Artist attempts longest batik

Artist attempts longest batik

SINGAPORE: Sleeping two hours a day for the past five days, a 62-
year-old Singapore artist hopes to enter the record books with
the world's longest batik painting.

A visibly tired Sarkasi Said had finished the 100 meter by 0.7
meter Indonesian-style painting of orchids on Tuesday morning and
planned to submit the entry to the Guinness Book of World
Records, a spokeswoman for Sarkasi said.

His painting of purple and yellowish flowers and shooting
green stems was inspired by Singapore's Botanic Gardens, using a
modern adaptation of Indonesia's centuries-old traditional batik
textile art of dyes and wax.

Known in Singapore as the "baron of batik", the Muslim artist
has won several local awards for his batik art, usually drawn
with dyes and a container of wax on washed and boiled silk.
--Reuters