Maggie Baxter Chaos Theory

Serendipity (n) 'The faculty of making desirable but unthought of discoveries'.[1]

The adventure began, obtusely, in 1989. Or maybe it was much earlier, when embroidered mirrored dresses from somewhere in the sub continent arrived in fashionable London boutiques, along the way acquiring price tags way out of reach for my meagre teenage salary. I hungered after one, and the pangs were never truly satisfied.

But, in 1989, I made a conscious decision that I wanted to work with Asian textiles, and to take those traditional, archaic processes into a contemporary idiom. How and why that thought came into my head, I can no longer recall, except that I know that I had read and been inspired by a big, glossy book about Asian textiles. The illustrations were magic.

I had majored in sculpture at art college, but took a sideways shift to textiles through performance art, and investigations into body and cloth as sculptural forms. The clothing was highly experimental (sub text: very few people had the courage to wear it).[2] Without anticipating the later significance, I began to make clothing simply by wrapping pieces of fabric around the body; then sometimes pinning, tying, and stitching. Eventually I did discover the rudiments of pattern cutting, clothing manufacture, and commercial screen printing. Nevertheless, when I made that crucial 1989 decision, I did not have any skills in, or significant knowledge of, block printing, weaving, or embroidery techniques.

Luckily, total ignorance can be very liberating. If you don’t know the rules, neither can you be frightened or over whelmed by them. Plus, some of the best things in my life have come without due planning or aforethought.

The decision to go to India, rather than Indonesia or Malaysia[3], when it came was, ostensibly, a commercial one, to look at the possibility of small scale manufacture for bed linen and table linen.[4]

The next bit really is true, I promise! The day after that decision was made, I met, in Australia, an Indian designer called Kirit Dave—now my close friend, mentor, and collaborator.

He said: 'You should come to Kutch'

I said. 'Why, what on earth for, where is it anyway?'

He is very persuasive. I went.

Ignorance may have been bliss for me, but I doubt if it has been for the karigars who have made my ideas, and designs into a reality. Without Kirit to translate, explain, and encourage, the work quite simply would not get done.

In the eleven years that I have been going to Kutch, I have worked with embroidery, block printing, and to a very small extent, weaving. My involvement with embroidery, through the Shrujan Trust, has been more as a writer and curator. As an artist, my main area of interest is block printing, and that will be the focus of this essay.

While the iconography of Indian textiles most recognisable to an western audience might be said to be the curvilinear and flowing designs of botehs, floral clusters, scrolls, and metrically arranged floral heads, strong geometric patterns have been produced in Gujarat for centuries. Stripes, zig zags, spirals, and circles were, and still are, integral to the design ethos of western India. It was those simple, universal markings to which I was first drawn.

Although, both in Western Australia and in India, I am often referred to as a textile artist or designer, as much as possible, I refute such rigid classification. The ideas that I work on – which may well be expressed through textiles – are thematic rather than materials based.

There is no difference for me between drawing on paper, and printing on textiles, because what interests me most are the qualities inherent in mark making, whether it is with pencil, pastel, paint, dye, or stitch. Discovering the core essence of an object or entity, and expressing this directly and minimally, is one of the possibilities that most inspires me.

Reduction, transformation, and serendipity equally govern my methodology. Drawing is essential, not only as a prelude to designing a block, but just as often as a sequel, when the block design is re-cycled into another kind of work on paper. I deliberately set up situations with drawing where I cannot predict entirely what will happen. It might start conventionally enough with a study of, for example, water or a piece of fabric from somewhere, but then it will evolve through a series of several stages; blown up on a photocopier, traced over, re-photocopied, having masking tape applied, cut, ripped, re-assembled, re-traced, and so on. Each part of this process brings it’s own surprises and it’s own particular sensibility. In the end, where lines are made is a matter of intuition, governed by the result of the previous stage.

