Judy and Nina Perez - Color Runs in the Family

When Rit Dye recruited mixed media textile artist Judy Coates Perez to help formulate the hundreds of recipes in our new ColoRit Color Formula Guide, she approached the task – as she has so many other things in her varied art and design career – as a pleasant opportunity to experiment. "The fact is," she says, "I had never used Rit before. I'm a bit of a dye snob, and I'd always used professional fiber-reactive dyes in my work. But I'm also very playful. I don't like limits. I do a lot of mixed media things – taking teabags and slapping them on quilts, combining fabric and paper and drawing and painting on them. I'm willing to try anything, and I'm always on the lookout for new materials that will work easily for specific needs."

Like Mother, Like Daughter

So Judy sat down with her daughter Nina – another mixed-media artist who's been "making imagery from the moment she could grip a pencil" – and went to work. Or rather, play. "We just pored over the Pantone color book and targeted every color that we thought people might want to use," says Nina. "We worked our way through the color wheel, dyeing all different sorts of combinations, trying to come up with as many different recipes as possible."

"From the existing product line," says Judy, "we conjured hundreds of variations, everything from delicate pastels to extremely bright and saturated colors. Ultimately, I gained a lot of respect for what Rit can do. It's incredibly fast compared to using other types of dyes. You can get results pretty much instantly, within just a couple of minutes. You mix the dye, throw it in the microwave, bingo, you rinse it out and you know what you've got. You don't have to wait four hours or more. So it's really good for experimentation.

"The other thing is, when compared to other types of dyes, Rit is essentially non-toxic. That was a major plus for me, especially now where I don't have a basement or a dedicated wet studio space where I can pull out chemicals and mix fiber-reactive dyes safely. With Rit, I can mix it up in my kitchen. I know a lot of my students are afraid to use fiber-reactive dyes because of their toxicity. So Rit's a great option for people who are uncomfortable with that aspect of dyeing.

"By the end of the project, I was thinking, 'Who knew? Who knew how easy and fun this would be?'"

Experimentation Trumps Technique

The experience reinforced Judy's long-held belief that "the best education comes from trial-and-error." Her own unique style of quiltmaking is the result of a journey that began with "high school days haunting Home Ec sewing classes and art studios." There followed a BFA degree in graphic design; a Los Angeles-based career in design, advertising, environmental graphics, and publishing firms; then a domestic life raising two kids in Los Angeles, Austin, Texas and Chicago. "After I had my daughter I didn't go back to work full-time, and I found myself sewing again. Texas is the land of the quilt, you know. I learned a lot during my years there, but making conventional patchwork was not as interesting to me, because I'm drawn to imagery. 



"I love traditional quilts, but I wanted my own to be more about expressing an idea, an image, what was going on in my head, how I was feeling about things. One of my first quilts had scorpions and snakes and cactus and crazy stuff all over it. I just knew how to sew – and I winged it from there." 

 

Almost-Living Dolls

Growing up in the home of a working artist, Judy's daughter Nina absorbed all sorts of knowledge by osmosis – "learning graphic design, learning photography, learning how to shoot her artwork, then transform it in Photoshop. Nina's just starting to get into the whole textiles thing now. As she's gotten older, she's started to sew, and she's really interested in these Asian ball-jointed dolls."

Says Nina, "I've always been interested in fashion. A while back, one of my friends introduced me to these dolls. Most of them are from Korea, they're pretty large, and they have a very anime-type look to them. I wanted to make clothes – and they gave me a chance to create mini-fashion. It suited me," she laughs, "because buying huge amounts of fabric is really expensive. But buying small amounts of fabric, doll-sized amounts, isn't.



"Now I have four of these dolls and I love them. I design clothes for them, I photograph them, I Photoshop the pictures so they look nice, or weird, or creepy. They're my medium."

Sharing a Wealth of Knowledge

Today, both Judy and Nina publish blogs that showcase their work and help viewers understand techniques. Says Judy, "I don't keep technical secrets. I think we all give and take from this vast knowledge that's all around us. Maybe I have this talent, so why not share it and help other people to grow? They may have a great idea, but they may not know how to pull it together. I get a lot of joy from helping people create the work that they want to make.

"I don't think we should be stingy with our knowledge. There's nothing that's truly new. Everything's been done before. It's really about taking what already exists and making it new again."