Between the Threads: Batik as Character, Cosmos, and Creation

As a student it is common to seek a well-known masters to teach about a medium. Perhaps it is not so common to consider the medium itself as the maestro. How is it that a medium can teach one? There is a concept in many indigenous cultures that the ancestors speak through a medium. This is not talking about a kind of robotic repetition of some traditional art form, but it is talking about a link to the intangible realm that allows for certain representations to be continued as a methodology of cultural regeneration and certain energies that can only manifest themselves if the creator of the art form has found an inner balance. Certain forms as we find in the Indonesian heritage creative process of Tribawana, which teaches us that we dwell in three realms which are the microcosmos or the self, the macrocosmos or the universe which gives us life, and the source of creativity which creates life. When these realms are synchronized, we have the capability to become a vessel to channel energies. So, adjustments are made through teachings found within the medium to help us find a way to a synchronization of these realms.