Following Bula into the Blue

During a trip to Fiji, I took a day trip to a small private island owned by a Fijian family.  They picked us up by boat and brought us to the island, where they had a small hut, served us ceremonial kava, and prepared a barbecue.  They were our hosts for the day.

While there, I went out into the water with a Fijian dive master named Bula.  It was just the two of us.  At first, the water was shallow filled with very surreal blue sea stars.  Then, as we swam farther out, the bottom suddenly dropped away into an intense depth.  I found it intimidating, even though I felt safe with him.  Below us were coral heads as large as Volkswagen beetles—nothing like any I had seen before.

At one point, Bula dove down and disappeared into the dark water.  I waited for him to come back up, but I couldn't see him.  He had swum off to the side of the reef and gone into an underwater cave and surfaced behind me.  He scared me and we laughed about it!

Bula encouraged me to make a free dive of my own.  I gave him my underwater camera, dove down, and he took a photograph of me in the water.  It was an amazing once-in-a-lifetime experience.

The photograph Bula took of my dive in Fiji—the starting point for Surface. 

That photograph became the starting point for Surface.  It shows me descending, but when I created the artwork, I chose to imagine the other half of the dive: the return upward, just before reaching the air.

I made Surface entirely in colored pencil, building layers of bubbles, light, and water around the figure.  The work belongs to my Women in the Water series, where real moments in the water become something more open to interpretation.

When I look at Surface, I remember the vastness below me, Bula's encouragement, and the feeling of making that dive.  Someone else may see an entirely different story in it.  That's one of the things I love about art.