While visiting Boston over the weekend, a friend and I got to spend time with artist Amy Nguyen at her live/work home/studio in Boston. The excuse for the visit was to review some pieces of wearable art we intend to show in the Fall 2010 Artful Home catalog, but the truth is that I always like seeing an artist in her own environment to get a better understanding of what makes her tick.

Amy provided us with a feast for both our eyes and stomachs, as she graciously created lunch salads perfectly composed on handmade plates. As we sat in her showroom/living room, we were surrounded by an abundance of colors, as Amy is a master dyer and textile designer, strongly influenced by Japanese textiles in her development of contemporary shibori designs.

Fashioned into modern shapes, Amy combines a painter’s eye with a perfectionist technique. It is staggering to understand the meticulous process she employs to create her designs. Each fold and pleat is calculated to create a specific effect, repeatable though slightly differing every time Amy hand-dips each piece in the vat of dye. Often, shibori garments are left in their pleated state, but Amy presses out her fabrics after pleating, folding, stitching, dyeing, re-pleating, and re-dyeing, revealing the full effect of all this work. There is no forgiveness of mistakes, so her master technique is critical to the final outcome. In her garments, she then pieces her textiles, referencing Japanese quilts as she develops bold graphic designs. The end results are elegant, classic, and powerful – and obviously I could not resist trying on almost every piece!

I was once again inspired by an artist’s passion for her work. As Amy explained her ideas for new work and showed me samples of experiments in the works, there was a visible fire in her eyes. “Look at this – and this!” she exclaimed, in her quiet way, pulling out swatches of inspiration and resulting new directions. She knows that she could probably make a lot more money through some version of mass production, but has no interest in that at all, preferring the thrill of creating by hand, from concept to experience to final work. I, for one, am most grateful for her passion!