Susi Johnston | The Sleeping Tiger on the Island of Bali

This is seriously crazy furniture from certifiably wacky Bali-based artist, Yaari Rom. So if you’re bored of synthetic rattan sectionals and routine teak garden furniture, go see Yaari. Bali is a magnet for creative eccentrics, but few are as prolific and irrepressible as Yaari is. He does furniture, furnishing fabrics, fashion and body painting events (for which he is internationally famous, or more accurately, notorious).

Yaari was buoyed up on the tsunami of psychedelia that washed over California in the 60s and 70s, and has been surfing it ever since. He paints, he appliqués, he dyes, he patchworks, he prints, he parties, and when he shows up at parties in Bali, as he often does, it’s impossible to miss him, bedecked as he is, in his own colourful creations.

It’s nice, though, that Yaari doesn’t feel the need to force his clothing on us . . . it’s ultimately optional. Whatever his fashion can do, his body painting can do even better. But don’t sit on his furniture until the body paint is dry, please. Find Yaari’s universe at Yaari Toya Studio on Jalan Mertanadi in Kerobokan. Your life, and your lounge chairs, will never be the same again.

The Phoenix Art Museum presents an exhibition of Sumatran textiles from the collection of Dr. Thomas J. Hudak, through 4 July 2010. The island of Sumatra is far larger and more diverse than most people might think. It’s five times the size of Great Britain and Ireland combined, and is home to a variety of peoples and cultures, some of them little known and studied. This exhibition offers a representative selection of textiles which reflect the island’s cultural diversity and rich history. Dr. Hudak is a professor of linguistics at Arizona State University, focusing on the languages and literature of Southeast Asia, with an emphasis on Indonesian culture, heritage and identity.

John Ruddy and Kumi Masumoto (among our most favourite textile dealers), showcase an antique Sumatran prada cloth in their catalog page for the New York Arts of Pacific Asia Show 2010 (on page 85). We’ve been keen on these extremely rare textiles for over a decade, and are delighted whenever one appears in public, which is not often.

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Last June I heard that Bill Gates bought Irma Lake Ranch (above), the property of a dear friend of mine, Roger W. Hollander. I was happy to hear the news. I loved the place, and will never forget the time I spent there. Knowing that it is staying in private hands is somehow heartening. (More info from Huffington Post here.)

Roger bought Irma Lake in the 90s to serve as his private home, and headquarters of his Empire of All Things Extraordinary. The ranch had belonged to Buffalo Bill Cody, and was used to entertain celebrities and heads of state on hunting and nature outings in the mountains and plains near what is now Yellowstone National Park. Cody even had the Burlington Northern Railway build a spur line out to the ranch. Many of the original structures from Cody’s time still survive intact on the 500 acre property. Thanks in part to Roger’s conscientious stewardship of the property during the years he called it home. (You can download a property brochure from it’s listing agent for the sale, here.)

Roger was involved in a terrible car accident a few years ago, while driving down the seven mile mountain drive from Irma Lake Lodge, his spectacularly beautiful, and intensely personal home. In the pre-dawn hours, heading for the Cody airport, he rolled his SUV, and was left in sub-freezing weather, unconscious and upside-down, held in place by his safety belt. Several hours later, he was found by ranchers and rushed to hospital. The head injuries and exposure were so severe, that even a hardy soul like Roger has been unable to recover. He remains in rehabilitative care in Wyoming to this day, and all of his friends are still saddened by Roger’s tragic story.

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Contemporary textile arts don’t get any better than this. Check out Weavers Studio in Kolkata for kantha cloth, felt, applique, embroidery, hand prints, kalamkari, zardozi, chikanwork, pintucks, pleats, shibori, and more. This is much more than a production house, it’s a textile study and development centre, devoted to fine handwork and learning from the legacy of world textile traditions.

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Textilians take note. There’s a spiffy article on the Laharia Turbans of Rajasthan in the catalog for the Arts of Pacific Asia Show (part of Asia Week New York 2010).

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Nice one-page piece in Travel+Leisure magazine about Bruno and me, and our galleries in Bali, ICON Asian Arts and Macan Tidur. Written by Jennifer Chen, who I very much enjoyed talking with back in December. We just heard she’s leaving the magazine to pursue other writing opportunities, incidentally.

(Click through for larger, sharper image.)

If you’re not in Paris right now, you missed it.

Parcours des Mondes is now undeniably the ultimate event on earth for non-western art or arts premier *. It takes place in Paris every September, and if you’re not there now, you missed it, because it ends tomorrow. Book now for next year.

During this extraordinary week, the galleries of Saint Germain are taken over by five dozen or so of the world’s most distinguished tribal art dealers - - those with the sharpest eye, the deepest understanding, the best sources, and the most discriminating tastes. After eight years in existence, Parcours has begun to shake the tectonic plates of the global art trade, garnering attention from the highest echelons of art cognoscenti and the media. That is as it should be.

With contemporary art looking like the painted stepsister of a dodgy derivatives investment, it’s not surprising to find timeless art that reaches deep into the roots of humanity and arises directly from those roots, maintaining its stature, and even growing it. Parcours is the proof - - ça marche. In a time when almost nothing works (including a lot of contemporary art dealers), arts premier works. And why shouldn’t it? Tribal art has always been about efficacy - - in proclaiming power, warding off disease, cultivating fertility, and establishing a place in this confusing universe. Ça definitely marche.

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The Ashmolean is rebooting. Big plans and improvements are underway, with 39 new galleries happening, to the tune of £61 million. Among them is a major new space for textiles. Textilism is officially a trend. In recent years numerous upper-echelon museums have created spaces devoted to textiles as art, notably the DeYoung in SF, among others.

The textile tale of the Ash in a nutshell: The Ash says one of its “best kept secrets is its large collection of textiles.” Just announced, £122,000 was awarded to the museum to support their forthcoming textiles gallery and allow more of the cloth in their collection to go on display. The collection numbers something over 4,000 pieces (that’s just twice my own private collection, interestingly). Download a flyer on the new textiles gallery here.

The New Ash reopens with a bash this November. If we had an invite for the opening night we would surely be there despite it being half a world away.

An exhibition “Indonesian Textiles as Art” opened on 19 July at the Museum Pasifika in Nusa Dua, Bali. We were there. We saw. And we agreed wholeheartedly with the stance of Georges Breguet who mounted the exhibition, that the best textile arts of the archipelago are indeed art, and should be viewed as such. Read more…