Lisa Kattenbraker
This body of work is about the conversations I've had with the bits and pieces of our existence 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 have 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.
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, to represent a human experience beyond the constraints of physicality. Silver thread and bits and pieces of other batiks are sewn on and added to the fabric to finish.
"We are searching for ourselves in each other"
(Sergei Parajanov)
Working with the medium of batik, I create emotive visual stories, drawing from the traditional process of batiking patterns and combining those patterns with more contemporary images -figures that are usually faceless- allowing the viewer to bring his or her own emotional moment to the experience.
Art has always been about connection and communication in my life~ we live within our internal worlds where thoughts, emotions, experiences, sounds, and stories all blend together by way of their own unique recipe. I bring these images out of my own self with the hopes that they make some sense on the outside, and with the larger hope that they spark a familiarity in someone else as well. The figures in my pieces are black stick figures- they are a combination of all the colors in the piece and in the color spectrum- as an inclusive way of portraying humans in general, and without facial features I present them as an invitation and a challenge for us all to see ourselves in one another. The pieces/stories/scenes are there as a backdrop to any person's life. Our experiences, thoughts, and feelings connect us in a way that extends beyond our physicality. The pieces I create are momentary versions of my experience of happiness, sorrow, excitement, confusion, comfort, loneliness, love, and a myriad of things combined together in nostalgic memory. When a piece resonates with someone because of the colors, patterns, or movement, and ignites an emotional response, that is the deeper connection that I am striving for. I use different patterns and symbols which hold meaning as a way to continue the non-verbal communication. When I put these things into cloth, I am changing the fabric with story, I am both exclaiming and asking: Do you recognize this in yourself? And when the answer is yes, we feel so much less alone. Because after all, we are all just walking each other home. (Ram Dass) Some pieces also serve to raise awareness and funds for specific causes.
Lisa Telling Kattenbraker
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, to represent a human experience beyond the constraints of physicality. Silver thread and bits and pieces of other batiks are sewn on and added to the fabric to finish.
"We are searching for ourselves in each other"
(Sergei Parajanov)
Art has always been about connection and communication in my life~ we live within our internal worlds where thoughts, emotions, experiences, sounds, and stories all blend together by way of their own unique recipe. I bring these images out of my own self with the hopes that they make some sense on the outside, and with the larger hope that they spark a familiarity in someone else as well. The figures in my pieces are black stick figures- they are a combination of all the colors in the piece and in the color spectrum- as an inclusive way of portraying humans in general, and without facial features I present them as an invitation and a challenge for us all to see ourselves in one another. The pieces/stories/scenes are there as a backdrop to any person's life. Our experiences, thoughts, and feelings connect us in a way that extends beyond our physicality. The pieces I create are momentary versions of my experience of happiness, sorrow, excitement, confusion, comfort, loneliness, love, and a myriad of things combined together in nostalgic memory. When a piece resonates with someone because of the colors, patterns, or movement, and ignites an emotional response, that is the deeper connection that I am striving for. I use different patterns and symbols which hold meaning as a way to continue the non-verbal communication. When I put these things into cloth, I am changing the fabric with story, I am both exclaiming and asking: Do you recognize this in yourself? And when the answer is yes, we feel so much less alone. Because after all, we are all just walking each other home. (Ram Dass) Some pieces also serve to raise awareness and funds for specific causes.
Lisa Telling Kattenbraker
