Cinque: April 2008

Here are some photos from a slide show I pieced together for the Daily Titan Web site. The project was posted on April 16.

I had been avoiding the Daily Titan newsroom for a few weeks in order to catch up in my other classes. Finally, I decided to cover this event. Originally I had planned to attend the grand opening of the exhibit, which the title is in the photograph above, and take a few photos then write an article.

A few hours before the opening, I was peeking through a window to get a glimpse of the lighting and spacing situation in the gallery. Another reporter walked by and recognized me then asked if I was the photographer for the event. I informed him of my plans and then he informed me of his. Apparently he expected to write the story because he had pitched the idea a while ago to the same news editor I had pitched the same idea to a couple days before.

That's when I decided to turn the project into a multimedia article. I stayed for a few hours, took a lot of photos and interviewed a few people on a voice recorder. The next day I created the slide show and used the audio from the interviews as sound. You can find the project at www.dailytitan.com. Click on the multimedia link in the column on the left.

Since I originally planned to write the story, I had gathered some information about the event and the pieces showcased in the gallery.

The entire exhibit, from the painting of the walls to the research of the bowls, was created by the students of the museum practicum class (Anthro. 498) and their teacher Julie Lee. The class obtained the pieces from the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana free of charge, according to Lee.

"The objects have never been studied by anyone at the [Bowers] museum and so the research conducted will be new information to add to the [Bowers] museum's object files," Lee wrote in an e-mail. "The students visited the museum to look at the bowls themselves, they conducted hours of research by looking at any information regarding New Guinea ceramics and other art objects, styles and motifs from the Sawos group and surrounding areas of the East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea."

Lee said to the best of their knowledge, this exhibit is the first to focus solely on a collection of bowls from the Sawos people. The exhibit divides the pieces into topics like iconography, trade, tools, techniques, gender roles and food. There are thirty-two bowls on display along with a video presentation regarding the creation and coiling of the bowls by Nobuhito Nishigawara, an assistant professor of art at CSUF.

While researching the Sawos people, I stumbled across the Web site journal of Dr. John Tyman (www.brandonu.ca/tyman/sawos/journal/) who happened to live with the Sawos people of the Torembi village in 1980-82 and then again in 1994.

"The Sawos are a generous and, till recently, independent people who have survived as hunter-gatherers for centuries but are faced now with the change-induced traumas that are common to indigenous peoples worldwide," Tyman wrote in an e-mail. "The nearest thing to a 'bowl' I can remember seeing was the broad wock-like platter used to make sago pancakes, but I never saw these being made,nor do I know if they make them or trade/buy them.

"All the other containers, as I remember, were derived from forest products: but my experience of daily life in their villages is limited to the period from 1980-82 and so they may have produced a range of clay bowls in the years before cooking pots and the like could be bought from the store."

The exhibit runs through June and is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Entry is free, but the teaching museum (McCarthy Hall RM 426) excepts donations.