Easter Island Wood Carvings
woodcarvings on Easter IslandShe has always liked reading, but as a kid she never thought of it as a sideline. Soon I realised that I needed a text that matched the images, and the more I write, the more I realised that I liked to write as much as or more than draft.
Maybe that's why so many of my textbooks deal with science." Today Arnold is the award-winning writer of more than 100 children's novels. Living in Los Angeles with her neuro-scientist husband, she is teaching at UCLA Extension.
The Moai Carvers of Easter Island work for the Tapati Festival (PHOTOS)
Approximately 15 mins after the sculpture contest in Hanga Roa, the only city on Easter Island, it became clear which of the artisans would be the first to cross the finishing line. He had already carved the general, recognisable form of the island's hallmark, the mai, out of his lithograf. Beside him, a man who wore a little more than a cord for a loincloth was still fighting to break off the outside of his tile.
Things are getting worse and less competitive. When others chopped away at their own carvings in the shadow of a baldachin spanned between the palms, a multitude arose. It was not an artworkshop, but part of the island's yearly Tapati Festival, a festival of indigenous people.
Naturally, the famed monumental sculptures were not handcrafted here on a bright afternoons. One of the three volcanos that make up this small island more than 2,000 leagues off the Chilean coastline, Rano Raraku, was cut by the rock. The crowds during Monday's Monday moon-carvings testified that the attraction of Polish handicrafts is almost universally, with US, UK, Japanese as well as Latin Americans attending, alongside natives who cheered on their neighbours and in some cases marvelled at the woodcarving of their colleagues Rapanui.
At one point in time it was less a contest than a cooperation, a ceremony of craftsmanship over a winner. One younger man, who worked quickly with his rock, decelerated his pace to help another wood engraver with his work. An older rival, adorned with a ceramic headgear and few other robes, chopped his pad until he paused to think about his transistor, sat near it before he covered it with a cap to protect it from falling rocks.
Obviously, the first price winner who would have run away if it had been just a matter of timing gave a small chunk of rock to a few kids near there so they could try to knock out their own smaller mai. The audience was thrilled when the smell of wooden barbecues in the vicinity fills the atmosphere.
Does traditionally used forms have more value than modern interpretation of the mai? Do I get points for woodcarving in tradition? There were few responses, but the camera footage was abundant, whether the modest mobile telephone objective or the telephone photo on the five-digit Rigg of a nosy Japan tourists pointing non-apologetically at a man who was able to cut vulcanic rock with a razor-sharp tool.
When the carvings went on, it became clear that it did not matter who "won". Its carvings, the rivalry, the brotherhood it brings forth and the photographs and reminiscences it evokes are a reminder to everyone that the people of the island are still here and still artistic.