My Last Day in Bali... Thailand Here I Come!!

        What a bitter sweet day it has been. I have packed almost everything up, shipped my tube of work home, and I leave this morning for Koh Phangan island off the coast of Thailand. What a month it has been! Looking back, the most amazing thing about the whole month was having the freedom to do my art day in and day out. What a blessing! My soul feels energized and renewed... There is something about the process of creation that feeds a part of me that nothing else can even touch. It's like adding logs to a fire, the more you add, the brighter it gets. I feel like I am burning bright!
       Bali has been a beautiful place to be and has also been an interesting eye opener for me. While here, I have  realized, surprisingly, that there are actually some wonderful things about my country that I had taken for granted. I wont miss the everlasting smell of burning plastic from the neighbors house nor the massage therapists that text while they work but I will miss the beauty that is overflowing here. Everywhere you turn there is another vista, an ornate temple, or an absolutely adorable little Balinese child the giggles with her brother at the tall blond as she says "Hello". It has been quite the oasis here at Bali Purnati. I have gotten used to this luxurious lifestyle and it will certainly be hard to leave. I am off to another paradise....

Photographs of the Holy

Yesterday we went to see the holy volcanoes and did a tour of the top temples of Bali. It was so beautiful I took almost 300 photos!! Here is a selection of some of the best....

 There was a huge line of people waiting to bathe 

in the holy water at the Pura Tirtha Empul

 

Finding Balance

Over the last 22 days, a lot of this culture has permeated my being. One of the greatest things that has touched me is their recognition of both darkness and light. They believe that there would be no “white” magic if black magic didn’t exist, and visa-versa. Their ceremonies all seem to not only include both light and dark, but fully embrace it as an important part of life. This has been amazing for me to witness because I used to not even acknowledge darkness. In my mind, light was the only way to peace and love, and people who recognized the importance of darkness or heaven forbid, embraced darkness with open arms, were the problem. But it was upon me truly respecting the darkness and realizing that their needs to be a balance that my true path as an artist began.

           I once had an astrologer tell me I needed to do some “dark art”. At first I thought she was crazy, but I know now why. It is in the moment when my feet first dance and the beautifully dark charcoal disrupts the white of the page, that I wholeheartedly embrace the Balinese mindset. The paper would just be a sheet of paper if I hadn’t combined it with the dark as night charcoal. It is in the balance and the contrast between the white page, the black charcoal and the middle tones of gray that breath life into each piece. 

 3 DRAWINGS IN STAGES

 

 

We went textile crazy!

        Phew, what a day! We left at 8:00am got back at 7:30pm and must have stopped at 6 different villages throughout the day. Our mission was textiles and boy did we see some textiles. We were lucky enough to go to a few ikat weaving factories and see it all being done. It was amazing to see how much work was going into ikat fabrics. The steps seem endless but the result is so beautiful.The hills were something to behold with the striations of rice fields right down to the sea. Another lovely day...

 

Shadow Dance

       

As I danced today I noticed how my dance has changed. Today it was a rhythmic and dynamic mix. As I watched the video afterward, I noticed the variety in my step that I hadn't noticed before. As the days go by here, I feel as though I am settling into my body, grounded by my daily ritual of dance. It's as if each footprint on the page is grounding me, and in that grounding I am freed. I am being swept up in a whirlwind of creative flow and my spirit is thanking me. 

 

Oh the beautiful music...

I am finally feeling settled in this sweet little spot in Paradise. I went away a few days ago for a night and I must say it felt like I was home when I arrived back. The days have been hot and lazy, not the best conditions for getting a lot done, but lovely for slowing me down.

            A few nights ago we went to a Kecak performance in Ubud.  Kecak is a very unique and beautiful form of traditional Balinese singing. Men almost solely perform this type of singing, but we were lucky enough to see one of the first groups of women on the island. It was amazing! I could have sat and listened to them forever. Just imagine, it was night and we were all sitting underneath an ancient Banyan tree in a space almost resembling an amphitheater. The performance began with a group of women coming down the steps in front of us chanting “chek, chek, chek-a-chek, chek” and holding torches. They formed a large circle with three rows around about eight flaming torches that were in the center. There must have been at least 50 women, all singing a percussive and chaotic rhythm that was complemented by a small group of them singing a more melodic chant. Every so often they would change the beat or the beat would stop all together and they would all sing in harmony.

