A Yank(ee) down-under

The ol' saying from the Wizard of Oz is more than apt here: You just ain't in Kansas anymore, or New York, Sydney or Auckland. Of course I'd never been to Kansas, or Sydney or Auckland, so I couldn't compare for certain. From a hot and steamy August day in Saratoga, mys husband, two small daughters and I packed the last of our worldly belongings and began a 30-hour trek tothe other side of the world. Taking a left at the interneational dateline, we swooped down below the equator to Fiji where it, too, was having a rather hot "winter".

At the university, the initial disappointment over the lack of good equipment and a sophisticated art supply store was overcome by my office second story view. I had left an office two floors underground only to find myself with a fully-windowed corner office on the second floor and a beautiful view of Laucala Bay and the Pacific Ocean, framed by mangos and palm trees. When the depression of leaving friends, family and familiarity would overcome me, the sights and sounds of the waves breaking on the distant reef would provide a soothing comfort to my bruised pride. Of course, adapting to the "slow" pace of the Pacific has meant developing an incredible amount of patience, as well.

But it didn't change the fact that the nearest art supply store was a few thousand miles away. And, as if distance wasn't frustrating enough, the suppliers from overseas would take ages to answer faxed messages, if they did at all, as if any message sent from Fiji was a message from the afterlife ans was better left unanswered.

An early example of patterned masi, Fijian barkcloth, a traditional craft with many symbols and much significance in the Pacific. The frigate bird is depicted in the central motif, along with the overlayed crosses, fish-spines, and floral pattern. Fiji Museum.

Scotch Tape and Paper Clips

After long delays in ordering, shipping and finally receiving the precious art supplies from overseas, I'd finally come to the conclusion that, with only a few exceptions, we could make do without them. I had learned to cope without the fancy trapping of the art industry of the states. And my staff, mostly local native Fijian and Indo-Fijian, who'd never used a pica ruler or a proportional wheel before, thought they should honor these items by keeping them wrapped in their original cellophane and cardboard, and either display them proudly at their crowded workspaces or, better yet, hide them away in a locked file cabinet, out of view of those who might covet these special treasures of the trade. In the meantime, the rubylith sat in a corner gathering dust, an unnecessary luxury in a plain paper world.

By the time the newly purchased 220v handwaxer had given up the ghost (after only three months of hard use), I had long since become accustomed to using scotch tape or glue sticks for paste-up, thinking all the while that my friends at my old job would get quite a chuckle. But the technique was fitting considering the use of plain paper output from the A-4 (8.25" x 11.69") 300 dpi Hewlett Packard laserjet that was our only source for final art from the computer when I arrived in 1991. By late 1993, we were able to purchase a 1200 dpi Unity LaserMaster plain paper typesettter which gave us oversized printouts. Though still a far cry from the high quality Linotronic 300 with 2540 lpi output that I was accustomed to, the new LaserMaster felt like a luxury after having had to adjust my design approach to the simpler equipment available earlier.