Natalie Guess demonstrates fine art of batik

But with local artist Natalie Guess as an advocate, it stands a chance.

"It's a consuming technique," Guess said. "A lot of artists just don't do it. It's one of those things that because it is done on fabric, it has been considered a craft for many, many years and not necessarily as fine art, an art form I've been doing for 28 years."

Guess is one of the artists featured in this month's exhibit at the Art League of Marco Island. Titled "Material Things," it's a collection of textile works from different artists. The show, which opened Nov. 2 with a demonstration by Guess, runs through Nov. 27.

Guess' medium is batik, which means "wax writing" in Javanese. The pieces in this month's show capture the essence of Southwest Florida: water lilies, herons, shadowy beaches, birds of paradise. These paintings have the appearance of worn marble, crinkled with jagged veins of color on cotton and silk.

The painting technique is said to have originated from India and was introduced into China during the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618-905).

The process seems simplistic, and is anything but: A hot, clear mixture of beeswax and paraffin is painted onto a fabric, covering up all the negative space -- that is, the space where the artist does not want color. Guess likens the wax painting to using water; the areas with wax appear wet. The artist then uses a dye (starting from the lightest color to the darkest) to color in the uncovered, unwaxed spaces. The wax is removed, and the process begins again with more wax layers and more dye.

Guess calls this process "backwards thinking."

"If I get someplace and I don't paint that with wax, I can't change that. If I forget to paint something before I move on, I can't go back," she said. "With that aspect, I have a tendency to work on it, step back, do something else for a while, take an objective look before completing the next step to lessen the chances of doing something I don't want."

Because of this artistic caution, Guess tends to work on three or more projects at a time, which takes her about three-fourths of a year to complete, she said. Once a piece is finished, the wax is ironed out, leaving a cloth that appears buttery smooth, like a vintage T-shirt.

She discovered the process in a high school art class. Her first work, which Guess said she still has "somewhere," was a bigger-than-life sunset of yellows, oranges and browns. She eventually made it into a quilt. However, that academic enthusiasm was practically squashed during college.

Although enamored with batik, the 1979 graduate of Drake University received her bachelor's of fine arts degree in pottery.

"(The college) offered classes in other areas, so I took everything. When it came to batik, they covered it in one half-hour of one night. So that's kind of where it stood on an academic level," Guess said and laughed. "Because of that, I was self-taught, based on a number of books that explained the technique. I did a lot of experiments, so I made a lot of mistakes. Even though I was taking other art forms in my courses, I would go back to my room and work on batik. My roommates thought I was nuts."

Sometimes, Guess said, so do other artists who try batik for the first time. So did people who first saw her work publicly.

As a young artist, most of her subjects were abstracts in the way of Pablo Picasso, Guess said. But all it took was a stranger's comment to propel Guess into fierce experimentation with batik.

"I was at an outdoor show, face-to-face with the people making comments, and I overheard two women who said, 'Oh, well, the reason she does abstract is because that's all you can do with batik,'" Guess remembered. "So I said, all right, I have a fine-arts background. I'm going to try one in pointillism, one in impressionism, one in realism. ... I wanted to try all directions because batik is a medium, not just a style. I wanted to show people I can take that medium and do a number of different styles.

"It showed people. 'Oh, wow! I didn't know you could do that with batik.' It's what kept me at this art form: 'You can't do that.'"

	AT A GLANCE
	-- The Guess-Fisher Gallery, Etc., in Naples is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday, from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and from 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday. For more information, call 659-2787. -- For more information about "Material Things," this month's exhibit at the Art League of Marco Island, call 394-4221.

"Part of it is education and awareness," Neal said. "It's such a positive and uplifting experience to be part of it all. It's about the public becoming more aware of other art forms out there besides painting. And all of the artists are amazing in their own right.

"Natalie Guess is such a master at her craft. She just has a 'fine-tune' to it that you don't even see any of the roughness of the wax. Even her use of dyes in her application ... That 28 years of experience really comes through in her pieces."

Although she no longer teaches any regular batik workshops, Guess said visitors often can find her working on batik projects in her studio, located at 824 Fifth Ave. in Naples. Called the Guess-Fisher Gallery, Etc., the gallery showcases and sells works by Guess, her husband, Phil Fisher (who does watercolors and oil paintings), and five other Naples artists.

Her pieces hang on walls like the other artworks, but Guess still considers herself a "3-D artist."

"Each time I paint the wax on, I pull it off ... put it in the dye, manipulate it by hand," she said. It's this handling that creates the crackled look traditional in batik paintings, Guess said.

Batik is an art form best seen in the making, she said.

"Even though I've had people take a class, they need to complete one or two pieces before they understand it," she said. "It is definitely not an instant-gratification art form."

The Guess-Fisher Gallery, Etc., in Naples is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday, from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and from 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday. For more information, call 659-2787.

For more information about "Material Things," this month's exhibit at the Art League of Marco Island, call 394-4221.