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Toray Industries, Inc. Encircling Fishing Net. 1996. Teteron polyester, variable width (1 1/2" contracted/132" expanded) x 278" (3.8/335.3 x 706.1 cm). Mfr.: Toray Industries Inc., Tokyo; also Nitto Seimo Co., Ltd., Tokyo. Collection The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Toray Industries, Inc. Knotless mesh net
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Transparency implies both a literal and metaphorical lightness. Sometimes this lightness is achieved through the advent of new lightweight synthetic yarns whose strength is exponentially greater than yarns ten times their weight. Alternately, this quality has been the hallmark of centuries-old traditional methods that use only organic materials, such as silk, to create something gossamer like a spider web.
Michiko Uehara uses the thinnest silk yarn possible. She describes this thread that is so fine it is almost imperceptible, as "weaving air" or akezuba ori - the weave of a dragonfly's wings. In Yuyake (Evening Glow), a double weave, the floating warp threads reveal the delicacy of the yarn.
Toray's Encircling Fishing Net, is also lightweight and employs relatively fine thread but for a very specific function. Instead of knots, this net is held together using a twist technique developed in the early part of the nineteenth centuryand modernized here with polyester yarns that are interlocked to form a mesh, then heat-treated to create a flattened surface.
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Michiko Uehara. Lower layer: Yuyake (Evening Glow). 1991. Silk, 20 x 250" (50.8 x 635 cm). Upper layer: Sogen (Grassy Plains). 1997. Silk, 24 x 100" (60.9 x 254 cm). Collection the artist
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