masses to our door were inexpensive, brightly colored paintings and traditional Haitian cut-out metal drum sculptures. And, when I say “masses” I am exaggerating a lot. In fact, we had been scratching our heads trying to decipher exactly where the masses were lately. We wondered if there was some kind of evil ghost in our space, which, unbeknownst to us, was scaring away all potential clients the minute they tried to ring our doorbell. If you were ever in the art business, you would know that being plagued by such questions is standard operating procedure. So, maybe it was desperation that drove us to seriously consider hosting this exhibit, but I like to think it was heightened intuition, having a nose for good business opportunities, and being able to forecast trends! So, off we went to New York to see the proposed exhibit housed in an East Village gallery, where New York artists were raking in the dough tattooing the clientele.
Much to my surprise, it turned out that henna designs in India were, in some crazy, cosmic way, reminiscent of veves, the Vodou symbols used by Haitian priests and priestesses to invoke the gods (I am a Haitian native). I don’t practice Vodou or any religion, for that matter. But I’m pretty sure those spirits exist! Taking it as a magical sign that we should take a closer look, Pascal and I took the plunge, and before you could say, But how are we going to pull this off in our private home gallery? we were back in Los Angeles, plotting to take over the world, or at the very least, paint it with henna.
My loving, smart, kind and generous parents (that’s what I call them when they do what I want) loaned us the money to open a space not in our home, and poof! Lakaye Studio opened its doors to hordes of people clamoring for their temporary tattoos. (Let me just explain that when I say poof! what that really means is two hellish and stressful months of hard work.) A few weeks later, we were famous—every media outlet in town covered us for the better part of that year, especially after the celebrities, like Sting and Madonna and Prince, started running around with painted hands and feet; but it wasn’t long before I started dreaming of closing that studio. Why? Having to be somewhere every day at an appointed hour just wasn’t working for me. Also, in ten years of having an art gallery and working with artists, never had there been so much drama and conflicts and issues to deal with. Separately, each artist was great...well, not every single one of them, if truth be told; but somehow, the energy was less than harmonious. I think it was about then that I started having a problem with clenching my teeth at night... The other thing was that other henna studios had popped up, and individual artists on the Venice Beach boardwalk were now daily fixtures; and they were able to charge a lot less than we could with our overhead. In the meantime, it was becoming clearer and clearer that there was a market out there for a home-use kit. People wanted to do it themselves! Well, by golly, we just aim to please; so we set out to find us some henna in bulk.
Veve (or symbol) for Simbi, Haitian Vodou’s healer deity. Henna designs reminded me of veves.
The art form called mehndi in India turned out to be popular throughout Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, as well. We learned that it had been practiced for 5,000 years in places like Iran, Pakistan, Syria, Persia, Turkey, Tunisia, Morocco, Palestine, Israel, Yemen, Egypt, Uganda, Tanzania, Afghanistan, Senegal, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sri Lanka and China, to name a few. This revelation gave Pascal an idea: since Paris is home to a large population of North Africans, maybe it could be a starting point for a possible lead to a henna supplier! He called his dad, who lives just outside the City of Lights, and asked him to try to track down any books on the subject, as there were none to be found here in the States. Sure enough, a few weeks later, his dad had visited a Moroccan cultural center and purchased a gorgeous coffee table book called Henné, Plante du Paradis (Henna, Plant from Paradise) by Michèle Maurin Garcia, which he posted to us posthaste! I don’t remember exactly how Pascal managed to find the author’s contact information, but he did. She lived in Paris and she agreed to meet with us on our next trip there.
Remember that scientist who was the first ever outsider to visit our Moroccan family of farmers? That was Michèle Maurin Garcia, a tall, thin and handsome brunette who arrived armed with equal parts French reserve and French charm. For various personal reasons having nothing to do with follow-up on her henna studies, she jumped at the chance to let us pay her way to Morocco in return for facilitating an introduction to the family. As you may imagine, who you know in Morocco is twice as important as who you might know in Hollywood. Or, maybe it’s the same; only it feels more important and a lot less pretentious among the desert dunes and shimmering mirages of Morocco.
As mentioned earlier, I did not join Pascal on that first trip to Morocco, but when he got back, I wished I had, but not because it sounded so glamorous. Sure, it was an adventure of grandiose proportions (just think of all that sand!), but it also involved laborious, sweaty situations in the blazing hot field as Pascal tried to take in the inner workings of a henna harvesting operation: pick the leaves off the bushes, lay them out to dry, pack them into bundles to be taken to a professional grinding mill, where they are turned into powder (where all kinds of switcheroos with other plant life can take place if you don’t watch them like hawks); then, teach the family about the sifting process needed for the fine instruments we use for henna painting here in the States (as opposed to a traditional henna cone). The sifting operation alone necessitated Pascal buying super fine wire mesh and himself building the equipment they would eventually use. After all this fun, still to be worked out were the mechanics of getting the henna from the remote desert region where they live (by donkey) to a merchant in Marrakech, who would serve as go-between for filling out customs paperwork, and then packaging the shipment for air delivery to us in Los Angeles. In addition was the issue of establishing a payment and a communication system with people who had no bank accounts, no telephone and who only spoke Arabic, except for their 15-year-old son, Mohammed, whose broken French has made for many years of extremely charming emails. Emails, you ask? That’s because Pascal paid a local cyber cafe owner to introduce Mohammed to computers. No, I didn’t mind missing out on that part.
What I did envy was getting to meet and hang with the family, a proud, lovely, generous and sincere clan of Moroccan Berbers, and to share in the excitement: for them, over having a new, stable source of income; and for us, in having a trustworthy source for henna. When I finally got the chance to meet them a year later, I wished even more that I had been there on that first trip. That is because I would have known exactly what to bring them as gifts. As I said, Pascal is Indiana Jones’ real life twin, with all the pros and cons that come with the personality—no matter how much I probed and prodded, I couldn’t get much out of him in terms of what they might need, or what they might consider fun! So, off I went to various shops, and returned loaded down with hair ornaments, lip gloss, perfume and a camera; a watch for dad, a Swiss army knife for Mohammed, toys for the littlest boy and other assorted things that, for the most part, they appreciated because of the intention. Had I been made aware by my blind and mute husband of the extraordinary conditions in which they live, what I would have brought was lots of moisturizing hand and body lotion, facial moisturizers, moisturizing lip balms (are you getting the feeling it’s dry out there?), first aid supplies, American T-shirts for Mohammed, and clothing for the littlest one (in addition to the toys). Minus my gauche and mortifyingly clueless offerings, the trip to Morocco was spectacular and unforgettable.
The rest, as they say, is history. It’s been about ten lightning-fast years since we’ve been back to Morocco because things have gone that smoothly. Against all odds, out of a photo exhibition on henna body art in our modest gallery sprang our flagship line of Earth Henna Body Painting Kits, which, more than a decade later, sit comfortably in the oft-revised and appended body adornment lexicon. The kits’ success among those who prefer their tattoos temporary keeps our family of henna farmers employed and happy. They harvest the plant, and send us the majority of their crop each year. And, we’ve become accustomed to receiving regular, hassle-free shipments of the finest quality henna powder. Our small business—we have a staff of two—affords us a pleasant lifestyle, which in an expensive
