Every morning I get out early to take care of Star and Vanilla. Soaked beet pulp and grain is fed to Vanilla and Timothy pellets with a wisp of grain to Star with a few apples or carrots and some whole peanuts… (She likes them and there is no sugar.) I like the peanuts too!…
I walked down the long hallway. It was freezing, and it smelled bad. It was the way to the outhouse in the first school I ever went to up in Maine. We lived as far north as you could go before coming to the mountainous forests between Maine and Canada and our town was tiny….
This batik was created starting with a black piece of fabric and after drawing on lines of wax from the tjanting and brush painted areas to save the black. It went through discharge dyeing and many more dyebaths to achieve the soft earth tones. This batik shows an open landscape with patterns from the tjanting…
I finished my batik, Morning Light on the Night Shadows, last August after Matthew Rogowicz from WMHT was here to do a video of me working on my batik art. This batik shows a playful frolicking horse galloping in the field and I like to think of the hills behind my house and the way the…
My dad’s words came to me quickly after I slid down an embankment late this fall and managed to catch myself on a thin fence wire which wrenched my collar bone, shoulder, back and neck. It was a thin and sharp jolt, and as I climbed down the embankment to the ground, my dad’s words…
Vanilla at sunset a few years back…. How strong he was…. He remained strong until after my cow, Steppin Up, his good friend passed. Strong and showing off when Star, My pretty pony mare arrived and very cantankerous, but then last winter he was sick and cold and I added a blanket to help him…
Back in the day, I did a batik demo at Bedlam Farm at their Fall Open House. People often ask me if I give classes, and I usually groan and say no, please, go to my website and look at my tutorials. I have so much on there. Maybe I have too much information and…
In my studio, I work with three different types of wax: Beeswax, which is soft and does not crackle; paraffin, a harder wax that, used alone, can crackle too much, to the extent that your image can be lost; and also soy wax, which I buy in bags of flaked wax. This is the softest…
Many people ask me where my inspiration comes, and how do I plan my designs for my batik artwork. I have two different ways of approaching a batik. Some of my batiks are done mostly with the tjanting tool, which is a brass or copper bowl with a spout. The tjanting is a very ancient…
The batik is finally finished, covered with wax, and now it’s time to remove it and reveal the bright colors underneath. There are several ways to do this. Some artists, especially in Indonesia, boil the wax out of the fabric. This has the advantage of having the wax rise to the top, and when it…