In this final section I wanted to share a place I have always found refuge in amidst intense moments of grief. Ever since I was younger, I always crafted jewelry. It was one of my first mediums of art. I started making macrame friendship bracelets, wove belts on looms, strung and knotted beaded bracelets. I would make adornments for people I longed to have intimacy with. I made them as a way to show love for myself. One of the first adornments I made helped me to come to terms with being Queer and Gela'. A belt I wove on a loom under the instruction of my art teacher Terry Reffell.
Terry was a very talented artist and potter. She was great cook too. I learned much of my basic art skills from her and some great cooking ones as well. She always pushed me to think outside of the box with my art. She made me paint, draw, sculpt, study art history, and sometimes craft. She gave me the space I needed to express my Queerness through art. She held me at times when my mental health got the best of me. You see even though Terry was White, she pushed me to think about art as a healing space. A space to escape the darkest pits where my mental health was imbalanced.
Terry pushed me to take concepts from crafting and apply them to my sculpting practice. Her endearing love as a mentor pushed me to explore how to make wearable adornments into large sculptural installments.For one of my final projects for my art portfolio for her class I created a hanging sculptural installation of a Juzu, a Japanese prayer bracelet. An spiritual adornment my mother gifted me when I struggled with my mental health in high school so that I could carry her love with me everyday.
Terry also always showed up to help us raise money for the American Cancer Society. She taught us to tie-dye t-shirts to raise money at the Relay for Life walk. She helped build sets for our open mic fundraisers, "Cafe Knight", and helped us decorate . She helped me to imagine a futurities from within. Futurities I thought were nearly impossible in those moments of intense grief after I came out to my parents. The same year my Uncle and nephew passed from cancer. She pushed me to express my grief through art. I don't know where those sculptural pieces I made with her went, but here is a performance from one of those events.
When I was a teenager I was an amateur cover artist. I often get teased about the number of times I sang "Sunday Morning" by Maroon 5 at Cafe Knight and other school events. To be fair, it was one of my favorite songs growing up. In attempt to no longer be known by that song I sang "Everybody Talks" by the Neon Trees with my band the Melona Bars at our Burger Bistro Cafe Knight (though I probably did sing Sunday Morning that night too so that I could fill in space when there were no performers). I share this video as a way to honor Terry's legacy as my mentor and to honor a younger version of me who walked with those intense moments of grief.
Terry's mentorship is something I always carry with me. She taught me to create art with intention. Even today as I create contemporary pieces of wearable art, what I deem Re(gela')lia. Contemporary indigenous adornments (though much of what we wear is contemporary) often fuses my mother and father's cultural heritages. For example, I made a Juzu long ago with Byakko (the white celestial tiger) and orange spondylous adorned with opalite, bone, and a rose quartz cherry blossom. This adornment I wear everyday because it represents the love and intimacy my mom and dad shared through their own cultural practices. It roots me in ways that you can only feel by having a piece of home with you in your heart. My mom cherished this photo tenderly in a small frame in our family home. She wears a kimono with hearts on it and my dad wears a Mwarmwar and island print shirt. Their love was always legendary to me. I only hope that I can find love in my life as fulfilling and beautiful as the love they shared cherished in my Mom's memories.
Terry unexpectedly passed a few years ago, right before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. She, like the many other non-CHamoru mentors that helped me come to terms with being Queer, are, as Teresia Teaiwa puts it, the ancestors I get to choose. By encouraging me to be creative, Terry showed me how to redirect my energy towards creative outlets for healing. She edited my college essays. She wrote me letters of recommendation for college. She helped me find a way out of a place where I felt unsafe, a place where I felt like I didn't belong, a place where I felt like I couldn't be liberated, a place I was supposed to be able to call home.
At the time I did not label my art as a cultural practice because there was nothing necessarily cultural about it. In fact I made more pieces that took from my genealogical and spiritual connections to Japan. Today I know that this was incorrect. Those formative moments allowed me to navigate my mental wellbeing in a highly conservative cultural space that made Guåhan unsafe for Queer youth. Between my visual and my musical art, I generated a new route for voyaging. Towards a place of refuge within my embodied relations to all of my geneaologies and ancestors. Between rejection of a proposal to establish a gay straight alliance at my high school, Archbishop Anthony Apuron's crusade to label LGBT people as inherent evil, or the Church's vicegrip on government affairs through its close and some corrupt relationship with legislative and gubernatorial candidates, it was stressful to grow up on Guåhan and feel like I didn't had space to exist as a Gela', as a Queer CHamoru kid. There were other moments, fleeting youthful loves that afforded me that space, but leaving home has been healing for me in ways that I don't think I could have accomplished if I had stayed. But I long for that space so that I can return home. But maybe home is a place within.
I designed the following set of of adornments to reflect grief in i tano, i tasi, yan i langet, The land, sea, and sky. Terry always told me crafting wasn't art. I disagreed with her. It can be combined to create fashion and fashion is art. Re(gela')lia is art. They serve Indigidudos Realness. These pieces size sculpture down to be wearable pieces of art. Three Earrings: A Guma', in the traditional style, held up by spondylous latte stones with ancestral skulls representing our deceased loved ones remains whose bones were historically buried below our homes. The skulls of our ancestors were once used in our spiritual practices. The two other earrings represent the sea below and the sky and cosmos above. The water earring taking inspiration from flowing ocean currents, the decaying and medicinal forces of water. Water is our first medicine in our mother's wombs and when buried in the ocean our last. The sky earring taking inspiration from galaxies, celestial bodies, and stars. Places where our ancestors may have come from and where our oldest ancestors exist. I think of these places as space where our Queer indigenous ancestors travel to and from. Places where we will eventually travel unbounded by flesh and bones once our time on "this canoe we call earth" has ended. Spaces that our ancestors communicate with us from, sharing their knowledge and wisdom. Places of grief. Places of joy. Places of collective healing. Places where stars exist to show us our path forward, into future, guiding us in the present and connecting us to our past.
