EDIT: On our journey we have learnt something fascinating that, when you read the rest of our blog about dots below, couldn’t be more fitting. You see we have learnt the kupu for a dot – Ira. However Ira doesn’t only mean dot, it also means your genes or life principal. Your ira is what links you to your whakapapa, to your tupuna. Your Ira is integral to who you came from and who you are today.
So you see we knew these Ira, or dots, we were making were important and now, in addition to all the things below, Ira also symbolise our connection to our tupuna and the essence of who we are – how cool is that?
And just before you launch on in to our Ira/Dot blog we also want to let you know that Ira are the taonga we are carving for every tamariki in care in Aotearoa. I won’t go in to too much detail as you can read all about it HERE. Suffice to say this is a thing, we are doing it and now we know the Māori kupu for dots our certainty that these were the right taonga for this kaupapa all makes so much more sense!
Anyway, I shall leave you with these updates and let you read on my friend…..
We are all about the dots around here lately. Beautiful, perfect, simple dots.
Dots carved from the earth and so connecting you with Papatūānuku. Dots carved from pounamu, so connecting upi with your Māori history and tupuna. Dots, each one with its own character and so reminding us just how unique you are. Dots from minerals that have been a part of your universe since, well, the day dot, and so reminding you of your place in the big picture of life.
It’s all about the dots. And in our little whanau we all wear our dots – so connecting us to each other as we go about our day.
These dots we are making come from the centre of our work; rings, pendants, various other forms of creativity where a hole must be created. Because pounamu is a precious taonga and a finite resource we never throw one single itty bitty piece away. It is all kept safe just waiting for the day when inspiration strikes and we know what to create with those tiny bits.
So we bring you these new creations from the depth of our creativity and the bottom of our hearts. Because when you think about it where would the world be without dots?….
- Dots connect us with the universe as the sparkling lights from distant stars;
These same dots guided our tupuna over vast distances around the globe.
- Dots can make three letters mean something much greater, C.I.A. Or change their sound entirely, Noel – Noël.
- Dots allow the blind to read…
- and the silenced to communicate
- We see our beautiful world through the dark dots of our Iris.
- A dot brings us the light of the sun while another dot moves the tides.
- Music can be communicated in dots.
- Dots let us know when a thought is finished.
- One dot on its own is a singular beauty of colour and simplicity and if you keep bringing those dots together,
they will eventually make a whole new creation…..
(A Sunday afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte – Georges Seurat)
And, you know, we are all dots. Every one of us a singular dot, just like in a Seurat painting. Literally, every single one of us begins life as the dot of an egg in our mother’s womb.
Unique and beautiful and complete in our own right, growing from a single dot.
Then, when we bring our dotiness together, a bigger picture is created. A whanau, a hapu, an iwi. Communities of people creating something beautiful.
Because dots are like that, gorgeous on their own, and a whole new kind of beautiful when they are with others. To quote artist Yayoi Kusama reflection on the universal dots… “in the universe, there is the sun, the moon, the earth and hundreds of millions of stars.” Dots are all around us, separate but never alone. In the same way when we live in harmony with one another, side by side or layer upon layer, our individual colours work together to create something beautiful together. And while from far away it might look like we are all broad brush strokes, if you take one of us away it would be easily seen that a dot is missing. There is an absence of colour, an emptiness, a blank dot on the canvas. We are all an essential part of the big picture, filling in the dots.
And you know when you really start thinking about it, even bigger then that is connecting the dots of our past, our tupuna, our ancestors, to understand who we are today. We are a small dot on the map of human history. We are a summary of our parts, all those dots coming together to make the complete picture of who we are.
But I digress, I have begun to wax lyrical about our love of the dot and all it symbolises. We are in love with the dot. In our little whanau we all wear them. We have friends afar that wear them now too so that we can always be connected by the dots. Dots are a force of nature. So I am going to leave you with a link to these beautiful dots on our website and this quote from Steve Jobs, so you can connect the dots…
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
