Page 25 - the NOISE June 2012

from kitchen to Gallery
by sarah Gianelli
by sarah Gianelli hot beeswax & suspension coils story & photos
two dramatically different works of art sit before me. One She starts by covering the areas she wants to retain the origi- format, she can draw over her original batiks using a comput-
is a soft yet intricate depiction of two quail beneath an Ocotillo plant alight with red flowers that look like little birds. Blue-lit mountains on the horizon bring to mind Japanese artist Hokusai’s woodblock prints. The other is a Georgia O’Keeffe-inspired orchid whose frilly color- splashed petals sway as if underwater, luring you into the sensual mouth at its center. The first might be mistaken for colored pencil, the latter watercolor.
In fact, both pieces are batik, an ancient Indonesian textile-dying technique that utilizes wax to resist the ab- sorption of colored dyes. Traditionally used for garment design, Jerome Artist Cooperative members Judy Yescalis and Marjorie Claus (whose work is described respectively above) illustrate just how elastic the term batik can be. Ms. Yescalis is a purist in terms of process, but diverges from the art form’s roots in her creation of landscapes rather than clothing. Ms. Claus is taking the art form into the 21st century and beyond with her use of computers to create digitally enhanced versions of her original batiks.
When one thinks of creating a painting, applying color usually comes to mind. However, batik involves painting with wax to block out color. It is like building a painting out of negative space, almost in reverse.
In her kitchen studio, Ms. Yescalis bakes scones prepared on the diminutive space reserved for actual cooking. The rest of her kitchen is crowded with jars of powdered dyes and stained plastic mixing containers. On a little table is a homemade double boiler—a tin can filled with a mixture of beeswax and paraffin sits inside an old pot filled with wa- ter atop a hot plate. A wax-coated coil, used to suspend her brushes over the liquefied wax, is stretched across the top.
Still unable to wrap my mind around her process, she walks me through it again. First she does a rough pencil sketch on a square of white cotton, working from photo- graphs or the sketch pad she brings along on her regular forays into nature. Then she plans the color progression.
“This is where it becomes problematic!” she laughs. It re- quires an expert understanding of the color-wheel which it’s very evident Ms. Yescalis possesses. After making notes, and shading and numbering sections that leave her sketch looking somewhat like a paint by number kit, she is ready to apply the first layer of wax.
nal white of the fabric — the delicate white flowers of baby’s breath, the bark of aspen trees, her signature. Then she dips the entire cloth in the lightest color — perhaps a pale blue for the sky. In between each dye bath the fabric needs to air-dry com- pletely and be thoroughly rinsed. Then she paints over with wax the parts she wants to stay that light blue. Moving on to the next darkest color — maybe a green for leaves — she knows it will over-dye the lighter blue left exposed, but also has to keep in mind that she will not be able to get any yellow from that point on.
She repeats the process until the cloth is a solid sheet of wax. She won’t know how it turned out until she irons off the wax. The end result might be two deer in a dappled aspen grove, red rock vistas, or a bouquet of her father’s roses in a tin can. Upon closer inspection, all contain the tell-tale characteristics of ba- tik — the “crackles” where the wax has cracked allowing a slight bleed, giving her red rocks “fingers of fire,” and the mottled qual- ity that gives away its fabric base.
Her pieces are darling; sweet, soft and mind-boggling in the detail and color contrast achieved through what seems like such a challenging, painstaking process, and that offers no guar- antees that it will turn out like she envisioned.
On the other end of the batik spectrum is the ever-evolving work of Ms. Claus. Unlike Ms. Yescalis, who paints solely in wax, Ms. Claus uses a minimal amount of wax to create the basic out- line of her subject, very often the beloved horses of her child- hood, whose essence she captures both in stillness and gallop- ing movement.
“I’m going to keep painting horses and keep pushing the image until it becomes something else,” she says. Indeed they are beginning to.
One significant difference between the work of Ms. Yescalis and Ms. Claus is that rather than dipping the whole cloth in a succession of dye baths, Ms. Claus hand-paints or splashes the dye on her canvas, usually silk or linen, allowing her to achieve the bloom of a watercolor or sharply defined blocks of color. The process is similar in that Ms. Claus also has to work from the lightest colors to the darkest, and still uses wax to retain areas of color but to a much lesser degree. Lately she has been diverging even further, combining her background in print making with her love of batik.
After photographing her batiks and putting them in a digital
erized tablet and pen, manipulate the colors of the original, or create digital collages out of multiple batiks and superim- posed imagery.
“With the advent of digital photography and all that comes with that, I have been playing with layering photographs of my batiks in the computer. So now it’s like a whole new field,” says Ms. Claus. “It gives me rich textures and interesting things to do that I haven’t done before. As an artist I just want to keep pushing the limits to see what else I can do.”
Ms. Claus’ work at the co-op showcases her evolution as an artist, and includes the more traditional batiks she learned how to do while working in batik factories in Jakarta, the art form’s birthplace, to the boundary-pushing frontier where she finds herself today.
While their process and resulting artwork is entirely unique to each artist, Ms. Yescalis and Ms. Claus do share some simi- larities. They both came to batik in serendipitous ways. On the very day in college that Ms. Yescalis gave away her oil paints in a bout of frustration, she came across a tattered book on batik at a swap meet. Now 67, she has been honing her craft ever since. For Ms. Claus’ final project in a college print- making class, she decided to do an experimental batik for the cover, as if foreshadowing her eventual melding of the two art forms. Both artists are world travelers and have lived in far exotic places — Ms. Yescalis, a multilingual, all over Europe, and Ms. Claus in Singapore, Indonesia and Hawaii. Above all, it is a shared love of color that unites and inspires them both.
You can compare and contrast the work of these two tal- ented artists at the Jerome Artists’ Cooperative, which will be hosting its annual member show from July 7-August 2. Also on display will be the wide-ranging work of at least 30 other local artists. Ms. Yescalis’ pieces — both originals and affordable high quality prints — are also available at the Vil- lage Gallery in the Village of Oak Creek, and Ms. Claus’ in Prescott at the Miller Valley Artists’ Market.
| Sarah Gianelli has been known to critique and be critiqued from time to time. sarahgianelli@hotmail.com
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thenoise.us • the NOISE arts & news magazine • JULY 2012 • 25