My greatest influences come from the Minimalism and grid forms of artists such as Agnes Martin, and Eva Hesse; the assertive pen and brush movements in calligraphy; the form and structure of clothes by Issey Miyake, and Romeo Gigli. When I look back through my visual diaries over the years I have been going to Kutch, I see other, more fleeting enthusiasms such as African body markings, & the geometry of cut diamonds. But the most enduring inspirations come from other textile techniques & water. I have drawn and re-created constantly from Japanese shibori, Indian bandhini, leheria, & ikat, from woven stripes, lattices, and structures. At times these textile drawings have connected and combined with other drawings about water. There is, for example, a similar quality to ikat in the reflections in still water at night.[5]

The 2002 collection of textiles was based on Rajasthani leheria, and to a lesser extent on Japanese shibori. The intent was not to reproduce leharia in block print, (what would be the point?), but to capture the unpredictable and irrational movement that occurs naturally when the layers of semi transparent cloth, folded, rolled, tied, and dyed on the cross reveal pattern upon pattern, wave upon wave or, as in mothara, minute checks twisting this way and that. The shibori influences were re-cycled from a 1990 collection of drawings.

There has always been a hint of patriotism too. I love the vastness of Australia; the irrelevance of perspective; the flat earth; the ocean and rivers of Perth, and try somehow to meld these as abstract concepts into my work. When I first arrived in Australia from the U.K., I was entranced by the enormity of the space around me, and understood this to be a liberating mental quality as much as a physical attribute.

The first blocks that I designed in 1991, developed from a series of drawings about water. True to the method out lined above, the long standing favourite of that series called ‘Tokioki’, was the result of a torn paper collage. The design looks simple but involved a complex diagonal repeat that evokes the arbitrary movement of water. Now that I know more about block printing, I probably would not attempt such a thing again! This block was lost in the in the 2000 earthquake, but will certainly be re-cut. I like to recycle and I haven’t finished with it yet..

But in the end designing for blocks cannot be all rip, tear, & de-construction. There are parameters that have to be acknowledged. They have to be a manageable size; 8 inches or 20 cm. Is about the longest any side of a block can be. The size of the internal markings is also important, and each printing technique will change the way a block looks on fabric. Blocks that look wonderful in one technique may not work well at all in others; serendipity & transformation again.

I will digress here to briefly explain the block printing processes used in Kutch.

Direct block printing is just that. The block is dipped into dye and printed directly onto the fabric.

For resist block printing, the block is dipped into a dye resist paste usually made from tamarind seed paste and lime. The fabric is then dyed and the resist paste removed to reveal the undyed fabric underneath. Complex patterns can be made with both direct and resist block printing using different blocks to build up layers of images and colour. Either chemical or vegetable dyes can be used for these techniques.

Discharge block printing is a chemical process. The fabric is dyed with one colour, and printed with another. The fabric is rolled and steamed, which creates a chemical reaction causing the original dye to disperse under the block print. The end result is that the block print is one colour and the fabric that hasn’t been printed is another. More than one colour at a time can be printed onto the fabric. This is a very temperamental technique that can only be done in the right climatic conditions. The humidity of monsoon halts production.

Batik block printing is a wax resist technique. The block is dipped into wax and printed onto fabric which is then dyed. The wax is removed to reveal the fabric underneath; two colours are achieved by overdying. The batik printing in Kutch does not have the intricate delicacy of Indonesian or Malaysian batik, but use strong, simple, lines and shapes. The batik karigars have recently started to use vegetable dyes again as well as chemical dyes.

In very broad terms, it is best not to use small, fine lined blocks for batik as the lines get lost in the wax, which spreads easily and tends to blur the edges. Conversely, discharge block printing responds best to fine lines, and in this technique it is the blocks with large spaces that blur. Direct and resist block printing seems to work well with just about everything.

No matter how much a design is visualised in my head, drawn on paper, with and without repeats, it will change once it is on fabric. Without doubt, the most exciting part of the process, and sometimes also the most frustrating, are the visits to the karigars to sample the blocks in different ways. I have learnt not to be too rigid over what might be the outcome of such visits. It is best to go to Kutch with a broad overview; the feel, the colour range, the general concept, then let the specifics happen as they will.

Being let loose in a block printer’s work shop can be an overwhelming experience; each is a cornucopia of design potential: stripe blocks, spot blocks, flower blocks, geometric blocks, chevron blocks, ancient blocks, new blocks; and they are there for anyone to use. Which ones to choose can be as baffling as it is exhilarating. For even though I always go with a whole collection of my own blocks, and sometimes drawn layouts, once I am there I simply can’t resist rummaging and playing.

