There wasn’t much time, but they knew they had to do something.

Nga Kaihanga Uku—a contemporary Maori ceramic collective group—was only visiting Guam for the duration of the Festival of the Pacific Arts (FestPac), and Lewis Rifkowitz and Monaeka Flores wanted to collaborate.

“It was all organic,” Flores said. “We never knew the format, but we knew we wanted to do workshops. It was a multi-faceted, multi-pronged consistent approach to come play with clay.”

Co-chairs for FestPac’s architecture, sculpture and pottery sub-committee, Rifkowitz and Flores organized a week-long series of workshops featuring the Nga Kaihanga Uku Maori potters from New Zealand hosted at the University of Guam’s Isla Center for the Arts. The potters include Baye Riddell, Paerau Corneal, Dorothy Waetford, Rhonda Halliday, Carla Ruka, Stevei Houkamau, and Amorangi Hikuroa.

The workshops included an outdoor ceramic studio for potters, ceramic artists, and sculptors and outdoor firing sessions for anyone who wanted to experience creating with clay.

Nearly 300 people from all generations and islands in the Pacific stopped by the Isla Center over the course of the week to get their hands dirty, work with clay, and meet the self-proclaimed “muddies” from New Zealand.

All the while, a beautiful collaboration was forming, said Rifkowitz, as the potters shared their culture and connections were made to perpetuate the practice throughout indigenous island cultures across the Pacific.

Fire It Up

Packing ifit sawdust, oblong pieces of wooden planks, salt and other materials into an old metal drum, Rifkowitz began the labor-intensive process of a sawdust firing on June 17.

Nga Kaihanga Uku requested the UOG professor of art conduct the alternative firing method on the sculptures they left behind—pieces that represent various aspects of their culture and the messages they want to send to the world.

 “With a sawdust firing, we’re trying to replicate a traditional aboriginal firing technique,” Rifkowitz said. “Their art is how they express their culture in clay and their goals are to share their culture, interface with other indigenous clay cultures, and express and represent Maori culture through their art.”

One such piece created by the muddies was an uku, a traditional outside oven much like the Chamorro hotnu. Flores said that everyone that came by the workshops had a hand in helping the New Zealand potters create the special piece, which they left behind to be fired on Guam.

Some of the pieces made and fired over the course of the week were also displayed at the Isla Center’s exhibition Festival of the Pacific Arts 2016 Visual Arts Exhibit: Pottery, Sculpture, and Other Media, which also featured works from Guam, Tonga, New Caledonia, American Samoa, Solomon Islands, Palau, and Australia.

Resurgence

A 2012 graduate from the University of Guam who majored in art, Flores said the only exposure some people get when working with clay is in a classroom setting. Unfortunately, the majority of people won’t revisit that medium for many years if at all once they graduate from UOG.

“For a lot of artists, once they leave the University, they have very limited opportunity to come into contact with clay again,” she said. “It’s not something we all have access to and resources for. People take a class and won’t touch clay ever again, and it’s heartbreaking.”

That’s why creating what they called a “sovereign space for clay people to work together” was so important, Flores said. By collaborating with clay people from around the Pacific, Rifkowitz and Flores laid the foundation to build a network of people whose goal is to share ceramics and clay creation.

“One of our goals of this whole thing was to identify local sources of clay, collaborate with others, and revitalize indigenous clay culture here on Guam,” Flores said.

See photos of the sculptures and workshops.

For more information on the pieces created during the workshop, contact the Isla Center for the Arts at (671) 735-2965/6.