PALAPALA

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"Pala" is the Hawaiian word for "print" or "stamp". "PalaPala" is this action repeated over and over, a many-layered and multi-patterned process that was used throughout Polynesia in the making and beating of tapa cloth. A double print: both from the carved imprint of the beater on the damp barkcloth, and later the dyed, stamped images.

PalaPala is also the adaption of the western name "Barbara", into the Hawaiian language, and was adapted as the name for my first business- a clothing line of hand-printed t-shirts.

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This section brings together works that visually and metaphorically repeat themselves. Printmaking, pattern, waves, water, oceans are all cyclical processes that recycle and rain down in new chemical and physical formations. Much of the work on plastic pollution and other land-to-sea environmental issues echo this repetition of our connectness to the element of water, gravity, and the natural world. 

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