Posts by Melissa

JJ Market

Posted on April 27, 2014

Bangkok, Thailand: When visiting a new place, there’s always one market that everyone lauds ‘Go there, it’s awesome’ but rarely is it really that awesome.  That is not the case with the Jatujak Market. This place is as cool as the Brooklyn Flea, but about 1000x bigger. We thought we’d spend a few hours visiting yesterday, but we loved it so much we came back today for even more. The JJ Market weighs in as the largest market in all of Thailand, covering 35 acres, with 15,000 stalls and 200,000 visitors each weekend day. On one hand, it felt strangely familiar as we meandered through the stalls lined with trucker caps, dodged retro tuk-tuks outfitted with artisan ice creams and rubbed shoulders with BKK hipsters sipping iced coffee. What was completely new, however, were squirrels on leashes, adolescent trannies, carts of fried insects, the mango lady who hocked her goods with both a question and a statement (Mango? Mango!) and our favorite – dried squid on hangers. Yum!!

Categories: Thailand

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Thailand underwater

Posted on April 12, 2014
Koh Tao, Thailand:  Each day we head out into Jansom Bay and explore what’s under water. After the first few days of being captivated by the beaked coral fish, Christmas tree worms, Harlequin sweetlips, parrot fish, double barred rabbit fish, butterfly fish, long fin banner fish and pink skunk anemone fish, we decided to get an underwater camera case. While we’re not able to capture all of it for the blog, it’s pretty amazing to swim amongst this beautiful marine life.
Categories: Thailand

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Auf Wiedersehen, Bali

Posted on March 31, 2014


During the planning stages of this sabbatical, we suspected our time in Ubud would be centered around art projects. We couldn’t have forecasted, however, how much these pottery and batik workshops would have an impact on our future plans. These last two months have been transformative, and the experiences here have led to a potential reframing of the rest of our year abroad. We’ve had countless conversations around how to continue down these creative paths, and how we choose future locations that will allow us to explore these areas deeper. Plans are still taking shape, but one thing we do know is that we will be back in Bali as a part of it. So, we’re not saying goodbye, we’re just saying, ‘until we see you again…’

Categories: Bali

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Final batik designs

Posted on March 30, 2014

A few of my final designs…an eclectic mix of colors, materials and wax application methods. Really hoping to work with natural indigo and woodcut stamps again. Stay tuned as we figure out some plans for studio work in Berlin.

Categories: Bali, Batik

Graduate studies in batik

Posted on March 27, 2014

Ubud, Bali, Indonesia:  I fell in love with the art of batik. There are infinite ways of approaching the creation of these beautiful fabrics, and over our 2 months in Ubud, I experimented across a broad spectrum of techniques. A few weeks in to our stay, I decided to take my initial ‘playing around’ studies a little deeper. I contracted with Widya, the man who runs the studio where I’d been learning batik, to come back and work 10-15 more times for the whole time we’d be in Ubud. My main areas of focus would be color, fibers and hand stamping. Color is a tricky one for me, as I didn’t go to art school and remember very little about color theory from my…

Categories: Bali, Batik

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Natural indigo & batik studio

Posted on March 17, 2014

Ubud, Bali, Indonesia: The director of Gaya where Thomas is taking his intensive pottery course introduced us to this incredible place. Located about 1/2 hour outside of Ubud, this facility employs about 50 people who produce natural plant dyes (primarily indigo) and hand stamp all the fabrics on their way to becoming batik.

The indigo leaves come from a local source and are soaked & fermented on site. Huge vats of indigo baths line the facility, and rudimentary but complex pulley systems hang the fabrics in various stages of dipping. For the deepest, richest blue, many of these fibers will be dipped 15+ times in the indigo baths.

Around the corner from the indigo baths was the stamping room. Hundreds & hundreds of wood and copper stamps lined the walls. Each of them had been made at the facility and was completely unique. Seeing something of this scale was breathtaking since I’d been working with just about 15 stamps at my other batik studio. Inspired & excited, I asked to come back and work on my own the next day. Does this count as an internship??

Categories: Bali, Batik

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Traditional Balinese family compounds

Posted on February 27, 2014

Ubud, Bali, Indonesia:  Driving around Ubud, there are times when we can’t see past many of the thick walls built up along the streets. We learned these are karangs, traditional family compounds composed of many homes and filled with extended family.

Within the compound is the family temple, which is actually a collection of five+ small shrines placed on high pedestals. These are dedicated to ancestor worship, specific Hindu gods or ancient spirits. Further within the compound there are a number of small houses or open sided pavilions, organized around a main house which is occupied by the current head of the family and his immediate family, while the smaller dwellings house visiting relatives and children.

Within these compounds, much effort and expense goes towards the decoration of doors and gateways. Doors are carved from rain tree woods and painted, but may also be gilded with gold leaf in the case of high caste families. Gateways are often highly ornamented, often with the Bhoma head, killer and eater of demons.

Categories: Bali

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Back in Brooklyn…kinda

Posted on February 27, 2014

Ubud, Bali, Indonesia: Despite being a world away from the modern conveniences of home, there are some signs of Western life sprinkled across Ubud. There’s Alchemy, a hipster/yogi/ Brooklynite cafe down the street. We discovered this place driving by on our motor bike, and couldn’t help but notice how different it was than the local warung we’d been visiting for most meals. Alchemy was clearly opened by a Westerner, hoping to attract all the other Aussies, Kiwis, Germans and Americans here looking for organic, gluten-free, vegan, sugar-free, probiotic, holistic, etc fare. We love the Indonesian food and eat local for most meals, but every once in a while it is nice to have some flavor from home. We laugh and say, ‘Want to go to Little…

Categories: Bali

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My art project: Balinese batik

Posted on February 20, 2014

Ubud, Bali, Indonesia: One of the reasons we chose Ubud was for its arts community. Expat artists have been coming here since the 1920s. We knew there would be no shortage of museums, galleries and artists offering workshops and studio time to visitors like us. I chose to focus my art project on batik because I’ve always been interested in fabric making and textiles. Before leaving the States, my only textile-related activity was knitting. One of the things I love about knitting is picking out beautifully colored silk, wool or cotton yarns and seeing them come together in an eclectic pattern and fabric. So, it wasn’t a big leap to want to experiment further with color, fabrics and making new patterns with Balinese batik.…

Categories: Bali, Batik

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Our new home in Ubud

Posted on February 14, 2014
Ubud, Bali, Indonesia: For the first month we’re in Bali, we’ll be living in this joglo just outside Ubud. It’s been beautifully restored to fit with the rest of the homes in the rice paddy community. It’s a 20 minute walk to the center of Ubud, so we are away from the sounds of this now bustling but still charming artist community. Because we are literally situated in a rice paddy, we are in the middle of a tropical farm of sorts. Chickens walk by each morning, nonchallantly checking out their new human visitors. Roosters crow, sometimes reaching protest-like volumes. And the best part is the frog symphony each evening. Thousands of frogs erupt into song, each outdoing the other. It’s so relaxing to sit in our open-air living room looking out onto the rice paddy and hear these gorgeous animals sing us into the night.

COLLECTION
Categories: Bali

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