JELLY FISH GALORE!

Over the last few days, our local beach has been dotted with Crown Jellyfish (Netrostoma setouchina).  Perhaps this seasonal invasion has something to do with the "cold" winter temperatures we have been experiencing recently (lows of 17' C at night) - would be interesting to know!  

Many haven't survived being washed ashore, but others can be observed, swimming in the shallow water, their umbrellas undulating - like hula dancers wearing lacy purple tutus! 

Hmmm - I can see the components of a great silk painting here!

 Recent beach walks with my kids and their friends have become mini rescue missions as we try to return jellyfish left stranded by receding tides back to deeper water...  (no long, stinging tentacles with this variety!)

Wailoaloa Beach, Nadi, May 2012

FROM VATULELE VILLAGE TO NEW YORK CITY... WITH LOVE

It's been fun working on another painting in my "Reki! ~Time to Dance" series.  This one will be transiting the globe in a few days time - keenly awaited by a client in New York City.

Last month, the fiber used to make the paper I am painting on here was the live, growing inner bark of a leafy green tropical mulberry sapling, in a family-run plantation on a small, coral atoll to the south of our island, called Vatulele.  The bark was harvested by my husband's aunt Mala, one of many women from the seaside village of Ekubu who make a living producing hand-crafted masi, or barkcloth, using an environmentally-friendly, but laborious process of scraping, soaking, beating, and felting the fibrous mulberry bark into long, textured sheets.  This traditional craft is practiced in only a few parts of Fiji, with the knowledge and skills involved being passed down from generation to generation of hard-working women.

Mala came across to the mainland by boat during the recent school break, bringing two of her children for some sight-seeing, and a big roll of lovely white masi to sell in order to raise money for school fees and other family needs.  Our studio is filled with the pungent scent of freshly beaten masi every time we get such a delivery.  It is an honour to be able to work with a material that is as steeped in culture and tradition as our Fijian masi is!
 

"Reki! ~ Time to Dance" - a work in progress...
Size: 46 x 46 cm  Medium: Acrylics on traditional Fijian barkcloth

 Watch this space for some pics of the end result!

DURUKA SEASON

It's duruka season here in Fiji!  Duruka (Saccharum edule) is one of the weirder, highly delicious vegetables that form part of the traditional Fijian diet.  When it comes into season around April / May each year, you will often see teepee-shaped  bundles of green daruka stalks lined up for sale at rural bus stops and in front of the lean-to vegetable stands that punctuate the verges of our roads here in Fiji.  Here's the bundle I bought from an old farmer selling vegetables door to door in our neighborhood the other day:

During my childhood in rural Pennsylvania, USA, being outdoors in nature was a big deal:  we spent several summers trying out various recipes from "Stalking the Wild Asparagus" by Euell Gibbons - an American classic on living off the land.  One of the more memorable dishes featured in that book was young cat-tails (bull-rush flowers) boiled and eaten with melted butter and salt like corn on the cob.  I was therefore delighted to find something of an equivalent here in Fiji when we moved here twenty years ago!

Duruka, a tall, grass-like plant, generally grows wild in damp soil.  The part that is eaten is the unopened flower, which must be removed from its sheath, as you see my husband doing here:

The most popular way to prepare duruka is boiling it for about ten minutes in coconut cream, adding sliced onion and possibly a little crushed ginger root, for extra flavor. Most Fijians will insist on eating it with fish - though roast chicken and boiled dalo (taro root) were the accompanying dishes for Sunday lunch at our house today!

Ready for the pot...

Boiling our duruka in coconut cream - YUM!!

CATCHING UP WITH ALIFERETI MALAI

The table on our porch has become a temporary art studio for visiting family friend and fellow Fiji artist, Alifereti Malai.  Based in Fiji's capital city, Suva, for many years now, Alifereti hails from Burelevu, a small village in the highlands of Ra, on the northern side of Viti Levu. Alifereti and my husband went to school together, where he was known for his amazing portraits, drawn in pencil at the back of exercise books!

Aliferti at work in our studio porch

 Alifereti has been a regular participant in many of the craft fairs and exhibitions we have organised over the past decade.  Until recently, his trademark product was fine drawings in black ink on white Fijian barkcloth, mostly of Fijian artifacts such as war clubs, cannibal forks, and whales teeth pendants. (Note the bookmarks Alifereti is designing in this photo.)  However, over the past couple of years, Alifereti has ventured into painting in oils and acrylics on canvas, using a broader colour spectrum and incorporating abstract elements alongside the cultural  references that are at the heart of this indigenous Fijian's creative work.  It has been fascinating watching this metamorphosis in the style and expressive quality of Alifereti's work!

Oils on canvas by Alifereti Malai exhibited at CreatiVITI's "Art on the Island V" exhibition in 2010

 Hand-drawn barkcloth maps of the Fiji Islands, full of incredible detail, are another line of work for Alifereti.  Below, my studio staff view his latest creation.  The framed map shown here has had pride of place on our studio wall for several years now...

 

  Alifereti Malai can be contacted by e-mail at alifereti.malai118@gmail.com,

or by mobile phone: (679) 963 7076

EASTER LEGACY

Been working on a new piece called "Easter Meditation" - in acrylics on dyed barkcloth.
The inspiration for the design of this piece, commissioned by a New Zealand based customer with Fiji roots, is from two corners of this planet: our local traditional Fijian masikesa designs, and a piece of African tapestry with it's bold shapes and warm colour combinations...

FIJI BITTER BOTTLES IN DYES ON SILK

I've been working on a silk painting commissioned by clients from New Zealand.  They wanted a brightly-colored  feature piece for their living room wall, along the lines of something they spotted in my portfolio.  This one was to portray aspects of my clients' Fiji experiences that are of special meaning to them - including not only a carved tanoa for serving our traditional kava drink, but a bottle of Fiji Bitter!  I included the couple's hand prints, creating what I hope will become a family heirloom... 

