About Lisa

I work with the medium of batik. The process, is long and slow and is in complete contrast to my daily life... I draw from the traditional process of creating patterns combined with iconic childlike images.  I create visual stories that the viewer can step into, explore the surroundings and be surprised and delighted with the intricate patterns, playful colors and emotive quality of the piece.  The figures are usually faceless allowing the viewer to bring his or her own emotional moment to the experience.

Working on tightly woven white cotton fabric that has been prepared to accept dyes, images are dyed into the fabric through a series of resists.  I use fiber-reactive and natural dyes, applying washes and vat dyeing the fabric.  To preserve the dyed areas by resisting the dye, I apply combinations of beeswax and paraffin at varying temperatures with traditional and electric tjanting tools*, as well as brushes (and whatever else lands at hand). The fabric is dyed one color at a time, once the dye dries, another layer of wax is applied.   I remove the wax by ironing it out between parchment and newspapers.   There are often over 100 hours of tedious wax application per piece, the wax is removed several times and the process is repeated.  I etch into the wax with different tools, and apply a range of chemicals that eat through the wax in order to achieve different effects and manipulate the way the fabric accepts the dye.  Small pieces of other original batiks from the series are sewn on after the wax has been removed.  This allows a measure of spontaneity that is much needed after months of tedious waxwork.

.  My kids are very connected to the work- often times they are right there with me in the studio, drawing or painting alongside…their influence is all over these pieces.  My husband is an artist, and we live and work in a colorful, messy kid house.  Our summers are spent traveling to art shows around the west and coming home to an overgrown garden.  We have moved a lot, down the road, across the country.  I keep hoping to look down one day and find my home on my shoe.  Nonetheless, our kids encourage us to bring snacks and to remember that this is all a great adventure…even when the cat poops in the car and our house decides that the time has come to shift off its posts.  We do a lot of drawing in our little family unit… I adore my children so much (and believe them to possess the utmost artistic talent) and they are graciously sharing their drawings.  I put them in my own picture drawings, they make me smile, they are my home. 

*A tjanting tool is a traditional Indonesian tool used to apply wax, it typically has a wooden handle and a copper reservoir and spout, the wax is heated in an electric frying pan (in my case) and the tjanting tool is dipped into the wax and lines are drawn onto the fabric.