Kjersten's photo on the NYT website

A few weeks ago I submitted a few photos from my time in Kuala Lumpur to the New York times for a project they are working on about living in high-rises. Last week I got a nice note back from an editor saying my pictures were exactly what they were looking for. Cool!

Check out the submissions page. One of my pictures is an example! (You can't see it from a mobile device). Can you tell which one is mine?

(For anyone who doesn't know me personally, it's the one with the mom and her kid with the sun streaming in behind them).

Magic in the air

My life is in complete flux right now. Change is afoot. Things will soon never be the same.
I feel magic in the air.
Firefly art: a collage I made in the last few weeks of living in Malaysia
Today is my last full day in Malaysia.

There are so many words I could write about it all, about the changes, about the experience, about what's to come, even about just the last few weeks or last few adventures. Heck, I never even mentioned on my blog that I went to Laos!

But for now, I'm just enjoying the last few moments here in this city I've grown to love. Saying good-bye to a few lovely people. Oh, and taking care of all the stuff that one takes care of when one moves (uffda).

What a strange, surprising, turn of life this whole experience has been.

I'll miss this place. But I look forward to going home.
But first...
 *she smiles*
....I have two weeks of adventures that await during the in-between time.

Yay for adventure.

I'm off for Hong Kong tomorrow.

More crafty fun: Batik

So, like I've been saying, my sister is crafty -- like me.
 
So I had to take her to the nearby KL Craft Complex to try Batik while she was visiting KL.
We also took my son, Oscar, who loves art projects lately.
Painting with Mommy and Auntie Kelli was a big treat (he made 4 batiks!).
I made a tree of life with a labyrinth in it.



 
The craft complex had a new offering too -- they sewed our batiks into pillows for just a few dollars more.
 I added the ribbon and button onto mine. 
Happiness is making crafty projects with my sister and son.
(Unless maybe those projects involve bike trickshaws...)

Kite Maker or Collage Artist?

Last week my family took a short trip north to an area of Malaysia called Kelantan.
Many artists around one of the main cities of Kelantan, Kota Bharu, are especially known for practicing several traditional Malaysian handicrafts. The painting above and detail of it below, done by a Malaysian artist named Yusoff Abdullah, hung in the airport at Kota Bharu. The painting depicts many of the local handicraft traditions*.
One of my favorites of these traditions is known as Wau, or kite making.
Kite makers use large wooden frames that they bend out of thin sticks:
And the patterns on most traditional kites are intricately cut out of colorful papers and layered over one another.
Here's an artist at work cutting a pattern using an exacto blade on a folded sheet of foil.
I watched him use a blade sharpener. It made me pause because most paper artists I know back home throw out their blades rather than sharpening them. (I personally most often use a scissors, FYI).
Here's a close detail to give you an idea of the layers of paper. Every color below is a different colored paper, glued on top of one another.
Inspiring!



* The signature here is from the painting at the top of this post. I mentioned that the artist's name was Yusoff Abdullah, a Malaysian artist who I could find little information on, which is why the uncertainty and the lack of links. Please accept my sincere apologies if I've given credit wrong! Also, please correct me, if someone out there knows better, I'd prefer to properly give credit and links if they exist.

Trying Batik

 I finally tried Batik!
 I went to the craft complex near my condo with some out of town guests and we spent "Craft Friday," the day after Thanksgiving, trying our hands at one of SE Asia's favorite art forms.
 The basics: you draw an image with wax, paint over it, and then melt the wax to allow the cloth below to stand out.
 Actually we drew with pencil first, onto silk, then drew with wax.
 Although the women operating the batik booth at the craft complex were willing to do the wax part for us, I tried my hand at it with the Labyrinth I made. It was really fun, even if my hand was a bit shaky and inexperienced with the wax tool. On my second piece I decided to let the ladies help since my second piece was pretty detailed (plus those ladies were so fun to watch!).
 I used part of one of my drawings from last month, the train engine, since I thought it might something I could hang on my son's wall (he loves trains).
 I had so much fun!
 I realized too, that I'm not really as slow as I always say I am at working -- it's just my usual medium, collage, is slow. I was lightning fast at Batik (I made two pieces while everyone else made one and I probably could have made a third).
 If I were a painter, I think I'd be faster. I realize that collage just takes longer. I'm okay with that. It's the medium I dream in, it's close to my heart and it's what I know best. So be it if I'm slower than I'd be in another medium (And I'm still working at making it faster).
 I should have handled the train engineer differently in Batik to make the white outlines work better, I think the engine looked better before the wax was melted. All in all it was a fun experiment, though.
I'm definitely going to try to learn more about Batik while I'm in Malaysia. I think I'll take a more in-depth class sometime in the next few months. I'm thinking it would be cool to use some batik techniques on paper for my collages. At the very least it would be a fun take-home from my two years in Malaysia.

A new point of view

So here I am, typing at my computer in my new studio in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I'm not on the 13th and a half floor as previously promised in a blog post. We opted instead to live closer to my husband's office so his commute would be walkable.

So I'm on the 18th floor of a different building in the heart of Kuala Lumpur's financial district. These photos are of the view I have from my new studio and living room. The first photo is of the iconic Petronis towers and KL tower. The second is of the adjacent park and Mosque.

I wonder what this new point of view will do for my art?

I look forward to finding out.