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The inspiration for these cups came from my experience living on the island of Pohnpei, Micronesia. Although many cultural rituals are being lost with mainstream American influence, the Sakau ritual has held up against the test of time. Similar to kava in Polynesia, Sakau is a root that is pound on a stone slab and served in a coconut shell. It is sacred to these cultures, and plays a significant role in feasts, marriages, accepting and receiving forgiveness, community gatherings, and other aspects of life.
My cups represent two important pieces of this ritual, the pounding stone and the coconut. Instead of representing brown coconut shells in my cups however, I made a mold of a small coconut with the husk still on and developed glazes that refer to the three colors of tropical coconuts I know to exist: green, yellow, and orange. I find it interesting that many people (not from southern Florida) are not aware of what a coconut looks like straight off the tree, or what beautiful colors they can be. In order to create the most genuine cups, I traveled to Homestead, Florida to collect coconuts. The stones used on Pohnpei are primarily basalt, so after moving to Utah I found a large basalt deposit in the Black Rock Desert outside of Fillmore Utah. I gathered the best rocks I could and made molds with basalt texture. |