 Color Decoded. The Textiles of Richard Landis. A silver-haired man walks down a tree-lined road. Richard Landis is a retired weaver who lives in Prescott, Arizona. His work explores complex systems of related colors. Everyone always asks me, how do you get interested in something? And when I looked at art, or when I look at nature, including in my gardening, in fishing and hunting, these things are never direct. They are inspirational. I get very involved in them. Landis studied art and design at Arizona State University, but left college to join the Army during the Korean War. The way we were moved around, I got to see some of the lower southern part of Japan. There was something about the way design was considered and carried out that I responded to. They would have these kimono lengths on display in the window, and they'd have five or six different ones, and they were stunning. I'm sure I never would have gone into weaving if I hadn't fallen in love with the fabric and OB design. The first warp I ever did was with cotton, because it's strong, but the selection of colors was very limited, but then later I wanted to get a finer gradation of blended colors. So that's how I got into using thread. And I could see that I could not only use the color, but I could blend these colors and come up with new ones that I didn't even have. I mean, you know, you cross two different colors and you get a third one. And especially when the finer you get, the more that is so, then the gradation was fine enough that the halftones were very convincing. I mean, they really looked like almost like they'd either been done with light or with pigment. Multicolored pattern notations are shown. My main little program started with a six-tone system, and it delivered the variation that I wanted as a possibility for sizes and continual movement from one thing to another. And the neat thing in a piece like this large one is that the last color in each unit is also the first in the next unit. He displays a weaving. Every single shade in there is different. And there's nothing in there that repeats exactly. My inspiration is simply life itself and all my different relations to different aspects. And nature's the big baby. I mean, my whole time, like in the Sierra Anja and in the Wind River range in Wyoming, I was looking at incredibly complex landscapes and being comfortable in big complexities allows you to do complex things. Abstract grid-based weavings are displayed. I think that I definitely have always been a real sensualist. I mean, my senses, I trust them and I have always cultivated them. And that is what gives you the inspiration to do anything. Special thanks to Richard Landis. Produced by Chris J. Gautier, with help from Susan Brown, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. For the exhibition Color Decoded, the Textiles of Richard Landis.