heather ujiie

Heather Ujiie: Terra Incognita /OPENING RECEPTION & GALLERY TALK: Thursday, September 13, 6:00-8:00 p.m. /Gallery Location: 301 High Street West/ Exhibition on View: September 4 – November 17, 2018 

 The Garden of Earthly Delights, painted by Hieronymus Bosch (1490 – 1510) serves as Heather Ujiie’s point of departure for Terra Incognita, a monumental exhibition, displaying configurations of multiple mediums and other worldly surprises.

 Through diverse characteristics of making, such as painting, stitching, embroidery, large format digital inkjet printing, and multidimensional sculpture, Ujiie creates a transcendental experience, implicit in the metaphor of the garden paradise. Walking into the gallery space, evokes a myriad of potentially confusing emotions and reactions, which resonate within the dualities of life and death, beauty and ugliness, and the sacred and the profane, beckoning humans to ponder on their fragile relationship between biology and evolving culture.

Experimental material investigations with repurposed materials

Demon: Black Zip ties, rubber tubing, lace, vinyl tubing, wire, boning, mannequin

Fountain: Swim noodles, yarn, aquatic tubing, water pump, glass beads

Hybrid Warrior: Para-cord, multicolored felt, zip ties, vinyl screen mesh, mannequin, wire armatures, tree branches

Heather Ujiie’s art abounds with colorful mythical creatures and monsters spinning allegorical stories and fairytales. Ujiie’s large-scale digital prints present a unique blending of the classical and contemporary. Her solo exhibition, titled Heather Ujiie: Fairytales, Monsters and Hybrid Creatures, runs until Jan. 8, 2017. “Many of the pieces in this exhibition were inspired from a kind of ‘data’ mashing of both western and eastern world history and religion,” Ujiie said. “This past year, I have been fascinated by the Christian northern Renaissance paintings, as well as Persian and Indian miniature paintings, some of which depict polymorphic gods and demons.”Ujiie’s textile work is a synthesis of several processes, including hand painting, drawing, stitching, and printing with innovative large-format digital printing. “I love the visceral quality of paint and material investigations, but I also love technology,” she said. “Digital printing, laser cutting and smart textiles are all tools that interest me in creating more innovative work.” Conversely, Ujiie said she enjoys sitting in her studio painting with gouache, a heavy, opaque watercolor paint, which produces a less wet-appearing and more strongly colored picture than ordinary watercolor.

This community-curated Outlooks exhibition explores collaborative life-work partnerships. Heather Moqtaderi, Philadelphia-based curator and teacher, developed the concept for the exhibition and invited four artist couples—Gina Triplett and Matt Curtius, Shoko Teruyama and Matt Kelleher, Heather and Hitoshi Ujiie, and Trefny Dix and Bengt Hokanson—to create new works for Duality. Their paintings, ceramics, glass, and textiles reveal dual, and often complementary, artistic viewpoints and technical skills.

September 11, 2014 to November 30, 2014

Textile artist and designer Heather Ujiie incorporates many techniques--including hand painting, drawing, stitching, and printing with innovative large-format digital printing technology, to create a Utopia, that she describes as “ a celebration of the unconscious.”

As an other-worldly environment, the installation reflects her interests in biodiversity and the future of our environs. This is accomplished through the creation of a fantastical landscape of hybrid animals and plant forms influenced by early botanical and anatomical illustrations by artists such as, Piero Fornasetti, Jean Cocteau, and Renaissance and Baroque iconography. This transcendental experience, using digitally created textile panels and upholstered furnishings, is made complete by the accompaniment of audio recordings from nature.

