Bark Cloth
Patterns are found throughout the natural and fabricated world from the grain of wood to fabric designs. However, bark cloth blends these worlds by imposing the order of a repetitive pattern onto a piece of nature. Bark cloth, or kapa in Hawaiian, is a type of primitive fabric made from the inner bark of wauke, the paper mulberry plant. To prepare the bark cloth, the bark must be beaten with a wooden mallet on which intricate designs are carved. These carvings leave a watermark impression on the cloth. In this series of prints, I explore the complex repetitive geometric designs of bark cloth and their connection to one another.
