Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada is an artist, curator and textile researcher. She holds a BFA in Textile Art from Kyoto City Fine Arts University, MFA in Painting from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and has studied traditional Japanese silk embroidery, ikat weaving and indigo dyeing. Past curatorial appointments include: "The Kimono Inspiration: Art and Art to Wear in America," The Textile Museum, Washington, D.C., “Japanese Design: A Survey since the 1950s,” Philadelphia Museum of Art; shibori and bandhani exhibitions at the National Institute of Design, India; “Shibori: Tradition and Innovation – East to West” and  “Ragged Beauty: Repair and Reuse, Past and Present,” Museum of Craft and Folk Art, San Francisco.

Wada received the Japan Foundation Fellowship in 1979 and 1996 wherein the first research yielded the definitive publication, Shibori: the Inventive Art of Japanese Shaped Resist Dyeing (now in 14^th printing), and led to her second shibori publication, Memory on Cloth: Shibori Now (5^th printing).  Grants include: the Indo-US Sub commission for Education and Culture; the Matsushita International Foundation; and the Renwick Fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution.  A lecturer at Okinawa Prefecture Fine Arts University since 1992 and recently a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Japanese Studies, University of California at Berkeley, Wada is President of the World Shibori Network-World and served as co-chair of the past International Shibori Symposia (Nagoya, Japan ‘92, India ‘96, Chile ’99, Australia ’04, UK ’02, Tokyo, Japan ’05) and upcoming France ‘08. She consults for other designers, including Colleen Atwood for the Hollywood production, “Memoirs of a Geisha,” and Christina Kim for fashion house Dosa Inc.