All fabrications are digitally inkjet printed on cotton sateen.
Hand-rendered motifs were painted in gouache, and scanned and put
in repeat in Photoshop.
Each wall panel: 108" x 48”: Textile installation 108” x 292” x 108”
Couch furniture designed by RJ Thornburg

Printed at: The Center for Excellence for Digital Inkjet Printing of Textiles, Philadelphia University

This immense digitally printed Toile de Jouy textile installation, was inspired by the original print by Andrea Mantegna, (Titled: Battle of The Sea Gods) which was created during the Renaissance. The entire vignette was all hand-drawn with pen and ink, and than digitally edited, and printed on a polyester micro-suede. It was scaled to fit a site-specific installation at the Racine Art Museum, in May 2014.(@ 126" x 250" )

http://www.ramart.org/content/once-upon-time-fairy-tales-fantasy-and-contemporary-art

This hand constructed and lined kimono was inspired by my digitally printed fabrications. I am interested in large scale engineered images, and dramatic simple silhouettes. This Kimono is digitally printed on micro-suede, and lined with red satin, and will be part of an ongoing collection of digitally printed high end kimonos for evening wear. I have also ventured into new digital technologies, with laser cutting. I laser cut black acrylic sheets, to make my erotic warrior garment from multiple triangular flat shapes. These were laser cut, and hand linked, and grommet together to construct an armor inspired fashion piece.

This costume was made possible by a collaborative effort with Benjamin Volta, Moore College of Art & Design, and the Russell Byers Charter School in Philadelphia. The Giant Neuron Costume was created with fun materials including, hoola-hoops, shimmer fabrics, swim noodles, digitally printed fabric designed by Benjamin Volta and the 5th grade class at the Russell Byers Charter school. I also integrated EL wires inside the body of the Nucleus, and the children also wove them into the tops of their bike helmets. We will create an educational performance, on January 21st, 2015 at The Franklin Science Institute in conjunction with the exhibit entitled: Your Brain.

https://www.fi.edu/exhibit/your-brain

The Universe, 2013, Digital inkjet print on cotton sateen 72 x 192 inches, Printed at: The Center for Excellence for Digital Inkjet Printing of Textiles, Philadelphia University

Resurrection, 2011/2012

Digital Inkjet Print, Edition: 1

Each of the 6 Panels: 120” x35 ”, cotton canvas, embellished with beads, sequins, threads, and buttons

Installation: @ 120” x216” Printed at:  The Center for Excellence for Digital Inkjet Printing of Textiles, Philadelphia University

The Garden of Eden, 2007 

Digital Inkjet Print, Edition: 2, reprinted, 2011

Each of the 5 Panels: 204” x 40”, duppioni raw silk, Installation: @ 204” x 225”      

Printed at: The Center for Excellence for Digital Inkjet Printing of Textiles, Philadelphia University

In addition to my focus on large scale textile installations and  textile printed patterns, I am interested in traditional/digital printmaking on various papers and substrates. My new archival digital prints are created by hand painting and drawing, scanning, and digitally manipulating various images. All work is hand rendered and meticulously drawn and painted first, and than digitally printed on somerset watercolor paper and range in sizes 30" x 40" and larger.

Currently, some of my digitally printed textile designs and engineered wall coverings are featured at Flavorpaper, a high end wall-covering company for interior design in New York. The Flavor Lair, their Brooklyn headquarters, houses all their wallpaper production facilities, offices and showroom and won the 2010 Best of the Year Showroom from Interior Design Magazine.  For more information go to http://www.flavorpaper.com/

Ninja Warrior Face-off! 2010/ 2011

Digital inkjet print, Edition:1

Each of the 6 Panels: 60 “ x 45 “, cotton canvas, embellished with beads, sequins, threads, and buttons

Each of the 3 sheer panels, 72” x 54”, polyester knit sheer voile / Hanging printed flowers

Total installation: @ 144 “ x 300 ” x 261” Printed at: The Center for Excellence for Digital Inkjet Printing of Textiles, Philadelphia University

This collection of prints was inspired by my artist residency at the Winterthur museum. Their Spode porcelain ware was a point of departure for the color and aesthetics of the collection.

All textile print work is designed with industry standards for repeat sizes, ranging from 27"-36" square and half-drop repeats. All my textile work is a combination of analog and digital work process. Many of the motifs are hand painted and digitally manipulated, using both Illustrator and Photoshop software. I design for many design markets, including home furnishing and Apparel.