These images were developed for a solo exhibition at the Mott College Fine Arts Gallery in 2000. The images were developed as a narrative that had, in part, become very familiar to me as I found myself answering questions from curious colleagues and students about why one would move from upstate New York to the Fiji Islands to Flint, Michigan. The project allowed me to use the digital medium to highlight both a visual and written narrative that explores the stages of transition and the passages one experiences making such dramatic shifts in their culture and environment.
The images were exhibited as if they were pages in a book and thus take on the form of different “chapters.”
Chapter 1: The Job Hunt
1: The Job Hunt “There’s nothing here but an ad for this job in Fiji, wherever the hell that is…”
2: The Crash (1) Our last night in the USA: “It was a major, major reality check. Someone up there must have been saving me for Fiji. …that could have been me …that could have been me …I had barely swerved out of the way…”
3: The Crash (2) “…We had been taking good-bye pictures of friends and our familiar home… I pulled out my camera and took many pictures of the scene… at the hotel, the police borrowed the color film… returning it as promised but with only the family photos… It was three months after our arrival in Fiji before I had the nerve to print the negatives…” “…The tickets sat on the front seat beside me as I drove so excited, literally singing to myself as I headed towards the hotel where my children waited… …they could have been with me… It took the whole night just to stop shaking…”
Chapter 2: The Move
4: The Move – Ballston Lake “We’re celebrating a change of address … to the Fiji Islands in the South Pacific…”
5: The Move – Transition 1 “We’ve arrived! Only30 hrs by air… shell-shocked but the hotel has a beautiful view of the ocean. Take care and send my love to all the ‘guys’…”
6: The Move – Fiji Islands “Thought you’d lose me to the other side of the world. I got here and my stuff is either on a dock in Jersey, or on a boat heading through the Panama Canal…” “We’re adjusting to life here but still don’t have a place to call home yet … the Grand Pacific Hotel is not as grand as it sounds… the room looks like a Chinese laundry with diapers drying all around… no such thing as a laundry mat here.” what have i done…
7: Transition 2 “Oh what materialistic nonsensical Americans we must have looked like when the moving van finally arrived with the contents of our container…all of our worldly possessions. Some confusion over which ship our goods were on lead to our being distraught over the sinking of another ship…the Polynesian Link. Its contents, shipping containers filled with concrete and some food which floated away for the villagers to collect in their small fishing punts. Meanwhile, a slow and miserable customs clerk cannot be rushed. We looked dutifully woeful and applied light pressure from a mutual ‘friend’ who spoke on our behalf. Finally, we signed a paper guaranteeing that all of these items were indeed ours, our heads still shaking over the scene when the container was opened and the contents of a toy box spilled onto the warehouse floor…”
Chapter 3: Undersea Wilderness
8: Undersea Wilderness Experience “the life giving source…”
9: Undersea 2 “I could feel the water rushing against my cheeks, my fingers clinging tightly to the antler coral at the end of my outstretched arms. the current was strong, pullingmy body in a desperate effort to relieve me of my grip. But the rush was more than just water.” “It pulsed through me like the life-giving source that it was as I hung suspended in time over the centre of the coral bommie, only 18 feet below the surface of the sparkling ocean waves.”
