Bali and me: the first 50 years

Toward the end of 1973, Ketut Madra and I decided to build this pondok on land he’d just acquired overlooking the rice fields to the south of Peliatan. For him, it was a commitment to adapt to Bali’s future economy and to engage with visiting artists, musicians, writers, and scholars eager to learn deeply about Bali’s culture. For me, it was all about my intention to return to Bali and continue working with him and his family, which I’ve now been doing for almost 50 years. Finished in January 1974, the cottage was soon joined by three others nearby. They were rarely empty. By the 1980s, with additional purchases of adjacent land, he and his wife completed the Ketut Madra Homestay in its current form.

New post to come here on Madra painting given to Yale Art Gallery

New post to come here on Made Berata Jatayu painting

New post/s to come here on Topeng Tua mask

All posts below appeared on an earlier Bali-focused blog between 2013 and 2016.

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Batik Masks

How to convert old, much-cherished, Javanese and Balinese batik sarongs into something useful in this year of pandemia? Memories of favorite fabrics from the past re-purposed into well-made masks? Why not? Dana Cooper, a Bermuda-based designer, suggested I call Pauline Lock at In Style USA in NYC’s garment district. Pauline said, “Let’s see what we can do….”…

December 26, 2020May 5, 2021

KJRI Exhibition Opening Video

The Indonesian Consulate in NYC shot the YouTube video below on October 24, 2016 at the opening of the exhibition “The Storytelling Art of Bali.” I’d never seen it before today–October 21, 2020. It seems like an appropriate first post in the resurrection of this blog from almost four years in Tumblr purgatory…. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1lY9XVbYKQ

October 21, 2020May 4, 2021

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This blog has been ignored for way too long. The previous entry is almost four years old….

October 17, 2020May 4, 2021

The Storytelling Art of Bali: Wayang Painting from Temples to Tourism

An exhibition opening on Monday, October 24, at the Consulate General of Indonesia in New York, will feature twenty-one 19th and 20th-century paintings and drawings that illustrate 100 years of evolution of Balinese wayang painting from precolonial times to the present. The show includes large antique paintings created for Balinese temples and royal houses telling…

October 5, 2016May 4, 2021

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Paintings 1-10 at the “Storytelling Art of Bali” exhibition at the Consulate General of Indonesia, 5 E. 68th St. New York, NY. The exhibition is open Monday to Friday from 10 AM to 4 PM from Monday, October 24 through Monday, November 7, 2016.

October 5, 2016May 4, 2021

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Paintings 11-20 at the “Storytelling Art of Bali” exhibition at the Consulate General of Indonesia, 5 E. 68th St. New York, NY. The exhibition is open Monday to Friday from 10 AM to 4 PM from Monday, October 24 through Monday, November 7, 2016.

October 5, 2016May 4, 2021

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“Garuda, Wibiwasu, and Supratika,” a 19th century Balinese temple painting from Karangasem, shown here at the top as it was purchased in 1973 and last exhibited at Ubud’s Museum Puri Lukisan in 2013, and below as cleaned and completely restored in Bali in 2015. The unrestored painting appears with the story on page 44 of…

May 22, 2016May 4, 2021