|
|
|
 |
|
TARA SOSROWARDOYO FOR TIME
|
Wax Artistic: Tracing traditional batik designs
|
Craving culture? In Kuala Lumpur find your creative side, and wear it home
By Simon Elegant
MAP: Kuala Lumpur
Unless you happen to collect miniature liquor bottles from hotel honor bars, it's hard to indulge in hobbies while traveling on business. If, however, you are willing to seek out activities beyond in-room CNN, it's possible. You just have to know where to look. Hidden in the middle of Malaysia's capital is the Kuala Lumpur Craft Cultural Complex, a two-acre retreat devoted to the promotion and sale of the country's indigenous art forms—notably batik dyeing and painting used to adorn fabrics.
In one corner of the complex is Galeri Artistique, where batik designer Zarina Lazim demonstrates her craft. On this day, Zack, in his mid-20s, is discovering the artist in himself. Zarina settles him down to trace a design on to the front of a cotton T shirt. When he's finished, she follows his drawing with a line of liquid wax poured from a copper beaker. Then it's Zack's turn to use the array of watercolors to create a psychedelic multicolored turtle. "Sometimes," says Anjang, who runs the stall next door, "we have people coming back day after day. Some of them even want to do a whole sarong."
Prices range from $3.50 for a batik-it-yourself cotton handkerchief to around $12 for a silk T shirt. That's far cheaper, and more culturally enriching, than a night at the karaoke joint off the hotel lobby.
Click here for more TIME travel stories, city guides and info
|
|
|
