For those interested in Kimonos or just live near Canton, OH. Check out this exhibit. Kimono as Art: The Landscapes of Itchiku Kubota features forty oversized kimono created by Master Kubota. The centerpiece of the display is his 30-piece landscape kimono panorama, “Symphony of Light.” An homage to nature and the passing of seasons, “Symphony of Light” consists of fifteen kimono depicting autumn and fifteen depicting winter. The ten additional kimono in the exhibit celebrate Kubota’s reverence for the natural world of Japan. The first U.S. visit was to the Smithsonian in 1995, where it sold more catalogues than any other show in Smithsonian history.

Kimono as Art Trailer

More about Itchiku Kubota

Born in 1917, Itchiku Kubota (Itch-i-ku Ku-bot-ta) began learning the art of dyeing at the age of 14. When he was 20, he encountered a 350-year-old silk textile in the Tokyo National Museum. He was fascinated by its extraordinary beauty, design complexity and saturated colors. Frozen in place, Kubota studied it for three hours. “In a sudden moment,” he said, “I encountered a source of boundless creativity which revealed to me my calling.” The remnant before him was a rare example of the lost art of Tsujigahana*, which made use of a simple, subtle dye technique that had been lost over the centuries. Kubota promised himself that he would rediscover its secret. Then World War II broke out, and he found himself fighting in North Korea. He was taken prisoner by the Russians and put in a Siberian prisoner-of-war camp. Upon his release in 1951, he devoted his life to finding the lost dyeing process.

It was not, however, until 1977, when he was 60 years old, that he finally developed his own dyeing and decorating techniques that involve complex tie-dyeing and ink drawing, often on textiles woven with gold or silver threads. His labor-intensive secret methods, produced a rich layering of texture, ink drawing and color subtly suggestive of French Impressionism, an artistic style he particularly loved. His first exhibit in Tokyo was a huge success. Since then, Kubota has won international acclaim for his creativity and dedication to this extraordinarily laborious craft, and has exhibited throughout Japan and in Europe.

Kubota’s dream was to live to the age of 100 – the time it would take to complete a series of 75 kimono that would hang side by side to form a monumental tapestry of the four seasons called Symphony of Light. Before his death on April 26, 2003, he completed the first 30 pieces, “Autumn” and “Winter.” The anniversary of Master Kubota’s death, April 26th, also happens to be the last day of the exhibit in Canton. Since his passing, his family, a team of apprentices, and his son, Satoshi Kubota, carry on the tradition of creating these extraordinary works of art. In an enormous gesture of generosity the Kubota family has agreed to let Itchiku Kubota’s Kimono come to the United States for a second time.