Auction Commission: Happy Accidents

I always tell those I teach that there are no Mistakes in batik, just Happy Accidents. Otherwise you will just go insane with all the imperfections. It is not a perfect medium. Batik has taught me to apply this mantra to other things I do, such as silkscreening shirts.

Every October, a cavalcade of friends travel to Dewey Beach, Delaware for the annual Greyhound gathering. We all stay in a house mere blocks from the ocean, usually more dogs than people crowding the couches. I always bring a craft project for my housemates, and one year I made silkscreens for shirts, and have every year since.

At some point I started designing themed images... The Dewey Bunch (Brady Bunch), the Bad News Hounds, and last year, MASH.

As we settled down to screen our shirts, with the wine flowing freely, eventually somebody drops a blob of paint on their shirt. My mantra has taught me to make something of that blob. They became bullet holes and hand grenades. Then my friends starting putting blobs on their shirts on purpose! Truely it became a Happy Accident!

Anyways, I have found that batiking a black dog is extremely difficult. Black cannot be... well, just black. You have to infuse color into black in order to develop tone and shape, so I chose purple. However, I didn't realize how purple my purple was and my layers of black on top of it are now tinged with the color. This can go two ways; it will wash out a bit in my final boil, or it will become yet another Happy Accident.

I have also never used hatching in a batik before. Now that I have been using my Ukranian Easter egg tjanting tool, I can get those fine lines that hatching requires. But never having done this before has made me uncertain and question my sanity. Then I remember my mantra, and move on.

I am getting to the final phase of the batik, the final dye bath. There is so much wax on it now that the image looks extremely dark. Removing the wax after the bath will be like opening a present on Christmas. Will it be an iPad... or socks?! You can never count on what you will get, but you can always make something of it. Again and forever my mantra... Happy Accidents!