The textile and fashion traditions of mainland South East Asia are rich and extensive. I am very happy as I engage in a close examination of these traditions from my perspective as an scholar of these cultures, a sociologist and a textile artist. The works in this series are drawn from the textile and style traditions of the Khmer culture which was centered in what is now Cambodia, but included much of the Isan plateau in Thailand. The culture is a fascinating mix of indegenous development and the influences of (especially) Indian and Chinese coastal traders.

There is no more hopeful act than getting married. The selection of the wedding dress itself is one of the ways in which ideas of roles, values and importance are communicated. I am fascinated by the edges between cultures -- the places that they meet. These images of Thai wedding dresses all show the tension between and attempts to mediate among, layers of meaning, east and west, traditional and modern. While the stores of Phimai, Thailand do feature wedding dresses completely in the Western style, the great majority of the dresses in the windows preserve design aspects of traditional Thai formal or court dress including the belt at the waist and elaborate folds.

The naga (snake) is a profound symbol in Thai thought and belief. The naga was essential in the churning the ocean of milk to create the universe of all things. The naga is the life force/abundance/luck that flows through existence to protect people. As such, the naga is a recurrent theme in traditional Thai weaving. Thailand has a long tradition of hand spun and hand woven cotton textiles, one group of which is dyed in the warp (matmi). Contemporary matmi handwovens were collected in the Northeast area of Thailand, and re worked into these textiles, each of which refers to the Thai idea of the naga and my own repertoire of precious lucky images.

For centuries, textiles from India were prized. During the 19th century, however, England was able to capture interational leadership in textile production through the combination of copying of distinctive Indian motifs (such as chintz and paisley) and industrialization. The Indian textile industry was virtually destroyed. In the mid 20th century, Ghandi made khadi cloth -- a hand spun and hand woven textile -- the symbol of the Indian struggle for independance from British colonization, industrialization and globalization. Working with Khadi cloth allows me to explore these themes.

These works explore the textile history, real and re-imagined, of the Pueblo peoples of the Rio Grande valley before, during and after contact with the Spanish beginning in the 16th century. The thriving cotton growing and weaving tradition of the Puebloan peoples was interrupted by the Spanish-imposed transition to sheep raising and wool weaving. Puebloan ideas of textile design leak through into these Hispanic textiles, but their design sensibilities find full voice in their pottery, which I have used in creating these compositions.

The pieces you will see here reflect my fascination with the contact edge between cultures -- west and east, old and new, homespun and machine, disappearing and emerging. These mixed media works incorporate traditional textiles collected from cultures as varied as the Hmong of Yunnan in China and rural women in Kenya with commercial textiles produced in Turkey, Japan and the United States. The selective juxtaposition of textiles enables me to work out issues I see as important in this edge between cultures.

One of the beautiful traditions of Thailand is the bai sii, elaborate creations made of plant materials that are brought to temples as an act of merit making. To make a bai sii, banana leaves and flowers are folded into elaborate shapes with symbolic meanings. I became interested in bai sii when I saw some made from fabric, and sought out someone who could teach me this art form. In Phimai, I found two young women who agreed to teach me. The bai sii we made took a day and a half to create, and this album documents the process construction and of taking it to the local temple.

Expatriate Chinese friends of mine talk about "eggs" and "bananas". Bananas are people who are yellow on the outside and white on the inside -- like some Chinese families that have been in the United States longer than my family has (I am third generation from Lithuania and Ireland). I am an "egg" -- white on the outside and yellow on the inside. My father joined the foreign service when I was 2 and I grew up in the Asia of the 1950s and 60s (and I have returned frequently during my international business career and later exploration of art). My life, and my art, raise questions of what is an indegenous culture, who is and is not a valid interpreter of culture, and who, or what, is the voice of emerging global culture.