Batik has been around for centuries and is still an integral part of some cultures in Indonesia- where it originated- Africa, and Asia, and used as much for storytelling as for design. This is how I approach the process -my own creative process involves using the medium as nonverbal communication to convey inner landscapes, feelings, thoughts, ideas, and memories that I hope others also feel familiar with.
2024 Multiple series are at play: Sowing stars Growing community
The initial image/question was posed to me in late 2019/early 2020: how do we grow community together, yet individually …and then the pandemic hit and we all really had to learn by experiencing that question in another way: How do we remain apart yet grow together?
There is a vast Mycelium holding together our world…our sowing of hopes and dreams communicates to the earth and the stars… if we listen carefully, we can hear what the planet/universe needs: By listening to how the plants communicate, letting them communicate with us; and by listening to how our communities communicate what they need and responding in kind, our hopes and dreams are sown not only for our own benefit but commingle with the hopes and dreams of our community, the earth and the greater good. So that we can be together.
Ancestors: Using the ancient medium of batik, I’ve created this particular body of work about the conversations I’ve had with the bits and pieces of my and our collective experience the past few years- with community, with home, with re-finding what “home” is, with loss and with acceptance and with invitation to something new. I’ve called on ancestors and old stories to inform me; I’ve looked back into imagery I previously used to understand and explain the world when I was younger, and imagery I used to communicate these things to my children when they were young. I’ve tried to infuse all this with the grace of age and experience by creating multi-layered backgrounds that hint at the perseverance of a mystery that never seems to unshroud herself. I’ve been working with batik, exploring and pushing it’s boundaries for 30 years, creating pieces that tell my story while also inviting the viewer to bring their own stories into the pieces
This series utilizes batik in a multitude of ways. Harkening back to the ages of Indonesian patterns to African storytelling to Asian design to eventual American counter culture and including the use of Indigo as an integral piece of the fabric- dying history, I am blending together many learned techniques, and layering them one upon another. Many of these pieces are multi-layered in that they are pre-dyed using particular batik techniques to create a background movement and pattern that becomes the underlying canvas to the story. The wax and dye is removed many times and the imagery is batiked and dyed over the “blank” canvas of movement. Wax is applied using traditional tjanting tools and brushes and removed multiple times in order to incorporate contrasting colors and create the layered “simplicity” in the imagery. The faces and bodies remain “open” (free from wax)- taking on all the colors throughout all the dyes to create figures that are a culmination of all the dyes and all the processes in order to represent each step, each emotion, and to represent a human experience beyond the constraints of physicality.
I love hearing other peoples stories of what they see in the pieces. If you want to share your story please feel free to email me or comment in my blog.