It is at this stage that Kirit Dave and I seriously start our collaborative process. Until this point I will have been working very much on my own –after all we live in different continents. When I start designing blocks there will be some brief communication between us by phone, email, and fax, and I generally send drawings and colour swatches ahead so that he can start thinking about how to best interpret my ideas Kutch style. But the ideas really start to roll once we are in situ.

Kirit has worked in Kutch for 20 years, and lived there for the past 5 years,designing full time. His knowledge of what blocks are available and how to apply them is comprehensive; and this is coupled with an understanding of art and design history and trends world wide. We speak the same languages; not just English, but ‘artspeak’ too. The time that I spend in Kutch is always shorter than it should be, and shorter than I want it to be. Often when I leave the design work is only 90% complete, and I have to trust Kirit to complete in accordance with my intentions; which he always does.

We start by sampling permutations of block on block, colours and materials. It is important at this stage to remember what the end product will be. I have designed for clothing, interior textiles, dupattas, and rugs, and eachis a very different experience. For example, where and how a particular print or pattern is placed on the body will govern its size & intensity. How a garment is cut will also influence the print.

Traditionally, block printers repeat the pattern they are printing by the block, which gives a very dense effect. To achieve the sense of space I prefer, I have often worked on repeats of 0.5 metres, using up to five different blocks but placed in a seemingly random way. Sometimes these repeats are worked out in Kutch, but more often I work on layouts in Australia using the old fashioned cut, paste, and collage on paper method. A design idea can be ignited by light hearted conversation and banter. The 1998 design ‘Chaos Theory’ came about from joking about whether chaos is better than order as a strategy in life. It may sound deeply philosophical, but believe me, it wasn’t!. A block, based on a diamond, was scattered inconsistently across the fabric, falling to a heavy crescendo at one end. Wrapped around the body like a sarong, the heavily printed end sits dramatically as the front fold.

I have a lot of fun going to Kutch, but does the work that I do there have any impact on the lives of Kutchee karigars? In a small, and indirect way, yes it does. Block printing as an ancient craft in Gujarat, but it cannot stand still. Art, craft, and design develop most through exposure to new ideas. Block printing is how these karigars earn their living. They may think the ideas that I and other designers have are strange, even insane, but if the designs sell and open up new markets, this opinion is quickly reversed. De-constructing the craft of block printing through random placement, and deliberate mis-registration of blocks can only be done responsibly with karigars who are truly proficient in their craft. The intent is not to lessen skill and encourage slip shod work, but to open up new markets, and activate fresh ideas. Then, once I have used my blocks for their debut in Australia, they are available for general use.

The 2002 collection has seen a return to the simple concept of ‘uncut cloth’.

Fifteen individual dupatta size fabric lengths have been designed using combinations of the leharia/shibori blocks with the kahrigars' stripe and chevron blocks. The idea is based upon the Indian tradition of uncut cloth being wrapped around the body: saris, lunghis, dupattas, shawls. OK, there was some cheating as the fabric was actually cut off bales not woven individually. In this instance, the designs have the formality of borders, implied borders, & fields, found in rug design, saris, & dupattas. Where the blocks are placed is completely integral to each design, and done in such a way that cutting into the fabric length for garments or other uses would be difficult, and probably unsuccessful. The classicism of these fabric lengths relates as much to the vocabulary of abstract painting as to textiles. For the first time, I have used embroidery but it appears as a linear, or calligraphic relief. The more expected curvilinear motifs are not used at all.

The initial destination for these designs is Australia, but can the concept of uncut cloth transpose into a western culture? The fabric lengths may be used as shawls; as sarong skirts; as wall hangings; as throws over beds and sofa couches; even as table cloths. It is a deliberate tactic not to define the end product, but to leave this to the purchaser.

Finally, there are two other very important ideals that dominate my art practice. The first is that the end product should be aesthetically pleasing. I like elegance, proportion, balance, and even decoration; and I want others to enjoy these qualities too. The second is that the works should be easily affordable for a lot of people. The ‘preciousness’ of the works should be in the enjoyment, not the price tag.

Western art is dominated by aspirations to ‘greatness’, as defined by signature, labelling, and art industry marketing. I do not aspire to this. How much more profound is the Indian artistic tradition in which the artist rejects the ego of signature, and instead considers that each design; each stitch; each colour is an offering of thanks for being given the abilities to create these in the first place.

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