Here it is, in various stages of completion:

 

POTTERY SHARD MYSTERY

The beach near our home bears the marks of recent floods, with bigger than usual piles of broken branches and rubbish washed ashore.  Amongst the mess, I have been finding yet more shards of earthenware pottery - water-worn shapes that range in color from rusty red to soot black, remnants of vessels made from a course clay that appears to have sea sand mixed into it.

Hundreds of shards like this have been appearing at Wailoaloa Beach along the edge of Nadi Bay for several years now - leaving me intrigued as to where they are from and what the story behind them is! 

They do not have any obvious markings - though a few have imprints of cording or leaves, in keeping with construction methods used by Fiji's traditional potters.  I love feeling the thumb and finger prints of long-forgotten artisans who have inadvertently left their personal marks on their handiwork - as someone with a passion for pottery, I sense a kind of tactile connection here with kindred spirits - and wonder if I will ever know more about who they were and how they lived... 

Since the Nadi area does not boast any traditional pottery villages (though perhaps there were potters around here too, in the heyday of this local craft?) some are suggesting that the shards found along Nadi Bay are imports from the Sigatoka river valley, carted into our area in truckloads of white beach sand brought in from the Sigatoka Sand Dunes during the 1990s, to beautify the hotels built on the reclaimed mangrove swamps of Denarau Island...  If anyone can shed some light on this little local mystery, please let me know!

"Kuro Ni Viti" from Nakabuta Pottery Village near Sigatoka.  These earthenware cooking pots are made
by a modern day Fijian potter using traditional forming and firing methods.

EMPOWERING THE PACIFIC'S CREATIVE COMMUNITIES

I have just come back from a four-day workshop for Cultural Producers in the South Pacific - a fascinating gathering of musicians, visual artists, craftspeople, fashion designers, and dancers from around our region.  The focus of the presentations and lively discussions that filled the program was on how to empower practitioners in these fields, often working in relative isolation with little visibility and support, to grow their creative enterprises and overcome the fragmentation that exists. 

Inspiring encounters with creative individuals who are often working against enormous odds to follow their dreams and make a living for themselves and their communities from their talents, were the highlight of my week in our capital city.  These included a woodblock printer from the Solomon Islands who makes his own paper from banana tree trunks, using an old exercise bike, converted to double up as a blender, a painter from Vanuatu who creates original designs based on tribal motifs, using paper made from the bark of banyan trees as her canvas, digital artists from Papua New Guinea, a ukelele maker from the Cook Islands, and a mother of six from Samoa who has grown her own handicraft retail business from early, inventive beginnings creating wall-hangings from natural fibers.

I have returned to Nadi refreshed and challenged, excited about the potential our island-based creative enterprises and networks have, in terms of contributing to the cultural vibrancy and economic well-being of Pacific communities....

Participants in the Suva-based workshop Feb 7th to 10th, 2012

WADING WITH SHARKS

I have lived in Fiji for over twenty years, doing my fair share of swimming and snorkelling - always aware that an eventual encounter with a live shark, in the wild, was probably inevitable...  Not that I was looking forward to the occasion!

My husband, Ron, who comes from a small seaside village on an island north of here called Taveuni, is a member of the Matapule tribe, a traditional clan that has as its totem a sea turtle.  Tribes in Fiji each have their traditional roles - warriors, boat-makers, hunters, builders, sailors, and so on.  The Matapule are traditionally known as fishermen, and as such, have a close affinity to the sea.  According to ancient legends, still very much alive in the minds of most Fijians, Ron's people were given special protection by Dakuwaqa, a sea-monster god who often took the form of a shark.  This close affinity between man and beast means, even to this day, that members of the Matapule clan believe they will never be attacked by a shark.  I am hoping that the descendents of Dakuwaqa will take into account my marriage certificate, and keep all encounters with me to a friendly nature too!!

I can now boast of having met my first wild sharks!  And yes, I have lived to tell the tale!  Actually, these were baby Blacktip sharks -not much more than a couple of feet long, as in the photo above.  There were several of them, swimming very close to the shore of Bounty Island, a small coral atoll not far from where we live.  My children and I spent a couple of days here recently.  Spotting the beige-colored sharks with their distinctive black fin tips became a daily highlight of our trip.  If we stood very quietly in the knee-deep water, they would swim right up to us, darting away just before we could touch them!  Apparently, baby Blacktips swim close inland for self protection until they are big enough to ward off cannibalistic attacks from adults of their own genus...

A campaign to create a national shark sanctuary in Fijian waters is currently gaining momentum locally, in the face of wasteful and abusive culling of sharks, in order to supply the lucrative shark fin trade fueled by demand from Chinese merchants.   For more information about saving these key players in marine ecology, visit http://www.coral.org/sharks

 A shark features in some sea-life murals I painted in acrylics on board

STRANDED BY FLOOD WATER

This has been the week of THE FLOOD!  It rained all Sunday night, and by morning the power was cut, and our road was submerged under a meter of water at the lowest places.  The Nadi River, just a cane field or two away from our neighborhood,  had broken its banks, and brown, swirling water was backing up through large areas of the river plain, causing havoc in countless homes and farmsteads,  and surging through the shopping precinct of Nadi Town.  Our home is on a small rise; thankfully the water did not get as far as our yard.  But it rained almost non-stop for the next two days, turning several areas of Fiji's main island into national disaster zones. Many families around us have lost the contents of their home and the crops in their fields.

Here are a few photos taken in our neighbourhood during the three-day flood: