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.
Posts from the “Batik” Category
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…
Tagged: Batik, color, copper stamps, fabric, fibers, graduate studies, internship, tjaps, wooden stamps
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??
Tagged: Batik, blue, dipping, indigo, intern, internship, natural plant dyes, stamps
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.…
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