crafts, and the opening of the Pan-American Highway in 1948 brought Teotitlán’s weavers to the craft markets of Oaxaca. American importers in the 1970s infused textile production with new energy, resulting in today’s dizzying variety of works that range from modernist motifs to Navajo geometrics to ancient and historical patterns reprised in vivid and colorful contemporary designs. Zapotec weavers express their sense of well-being and belonging in what they weave, and the tapestries and rugs that are currently produced reconcile ancient history with the ways of the twenty-first-century marketplace.

Pilates for Fragile Backs: Recovering Strength and Flexibility After Surgery, Injury, or Other Back Problems

Safe Techniques to Reduce Pain, Build Strength, and Speed Recovery

Studies suggest that proactive strengthening and flexibility-recovery exercises can speed healing after spine surgery. Whether you’re preparing for or recovering from spinal surgery, recuperating from a back injury, or just dealing with a back that has ‘issues,’ this book offers an effective program to help you manage pain and regain strength and mobility.

These exercises modify traditional Pilates routines to accommodate partially immobilized spines, making this routine safe and effective therapy for your fragile back. The exercises are designed to not compromise a spinal fusion. Instead, they will do what Pilates exercises do best-stretch, strengthen, and tone the trunk with precise positioning and movement, while avoiding potentially dangerous repetition and overexertion.

The Garden’s Plot

Since running from her violent husband, EVE lays low in a new town. Her neighbors, hearing she is starting a garden, have been gifting her mysterious seedlings, presumably to welcome her. What she doesn’t know is that all the plants are poisonous. What’s more, the plants are sentient and watching out for her should her husband come looking for her.