This ipu began as a piece made in the pawehe Niihau tradition of dyeing ipu from the inside out. It involves a long process of scraping designs into the skin of a green living ipu fresh off the vine. Dye is prepared from locally sourced and processed plant dyes and poured inside for several weeks. The dye slowly moves from inside, penetrating the shell through osmosis and eventually revealing the design on its surface. It’s a slow process that feels like living alchemy as elements bind, and crystallize in a soupy brew of biology.
I had used an experimental dye plant, which didn’t take to the process very well. The faint designs were barely visible. I had used freshly crushed indigo leaves blended with rain water, hoping to get a deep blue. The color of blue was to represent the waters of nourishment, transformation, and deep well of emotion and love.
At that point, countless hours had already gone into the process, and so it was unfortunately disappointing when it didn’t come through the way I had hoped. Rather than tossing it out, I decided to go over the original design with acrylic paint to bring the motifs back to life in bright colors. I went back to the original focus of blue, adding highlights of gold and silver, soul and spirit.
I made the carving just after my father took the journey. The transition of a lifetime weaves a multidimensional story binding and expanding into all the threads of its own spinning creativity. Consciousness moves across space and time, across oceans and calls to home and gathering.
Synchronicities amplified dreams and waking experience. It was a sacred time shared with family in which grief and remembrance was the ritual that brought together circles of laughter and community, binding new weavings as circles open and close and transform.
There is an opening in the motifs that speaks of stars. There are sharks teeth referring to aumakua, as every doorway has a guardian. There are feathers that give flight to spirit. The feathers are beloved as life.
The vessel of the ipu grown from the Earth is a shell. A container for a purpose, as the body is a shell for life. Grief is a powerful teacher and healer. Beauty brought forth from experience is also a teacher and healer. The glyphs of memory are forever embedded as ike tupuna moves through all generations past, present and future.