10: Undersea 3 “Surrounding me, schools of thousands of fish in a multi-colored ballet, dancing in the water’s rush, appearing to be swimming still.” “The current would not carry them away. my mind drifted with them and I opened my eyes to see streams of sunlight pouring through the plankton-filled waters…”
11: Undersea 4 “Music swept through me, ‘This Island Earth’ of melodies and rich harmonies I had come to cherish, a gift from a dear friend.” The fish danced, trevally, skipjacks, damsels, and clownfish. We all danced in an andante suite as the sun and ocean spread their energy across our souls.” it was as if i had met God. 9 Oct. 1992, Friday, 9:30 pm aboard the Pacific Nomad somewhere near Fiji…
Chapter 4: Immersion
12: Immersion 1 Sigatoka Sand Dunes
13: Immersion 2 War Bure ~ homage to Wati
14: Immersion 3 “Thump, thump. Thump, thump. It surrounds you and at first you are uncertain as to where the sound is emanating from… …serious, yet lighthearted, they perform their mystical task.” making masi…
15: Immersion 4 masi symbols…
16: Immersion 5 Fiji textures…
17: Immersion 6 “…one of the most distinctive artforms of Oceania is painted barkcloth, called masi in Fiji which also is the name of the tree from which it is made. Though practiced in many other parts of the Pacific, the barkcloth of Fiji is still highly sought after by collectors for its intricate designs and detailed patterns. Primarily manufactured for clothing, masi is iyau, a property of value for trade or ceremony. In contemporary Fiji, artists and designers have adapted many of the motifs and styles used in masi for printed cloth, fashion and interior design. The general process of manufacturing barkcloth is described by the Fiji Museum as follows: Paper Mulberrry trees about one to two years old are cut down and stripped of their bark. The green outer layer is stripped from the inner white layer. This white layer is then soaked in water and … bark is beaten with a mallet (ike) across a large wooden anvil … wider. depending on its use, it would be beaten to a fner …for clothing or to wrap babies. Also depending on its use, …beaten together to make a wider sheet. Or, alternatively…and glued to each other using the gum of a tree. The…white before applying the decoration. In other uses, … to give it an overall yellow or brown color base. Once prepared, there are two basic methods of …” a thesis…
Chapter 5: TamTamedia
18: TamTamedia 1 media musings under a tamtam… “ The tam tam looks down upon me with its weathered face and large round orbs. ‘Could it be,’ he asks, ‘that the questions have become too difficult to answer?’” …a cultural multimedia?
19: TamTamedia 2 “He continues: ‘When my time was, I was both caller to task, and the cultural multimedia… There was no distance beyond the sounds of my drum… Before, in my time, the power to drive our thoughts came from within our hearts, from within our surroundings… No need for wires to connect us… we already were connected. in thought, in our goals, in our hearts…’” what am i a party to?
20: TamTamedia 3 “…so now he looks down on me… and i feel his slowly turning head, shaking in disappointment a the predicament i feel party to… The lure of technology can drag us away, like a fly on a stream. It can cloud our thoughts with its fuzzy logic. It can lead us to forget that which we already had the means to do well. The further away we are carried, the closer we come to realizing how important it was, that which we left behind. That, to which we long to return…” no high-tech support…
21: TamTamedia 4 “multimedia? What does that mean to one who washes in the stream, hunts in the woods, and gathers the family by firelight. many miles from the electric trappings of a city… His multimedia is the tapping of the toddie for his wine… the pounding of the mallets for the tapa… the dreamtime he paints with pigments ground from the earth. no electricity, no high-tech support. no batteries required… …he tells me: ‘maybe you are not lost… afterall.’” …a different drum.
Chapter 6: From Fiji to Flint
22: Fiji to Flint 1 from Fiji to Flint…a new cultural encounter
23: Fiji to Flint 2 “My spirit was carried across miles of ocean from a sea of islands to islands of a different kind… Autofactories sit like independent island nations where many rush. Where once my soul was soothed and teased by the constant lapping of waves against the seawall, an urgency overtakes me with waves of autos, trucks and miles of highways to carry it across the great sea of land that now surrounds me.”
Chapter 7: Christmas in Flint 1998
24: Christmas in Flint 1998 – 1 from Fiji to Flint…a new cultural encounter
25: Christmas in Flint 1998 – 2 “There is a spirit that takes me through the year to this place in time… where giving brings and sharing grows and hearts combine. Where love expressed in a gentle smile… a sparkle shines in a candle’s eye… these hopes of mine… A breath of the promise of peace… to fill all hearts of mankind. a wish to all, from this place in time.”
Chapter 8: A Cultural Gavotte
Mara Jevera Fulmer 