Dorothy “Bunny” Bowen draws upon familiar and remembered places as subjects for her paintings. Working on silk with dyes resisted by molten wax, she continues a 2500-year-old tradition which has been practiced in various forms all around the world. Since 2002 she has experimented with soy wax as a non-toxic resist and has presented her research internationally. Some of the pieces shown today were done soy wax. Bowen also works in the ancient Japanese technique of rozorne, an extremely intricate and slow process of layering dye and wax on silk which has been sized with a soybean ground. She will he demonstrating rozome at her studio during the Placitas Studio Tour May 9—10, 2009. As the featured artist for the 2009 Fiber Arts Fiesta, Bowen will be showing a body of work at Expo NM in the Manuel Lujan Building May 2 1—23.

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"Bosque Fires"
  Rozome on silk

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Bowen grew up in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains. Originally an oil painter, she earned a B.A. in Art from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Virginia and studied printmaking at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. She holds an M.A. in Art History from the University of New Mexico, writing her thesis on Navajo Pictorial Weaving and then worked at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe as a research associate in Spanish Colonial Textiles. After ten years with MOIFA, a major exhibition was mounted and several articles by the artist were published in the catalogue, The Spanish Textile Tradition of New Mexico and Colorado.

In 1980, Bowen was introduced to batik by Australian Jeffery Service. She has been working professionally in batik ever since, and has exhibited her work in numerous juried shows with awards. Although she began as a portrait painter, most of the batiks are landscapes, dealing with the coming of rain to parched land. A Southwesterner since 1967, Bowen knows the frustration of desiccating winds, of harsh sun that bleaches the very fabric of life. Rain is always a welcome respite, a renewing force that restores hope and energy.

From her studio in Placitas, New Mexico, she can watch as storms sweep across the Rio Grande Valley, as mists swallow entire mountain ranges, hoping that at home the earth will be blessed with a few drops. Most often, the rain falls as virga, never reaching the ground. Or it can come with such violence that most of it is lost in runoff.  To achieve these atmospheric effects in a medium known for “crackle” (dark lines where the final dyebath penetrated cracks in the wax resist), Bowen has developed a unique technique which minimizes the cracking and which allows for added control over the flow of the dyes, which are applied with brushes to the wet cotton or silk. This technique is closely related to the Japanese tradition of rozome, which the artist has studied with artist Betsy Sterling Benjamin. Bowen recently took rozome workshops with noted Japanese artists Shoukou Kobayashi and Keijin Ihaya.