Batik Training

Here are all the participants of a three-day batik workshop that I led at Sabolamby Unayon Samity in Netrakona, Bangladesh (minus the photographer, Gloria Shin, plus an interloper.) In spite of a few unforseen circumstances a lot was learned by all (myself included). We had a few mishaps, lots of tea, and a lot of laughter. For Gloria and myself it was a breath of fresh air to get out of Dhaka and see fireflys, hear birds other than crows and enjoy the rural countryside.







Working together on a new design.








Toru testing out natural dyes with batik.







Creating test swatches









All of the water hand-pumped.







Washing out the wax and giving the pieces a final rinse.






At the pump.







Soaking in the dye vat.







The creators with their creations. Beautiful work!






Poly and Toru display their collaborative work. Amazing yellow with flowers.







Poly displaying her tchap-batiked silk scarf.







Rupon, not sure whether or not he wants to boil the wax out.







Sadia, Abir (my co-designer, MCC colleague), and Anita displaying their craftsmanship.







Gloria Shin records forever the "Fuska" piece. This is before the wax is boiled out.







Drying off the dye before adding another layer of wax.







Beautiful work Sadia! Especially for your first piece (in this workshop that is).







Spider web.







Cyan doodlin'








What's not to love in these beautiful pieces?

Rice Planting

The beginnings of a new rice crop. Each individual sproutlet pushed one after the other by hand into verdant, striped patches of land.








Patchwork fields. I think the lush green carpet is a mass of sproutlets waiting to be industriously hand-placed in an empty field. My back is beginning to ache just thinking of the labor involved. I think that in the future I will appreciate every handful of rice that enters my mouth just a little bit more than I have before.

Shapla: The National Flower of Bangladesh

I guess I'll just let these beauties speak for themselves. Sorry Dave and Nate your lily pics didn't make it to my blog. These lilies were found at a lake in Srimongal. Needless to say, the lilies were much nicer to look at than to doggy paddle among.

Srimongal Flora and Fauna

What can I say? This was absolutely exquisite in real life. The photo does no justice.





I took a walk with Pruitt and Annika to find the sunset. We never saw the sun, but the sunless evening sky was nice enough. The "fog" was actually smoke from fires burning on the hillside.







These leaves were mammoth and so very nice and crunchy.







This tree with its strange seedpods was odd and somehow strangely poetic. "I think that I shall never see . . ."









Look what Dave found. The underside of this baby is where the beauty lies. The top is just plain jane black.

Containment and Sustenance

Chanachur mixed with muri, shallots, tomatoes, mustard oil and other mysteries. I would say that this is the national snack of Bangladesh followed closely by fuschca and chatpoti.







The best looking chicken cage I have ever seen. The blue wall definitely completes the picture.







Jackfruit is the national fruit of Bangladesh. These are the seeds found inside of the jackfruit. They are being dried for consumption in a savory dish of some sort. I have never eaten said dish. Personally I hope it is better than jackfruit. Imagine trying to eat a fat little eel that is sickeningly sweet and every time you try to chew on it, it starts to go down your throat.








Drying in the basket.








Baskets make the best shadows.

7-Layer Tea

On our way to the train station in Srimongal we stopped for 7 layer tea. It was a whopping ten Taka per layer which brought the price of each cup up to about one USD. What I want to know is how many layers you see. Sometimes when I look at it I see eleven and sometimes six. Needless to say the top layer tasted like dirty dishwater but the penultimate amber layer was an exquisite blend of cane syrup, ginger root, and Srimongalese tea dust infusion. (black tea, ginger and sugar basically) You pay thaaaat much for a cup of tea and you want it to at least sound exquisite. For you Americans who pay over three bucks for your Starbucks: This is Bangladesh's answer to Starbucks, they just don't have oversized disposable cups yet. By the way, a normal cup of tea costs about 5 Taka.







I dig this sign out in front of the tea stall. Unfortunately I do not dig the vehicle mirror sticking its ugliness into the picture plane. Above, the words "FIVE COLOUR TEA" the transliteration says, "Pach color cha". Why didn't they use the Bangla word "rong" for color? It doesn't flow out of the mouth. I have been told and have found it to be true that if an English word "sounds" better people will stick it in there. I mean it sounds better poetically, rhythmically, causing it to flow. Of course throwing in foreign words into your spoken language is proof of "sophistication and education". Think of how it sounds when people throw French words into their American English, it really jazzes it up.

Bambeautiful

This little close-up is a portion of a tribal bamboo ladder that I discovered in Srimongal. I think it would make a perfect jewelry display for a fair-trade showroom.







This is not bamboo. I think it is a sisal tree. They make rope from the fiber although I like it just fine as a tree though with those droopy, floppy, thornesque outcroppings and a perfect yellow-green.







"Dad, what can I do?" "Son, why don't you find a knife and cut bamboo into strips and make a multi-layered grid?"







Gloria pointed out this color scheme on the bamboo that changes from section to section. Each ascending section got brighter and brighter.







Bamboo leaves.

Colleagues in Bangladesh

Marita and I in our little mud hut. (okay its not really ours)






Lena Yual







Phil Burkey







Jodi Crossgrove







Dave Franz







Jodi and Dave chillin'







Gayle Alderfer-Fisher, Phil and Dave







Sarah Wheaton






Nathan Charles

Little Vignettes That Grabbed Me

I have the "thirds" grid set up on my camera . . . can you tell? The red with the complementary background was striking. I was fascinated with the scarring of the post in the middle of the "red".







Stalag 17, The Great Escape, Chicken Run and Prison Break . . . all so very thrilling

Barbed wire also makes me think of when I was a kid. If we really waxed our sleds we could sail right into the neighbors' field . . . under the barbed wire . . . hopefully.

Somehow it also makes me think of a crown of thorns . . . sarcastic honor!







I found this net hanging in a tree. I once tried to buy a net from a fisherman in Gopalgonj but he wouldn't part with it. They had become friends. The way the light falls on this particular net was beautiful . . . though not particularly useful. I guess most of its most valuable work is done in the obscure underrealm of the river. Wow . . . did you notice those shadows?







Rickshaws are hard not to love. Just looking at their primary colors and unpretentioius, flambouyant "shajano" is enough to make me happy that they are all around me. Living in Dhaka and traveling frequently to Mymensingh I see my fair share. In Mymensingh they are almost all primarily blue (like this one). in Dhaka they run the gamut, I just returned from Bogra where I saw a few pink ones. I am working at decorating my sons' room with a rickshaw theme. I'll post the pics in the future.







This is the mud wall in a tribal village that we visited. Nature has a funny way of making the most interesting and beautiful vignettes out of decay and neglect. Did you ever notice how beautiful rust is? Rotting banana peels? Burnt desks (ha). . . see earlier post.











These blues at the pool are crazy. Perfect for a monochromatic color scheme. The shapes also add an otherworldly feel to the blues.







Water spots on the poolside. I love grids and this was to great to pass up.







Sunset on the bottom ten inches of my cottage wall at the Heed Guest House in Srimongal. Its curious what you see if you look.







This was a dark signboard alongside the trail on our hiking adventure in Srimongal. I love the Bangla script and wanted to abstract it with some green and blue . . . so I did. Here is my Photoshop rendition.