Lisa Kattenbraker

I am an artist working with the medium of batik. I work on cotton fabric, using traditional batik methods and tools, combined with experimental approaches to create contemporary american batik. I use tjanting tools and brushes to apply variations of hot wax to the fabric, there are often times over 100 tedious hours of wax application in each piece. The pieces are hand dyed and submersion dyed in fiber-reactive and natural dyes 20-30 times per piece. The wax is removed multiple times during the process. The finished pieces are mounted on museum quality foam board and floated in black frames with UV protected glass. .
My life looks a little like this: I have a fantastic artist husband and amazing children. We live in Olympia, WA after moving quite a few times. Our kids encourage us to bring snacks and to remember that this is all a great adventure…even when the cat poops in the car and our house decides that the time has come to shift off its posts. We do a lot of drawing in our little family unit… I adore my children so much (and believe them to possess the utmost artistic talent) and they are graciously sharing their drawings. I put them in my own picture drawings. They make me smile. Quite possibly, they are my home.
The process of batik is, in many ways, a contrast to my daily life. It's slow going, its meditative. I'm drawn to that process part of it...the journey. I still use the electric frying pan that was given to me over 15 years ago by a high school art teacher. I still use some of my first brushes and tjanting tools. The process and the tools hold history, and time stops while i'm in the midst of it.