Doyenne of dying art of batik

Sri Wahyuni, The Jakarta Post, Yogyakarta

Salasatun Djogo Pertiwi will obviously not use old age as an excuse to retire from painting batik.

At 93, Salasatun is just as energetic as ever and has never even thought of stopping making batik, her lifetime profession and passion. At her home in Pajimatan village, Imogiri district, she paints on.

Her fragile physique is probably her biggest handicap as she is forced to paint on a chair instead of the low stools traditionally used by batik artists.

Despite her age she has retained her remarkable senses. She wears no glasses and her wrinkled fingers move nimbly, drawing various motifs on white cotton cloth.

Neither does she find it difficult to work with the tiny point of the canting, a small dipper used to apply boiling wax on cloth during the batik process.

And most amazing of all is that, unlike other batik artists in general, she never needs preliminary sketches for the motifs she imprints on the cloth -- a tradition that is literally a dying art.

Most traditional batik painters usually apply a motif by simply following a pattern already drawn on a cloth, instead of on a completely blank sheet of cloth.

At a glance, the batik she makes with the hot wax and canting look the same but in fact each has a subtle difference.

And she does so with ease. It seems that all the motifs just flow from the canting.

"I can make up to five sheets of batik cloth in half a day when I feel fine," said Salasatun, adding that she mostly did the batik painting in the morning and in the afternoon.

For her dedication to the art of batik, Salasatun won the 1992 Upakarti Award from the central government.

In an interview with The Jakarta Post when she participated in a recent batik exhibition held at her village, she said she had lost count of the number of motifs she had created since she began painting batik at just 13 years of age.

Salasatun's motifs are inspired by various objects she finds in her neighborhood: Trees, animals, flowers and at other times, existing batik motifs, mostly classic Surakarta or Yogyakarta styles.

One her favorite motifs is the one she calls "Irian motif", which takes its inspiration from leaves. She said the name of the creation had nothing to do with the name of Indonesia's eastern- most province, Irian Jaya (Papua).

"It just came out of my mouth. I did not prepare a name when a customer asked me what I called the particular motif, so I just said 'Irian' spontaneously," she said.

The most difficult motif to make in batik making, according to Salasatun, is the Sekar Jagad. So difficult is the motif that it can take her up to three days to finish a single sheet.

Salasatun sells her batiks for between Rp 350,000 and Rp 500,000 per piece, or about the average price charged by traditional batik makers in the region.

Imogiri has long been known as the center of traditional batik making. Girirejo alone is home to about 200 traditional batik makers. Many batik traders in Yogyakarta and other major regions in the country, including Jakarta and Bali, buy their merchandise here.

Salasatun said she could make Rp 100,000 per piece. She shares the profits with her marketing assistants.

When business is good, she said she could earn a gross profit of up to Rp 20 million per day. On a bad day, she can make nothing.

What makes her different from other batik makers in her village is probably the way she manages the money. No matter how much money she gets, she never keeps it in cash or deposits it in the bank. She always reinvests most of the money to buy raw materials.

That explains why 3,000 pieces of batik are crammed into her home at present.

"I just don't like to keep cash. Being broke is not a problem for me. But stop making batik? I can't even think of it," she said.

For Salasatun, making batik is just as important as breathing.

The widow of a keeper of the Imogiri Royal Cemetery used by the Yogyakarta Palace families, Salasatun, who is also the mother of five, the grandmother of 18 and the great grandmother of five, cannot bare to see a single day pass without making batik.