Wine and finger food will be served on 15th Oct from 4pm onwards.

This delightful exhibition will intrigue art lovers of all persuasions and become a major event on the Bangkok art calendar.

The Artist

Lea is an international artist, renowned for her free-hand designs on silk, and has lived in Thailand since 1987.
During her vocational training with lace manufacturers in the Netherlands , Germany and Switzerland , she focused on design. After arriving in Thailand , Lea began to explore the properties of plain-woven rough and smooth Thai silk. Applying the ‘hot-blow' technique, Lea paints free-hand, that is, without first sketching any pattern.

Significantly, Lea has developed the quality silk fabric herself over the past eighteen years through a project in Ban Reng Khai, a north-eastern Thai village in Surin province. She has been able to draw upon ancestral weaving traditions, which are rapidly disappearing from many parts of the country.

Through her activities, these traditions have been revitalized and, today, Ban Reng Khai silk, together with Lea's distinctive designs, receive national and international recognition. This was affirmed by the awarding of membership of the world-famous International Silk Association, located in Lyon , France . Lea's works encompass abstract and figurative silk paintings as well as fabric designs for interior decoration, furnishings and fashion.

Under Lea's bold and sweeping brushstrokes, even the plainest fabric suddenly comes vividly alive. Daring colour combinations, applied free-hand to form patterns and designs of great harmony and originality, have won Lea worldwide recognition. She has received several international awards for her work. In Thailand , Lea has received certificates of appreciation from HRH Princess Galayani Vadhana and HRH Princess Somsawali. By exploring ways of combining modern avant-garde fabric design on Thai silk, manufactured by centuries-old local techniques and tradition, Lea has built an artistic bridge between old and new, and East and West.

Ban Reng Khai Village

In 1987, a substantial donation from the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Bangkok enabled Lea Laarakker-Dingian to found the Ban Khai Weaving Project.

During the past eighteen years, Lea has initiated the study foundation, fishponds, a tree nursery, sericulture, a savings fund and agricultural fund, which allows the villagers to borrow money at a very low interest rate, enabling them to improve the quality of their crops, healthcare, village committee, library and more.

Working in partnership with the Thai NGO, Village Foundation, the weaving project now encompasses seven villages in Surin province. The aim is to extend this to fifteen villages.

The education and training of the weavers and dyers is of primary importance. Surin is one of the poorest areas of Thailand . The only hope for future generations is through education. To date, the foundation had funded the secondary education of more than five hundred young people.

Village life is basic; the looms are traditional, allowing repairs to be made on site. Although unable to complete with the speed of hi-tech machinery, the silk produced is superior, durable with a unique beauty which is totally Thai. Environmental awareness is reinforced by using only solar, vegetable and non-toxic dyes.

Finance for this project is derived solely from exhibitions and sales.

Ban Reng Khai Silk

Sericulture involves silkworms consuming twenty-five thousand times their original weight in mulberry leaves while being kept in trays for 40 days. Once cocoon spinning commences, they are transferred to twig bundles for one week of cocoon completion, Cocoons are unreeled in boiling water and the resulting yarn is hung to dry. A remaining coating, sericin, is removed by immersing the yarn in liquid produced by running boiling water through ashes of coconut husks and banana leaves. After being dried again, the yarn is ready for dyeing.

IMMERSION DYEING All chemical, vegetable and solar dyes are non-toxic to ensure safety of and no damage to coloured silk. Carefully prepared chemical and vegetable dyeing solutions ensure consistent colour penetration. After the yarn has been dyed, hung and dried, it is reeled onto an ‘umbrella' to untangle it.

The yarn is then wound from the “umbrella” onto a spool making it taut and allowing for removal of fluff. The spool is stored ready for transfer to a warp comb which ensures equal lengths of warp threads. The warp is put through a weaving comb and then mounted on a loom. Dyeing to mounting takes one week. A weaver can produce a half metre of cloth per day.

Great care is taken in controlling production during and upon completion of weaving. Close scrutiny ensures uniformity of weft thickness and spacing, straight borders and permits no broken warp threads, holes or foreign particles to occur.

SOLAR DYEING

An alternate method of dyeing is using dye which has a fixative that reacts to sunlight. Warp threads are spread in the open and weavers, each with a pot of individual colour, apply their paint by brushing the colour along the threads at random. The sun fixes the dye in six hours. The coloured threads are then stretched on the weaving looms to be woven in combination with a natural coloured weft, resulting in a beautifully subtle effect.

A variation of solar dyeing is direct application of dye and design by the artist on natural coloured woven silk spread in open sunlight. After a fixing period of six hours, a complete length of hand-painted fabric has been produced.

Highlights of Lea's work and carrer

Ámantee
131/Chaeng Wattana 13, Laksi, Bangkok 10210
Tel: 02-982-8694-5

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