Blogging a world of batik

By definition, Thomas J. Watson Fellows travel the world. Wheaton students who have won this prestigious award (eight in the past 9 years) have spent time in nearly every corner of the globe. Independent world travel and study is the point of the award. 

Current Watson Fellow Rushyan Yen '08 is  criss-crossing the world to observe and work alongside batik artists in Europe and Asia to study how they transform the influences of culture and community into their own unique designs. And she is writing about the experience as it happens. 

The studio art major is documenting her trip on the blog, Paths of Molten Wax on Volatile Cloth. Her online diary offers a stream of impressions: images of the batiks she creates and how each country is influencing her work, thumbnail descriptions of the artists with whom she has studied and comments about living and creating art "on the road."

Most recently, Yen posted a string of articles about her experiences in The Gambia, an undeveloped country with very few modern amenities. The articles recount some of what she learned about the economy and culture in which the country's artists work, as well as the struggles of learning how to create batik without the tools and resources to which she is accustomed. 

In particular, she paid tribute to the artist with whom she worked: 

Buba Drammeh, took his role as my teacher very seriously and was adamant that there is only one way of producing a batik – his way. My sense of superiority made it difficult to take him seriously and I couldn't help but see how crude and "inferior"  his technique was to the others I have seen. These feeling quickly changed to amazement and admiration the day I tried to create my own batik.  After wasting an hour and an entire box of matches trying to melt my wax, lugging gallons of water over from the water pump half a mile away, working on a completely uneven table and standing under the hot sun, I am humbled by Buba's skill compared to my own incompetence.

Yen's yearlong study of batik artistry and the ways in which artists' practices are influenced by culture is not her first experience in working and learning abroad. As one of Wheaton's International Davis  Fellows, Yen worked in Beijing at the Art and Design Research Center for the 2008 Olympic Games (and she attended the games' opening ceremonies). The center was responsible for communicating the Olympic theme "One World, One Dream" through art.  

The 2008 Wheaton alumna, who graduated magna cum laude with a major in studio art, plans to continue her work and study in western Africa throughout July before returning home, and her blog will offer more impressions of an incredible trip in the weeks ahead. She has said that that her long-term goal is a career in art. "As long as my hands and my mind are engaged in the process of creation, I will be living my life goals," she said. 

 The Thomas J. Watson Foundation was created in 1961 as a charitable trust by Mrs. Thomas J. Watson, Sr., in honor of her late husband, the founder of International Business Machines Corp., widely known as IBM. The Watson Fellowship was established seven years later and has granted fellowships to more than 2,300 undergraduates, with stipends totaling more than $29 million.