The History of a Few of Our Artisan Friends

MacroSun works with hundreds of different individual artists, craftspeople, families, co-ops, etc.  I have chosen a few to give a general sense of who we work with.

Journeying across the island of Bali in '92, I stopped in at the Sukawati Market near Batuan and began chatting, joking, and playing the crazy Bali bargaining game (which takes equal parts skill and humor).  I was drawn to the paintings in a particular stall, which seemed particularly spirited and accomplished and became acquainted with Ni Ketut.  She sells the work of her husband, I Made Nyana, in this village market, and is also a highly respected temple dancer herself.  In the course of discussing the artwork (and purchasing a fairly large quantity), we became friends with Made, Ketut, and their family.  Despite the fact that Made is a acknowledged master of the 'Batuan style' of Balinese painting, is a renowned Balinese traditional Gambuh dancer as well, and has toured Holland, Italy, and Germany, he is fairly poor, and lives simply but happily with his wife, grandmother, and two children, who are musicians.

I met Nanda Kulu, who was to become a true sister of the spirit to me, while walking along the backroads near Durbar Square in Kathmandu, in 1993. She and her husband, Ganesh, own a small musical instrument shop and live nearby. They work with local drummakers (called madals, or khin, or patchima depending on size and type) as well as other musical artisans in the Valley and some in Calcutta, and each piece is hand selected and hand tuned and so is popular with local traditional musicians.  In addition to her own family of 3 sons, Nanda and Ganesh have taken in two young Nepali girls who were homeless, and raised them as there own for the past several years.  One of these girls, Nanni, cannot speak, yet she is wonderfully expressive with a great sense of humor.  Nanda has also starting a special project called Mitrata Nepal ("Mitrata" means "Friendship" in Nepali) that works with underprivileged children.  MacroSun gets many traditional instruments from Nanda's shop, thus providing a market for traditional artisans, helping Nanda and her family, and contributing to the work Nanda is doing.  We are certainly much more than simply business associates, we have grown to be close friends, and it was my great honor in '95 during the Nepalese festival Tihar, to be invited to share "Bhai Tika" with Nanda and her family, a special kind of blessing given to brothers by their sisters.  Later that same year, Nanda accepted our invitation and stayed at my home in St. Louis, and made a short tour of the States.

Prakash and his family have operated a small hand-made paper shop in Kathmandu for over ten years, and MacroSun has been doing business with them for over eight years. Of all the hundreds of different craftspeople MacroSun does business with in South Asia, Prakash is without a doubt one of the most hard-working.  His shop is always the first one to open, the last one to close, his is open on many festival days when most businesses are closed.   All his daughters help out in the shop, and through the years I have seen them grow from young children to young women.  Prakash combines his business with his home (above the shop) and family life in a pleasant and enjoyable way.  Yet in the international brother/sisterhood of hard-working small businesspeople, I think we share a mutual respect. Prakash does the special MacroSun fliers, business cards, and calendars the old-fashioned way, with hand-carved blocks and printing presses that could have been used 100 years ago - on environmentally sound handmade paper from the bark of the Daphne bush.  Combine this with the fact my Nepali speaking and Prakash's English spelling both leave a lot to be desired, and you have a very challenging situation indeed.  The first draft of the fliers, supposedly in English, come back looking like an entirely different language all-together!  But with a lot of dedicated effort on both sides, and considerable time, we end up with an interesting, and undoubtedly hand-made, hand-edited final product. . . .  The handmade Nepali paper has an entirely different individual personality that the mass-produced Western product, each piece a little different than the next...

- Gil