Batik is an ancient art - and a painstaking one. Perfected in the centuries of Indonesian history when there was time enough, it involves a sequence of waxing and dyeing, waxing and dyeing, until a plain piece of cloth is turned into a stunning piece of art.
This is the skill that Joni Susanto learned from his father, who learned it from his father. Traditional Javanese batiks feature flowers and dragons and masks and other intricate designs, but when the Susantos joined the Church, it was natural for them to use their old art to express love for their new faith.Some of Joni Susanto's batiks show the Angel Moroni visiting Joseph Smith, Joseph translating the plates, the Salt Lake Temple, and missionaries. There are scenes from the life of Christ - the Nativity, pictures of His ministry, the Last Supper.
Brother Susanto works with his father-in-law, Hadi Pranoto, also a member of the Church, in a batik shop centered in his home. They do traditional designs as well, but the ones with Church themes are popular with missionaries, he said, and with visitors to the country who recognize them for what they are. (Even the batiks featuring Old and New Testament scenes are not overly familiar to most people in a country where Christians form a definite minority).
The Church is small in this island nation. Nearly 200 million people live on the inhabitable lands of the 13,677 islands that make up the archipelago. Of those, some 3,600 are Latter-day Saints, mostly concentrated on the island of Java, the most densely populated of the Indonesian islands.
Brother Susanto currently serves as branch president of one of two branches in Yogyakarta, one of the major cities on the island. The Church may be small, he said, but it is growing.
He joined the Church as a boy when missionaries contacted his family. "My father, my mother, my wife, my father-in-law, we are all members of the Church." In the early 1980s, he served a mission in his native country. He and his wife now have two children - with another on the way, he says with a smile.
Brother Susanto is a native of Yogyakarta, a city rich in cultural tradition. Dance, music and the visual arts are strong here. And batik is a leader among the visual arts. Although the art form is practiced in other parts of Indonesia, Javanese batiks are universally recognized as the finest in the world, done in rich shades of indigo, deep red, yellow and Javanese brown.
No one knows just quite how the art developed. But it took a great leap forward in the 17th or 18th century when a tool called the canting was invented. This tool allowed the artist to apply molten wax in a precise and intricate way.
Batiks are created on the principle that waxed cloth resists dye. So the areas not to be colored in the first dyeing are covered with wax. The cotton or silk cloth is then immersed in dye until the desired shade of that particular color is achieved. Then the cloth is dried and the wax removed. The process is repeated until the artist has achieved the results he wants.
Each of his intricate pieces can take as long as 50 hours to complete, said Brother Susanto. But when he is finished, he has more than just a work of art. In the batik fabrics with Church themes, Brother Susanto also paints his testimony.
"The Church," he emphasized, "is my faith. It is what I believe. I believe in Jesus Christ. I believe in the prophets. I believe in the Book of Mormon."
And Brother Susanto also knows that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a universal church, a world-wide church, where family values and traditions handed down from generation to generation are revered.