 What to say about Reggie Meredith ....Siapo artist (ancestral Samoan bark cloth art), performer, dancer, singer, fine arts teacher, visual artist... her bio is too short to encompass the breadth of who she is, but it's a start: Reggie Meredith is a Professor of Arts, at American Samoa Community College and also a fourth generation Siapo maker. She has traveled the globe promoting the art of Siapo and has been a guiding force to keep the art alive. She lives in Tutuila, Amerika Samoa. More about Siapo here For inquiries about her work, please email her at [email protected] Connecting with her is one of the truest gifts of my time in Amerika Samoa. SIAPOS by Reggie Meredith It's fitting I spend my last day in Amerika Samoa with her, in her studio, listening, sharing, collaborating on helping her develop a performance she is creating on embodying siapo... What to say about deep rivers... What to say about the deep rivers of art and performance, story and song that run in her.. best to show you her pounding the bark of the u'a, the paper mulberry tree
best to share a short audio of her performance text (I tell her that I am dreaming of her performing this as a longer solo play - along with The Good Manners of Colonized Subjects as part of a women's solo festival I want to curate in the future: the voices of indigenous women of art, fear, colonization liberation celebration, strength The dream is to do it next year,,, I see it, she says, and I too see it) best to share a poem about her.... ... and the Sunday I also spent with her and her husband Su'a, a master tattoo artist and their friends. we shared toana'i the Sunday afternoon lunch.  That day, Reggie performed excerpts of another short performance she had done inspired by the origins of tattoo, the first sight of the Samoans, That day, I began to hear the story of so many origins. All this inspired the poem....  tattoo instruments of Su'a   from Siapo, Bark Cloth Art of Samoa, an oral history by Mary J Pritchard, Reggie's aunt and teacher. Reggie learned siapo from Mary and her sister Marilyn. and finally, best to share an interview with Reggie... about connections, creativity and what matters to her now, here.... (in the interview, we reference how we met last year, when I shared excerpts from The Good Manners at American Samoa Community College Reggie wrote a moving response to seeing it)  this is a beautiful record of my last day, this time, this trip, in Amerika Samoa. in my voice, I hear the blessings of faraway being close, of following what calls, of connections of heart and art, in time and out of time, and how much it matters to cultivate and celebrate the story only you can tell, how at peace I am when I spend time with kindred spirits who feel the fullness of their story and live it, sing it, dance it.... this, to me, is revolution, one voice one dance at a time together we create a network of resonance and healing like that así aisa faafetai tele lava, thank you very much to Amerika samoa. I am grateful. I am grateful.  Fatu Siapo by Reggie Meredith
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