In the center of the circle there was a theatrical dance with amazing traditional costumes, but honestly I hardly noticed it because I was so taken by the women singing. I sat there enchanted by their voices and sheer beauty of the moment: A circle of women glowing in the torchlight. After the performance we were all trying to describe what it was that was so incredible about the performance. The word we came up with was “raw”. I felt like I had stepped back in time and was witnessing some tribal ceremony, primal and full of life. But the crazy thing is I hadn’t stepped back in time at all, this is the present here on this small island. That type of ceremony is not some far off thing that humans used to do once; here it is their lives. It’s constant and a gift to have the chance to be a part of it, if just for a moment….

           

Ceremony for Abundance: Barong Dance

          A few days ago we were invited by the driver that works for Bali Purnati, Wayan,  to an all night ceremony in his village about 45 minutes from here. What a gift it was. He first took us to his family compound where we met his two brothers who are both painters, and we were able to see how the Balinese compounds are arranged. When you first walk in, there is a stone statue of Ganesh, the protector, with his own little altar area. As I walked in further, the beauty of the compound struck me immediately. This family is not super well off, but there place still has intricately carved doors, and the edges f the roofs are carved into beautiful intricate designs and figures. In a Balinese family compound, there is always the family temple in the center, where they do all the family prayer and ceremonies. They have a daily ceremony in the morning and others throughout the year. Then all the buildings are carefully placed in the different directions, and the separate parts of the family live in the corresponding direction. Wayan’s entire family lived there including his father, his three brother’s and their wives, and all his little nieces and nephews. It was really an honor to be invited into his home.    

            We then went to his village’s temple where there was the third day of a four-day ceremony for abundance happening. We got there around 9pm and had to wait at least 45 minutes before the dance began. It was pretty funny how the Balinese children were reacting to us blond hair green eyed foreigners. They would all just start hysterically laughing at us if we went near them. But it wasn’t just the children that found us so amusing, even teenagers and adults would point and giggle. We were the only six westerners in a crowd of a few hundred Balinese, so needless to say we stood out.

             The ceremony began with the traditional Barong dance, which was amazing to watch. I had never seen anything like it. They had these intricately carved masks that had a cloth body attached to it so that two dancers could fit inside. The way they moved brought the beasts alive! Here is a video….

 Barong Dance

 Audience at the Ceremony

 A book I have been working on...

 The dynamic sky from Nusa Lembongan

 It's PINK!

 Detail

 Combining my love affair with color and drawing

 Detail of the most recent works

Another detail

Monkey forest and latest work....

    A few days ago, we went into Ubud to the monkey forest. I had never seen wild monkeys before so it was quite a trip. They were so cute, but extremely unpredictable, which made me quite on edge the whole time I was there. At one point, Henriette, one of the artists here at Bali Purnati, was taking a picture of a monkey and it leaped onto her head! At another point, we were standing under a tree and realized a monkey was peeing on us! and last but not least, poor Henriette got attacked again by another monkey that was trying to get into her bag.... It was so aggressive it ripped the outside pocket right off! The monkeys were fun to see and the forest they were in was beautiful, but I must say I was happy when it was over!

 

 

 

 

Dancing in Paradise- A Video

 

The internet here was finally kind enough to let me upload this video. Hope you enjoy!

A Procession to the Sea

It is so lovely to be in a society where reverence and ceremony are an everyday occurrence. It is just a part of their lives here. I have been struck by how they don’t take ceremony too seriously either. For example, we went to the second phase of a cremation ceremony a couple of days ago, and even during the procession (that was from 4am until 9am) they were laughing, splashing each other with the rain that was flooding the streets, and smoking cigarettes. That might sound out of place, it seemed to me at first, but as I was watching it, I realized how refreshing it was. It was a cremation ceremony, but it was also a celebration and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, even at the end of a five hour walk with huge heavy towers on their shoulders and flip-flops on.

            This cremation, and most as I gather, was for about a hundred people from a particular village. This town hadn’t had a cremation for five years, and the bones have been waiting in the ground until twelve days earlier, where they burned the bodies. This procession was the part of the ceremony where they bring the ashes to the sea. In my previous post there is a picture of the women carrying the ashes on their heads. Each village, no matter how far they are from the ocean, process down to the sea with the ashes of their loved ones. The amount of talent and time that went into the towers were astounding. They were so intricately decorated and finely crafted. Apparently you learn at a young age how to make the animals that are on the tower, and each village has it’s own special animals that they use.

            The beauty here is slowly seeping into me. I have realized that the lines and shapes of the environment have started to show up in my work without me even realizing it at first. It is exciting to have such different shapes and textures informing my drawings. It’s as if I am taking it all in, filtering out what moves me the most, then my hand acts as the record keeper moving to a new beat. Moving to the beat of this tropical paradise.

Cremation Ceremony and Work from Today