Aleki Prescott, Tonga’s leading

wood sculptor

Interviewed by MARJORIE CROCOMBE

M.C.: How did you get started as a professional wood sculptor?

A.P.: One day I was sitting on the wharf and I saw a ship sailing in from Haapai with an angel carved on the front. I thought I’d like to carve one like that. I had been teaching carving at Tupou College, but not very well, and that angel gave me new ideas.

When I left Tupou College I worked for the Tonga Produce Board and sometimes I didn’t like the way I was treated and I hated to work like that. So I left the job and when I came home I asked God to give me a talent that I could use all by myself to make me free.

Then I went and worked at the government market.

The manager, an American, went to Hawaii and a Tongan man took charge of the market. He told me to leave the work and let his son do it. I was very sad because I did no wrong.

I came home, held the Bible in my hands, and asked God, “Can you help me? Give me a real talent I can use and you can make me free.”

The day after that prayer I sat on my bed and I heard someone knocking on the door. A lady came and said she had been thinking about who could do the carving and handicrafts that Queen Salote had ordered the whole of Tonga to revive—the art that was destroyed in the 1830 s.

I told the lady, “All right, I’m going to carve what you want”. So I started to carve the dove, the bird sent from the Ark of Noah in the Bible to bring the leaves of peace. And the next carving was the Red Indian Chief Makua.

M.C.: Why did you choose a Red Indian?

A.P.: I saw it in the picture show, at the films. I remembered his face. It was an easy face to remem ber. I didn’t have a photo. 1 just remembered his face but when I carved it, it looked like that. The children said, “Look, look at Makua, the chief of the Red Indians”.

The first prize went to the Dove and the second to Makua. The Queen put them in the palace and then she sent them to her Tongan home called Atalanga in Auckland.

After that a lady from Australia wanted me to carve a hula girl. I did it and that lady put my name in the Weekly Times and I got a thousand letters from people asking me to send price lists, dolls and so on. But I hated to carve to sell at that time because I wanted to study for a few more years more about sculpture.

I wanted to study by myself, M.C.: How do you get ideas of what to carve?

A.P.: I sit and think for a long time. I belong to a group teaching dance, lakalaka. I’m one of the teachers of dance. That’s why I’ve got a home, a piece of land given by the chief of Kolomotu’a because I’m the youngest dancer. When I carve I like to use the move ments from the dance. But since my accident I hurt my left arm. That spoilt my dance.

M.C.; Before your accident you used both hands for carving, but now you can only use one. It must be harder to carve with one hand.

A.P.: Well I don’t like to say I have any problem because I know now I’m coming to another step in my sculpture. Now 1 know 1 can work with one arm and I have to do better with one arm.

M.C.: How did you come to be carving at the Uni versity of the South Pacific?

A.P.: I was on my way to Australia. I told the King of Tonga 1 was going to Australia to look for ancient Tongan carvings we lost between 1830 and 1895. Some of them are in museums there. Sione Tupouniua came to me twice, and asked if I would come and do some carvings at USP just as Pilioko did with his paintings.

M.C.: Aleki, how did you come to choose this living tree which was blown over by Hurricane Bebe?

A.P.: I really like the natural art of this tree. I never worked on such deep roots before. I’ve tried small roots before, but I know that natural art is a modem art, yet its from the beginning of the world.

And I believe that up to the end of the world the natural art must be the modem art.

M.C.: What is this carving all about?

A.P.; When I first started here I thought about this tree in the middle of the University of the South Pacific.

The university must be like the people so I’m going to start mixing people here. I don’t know how many different kinds of people there are but these different figures are like the university, different people from all the islands of the Pacific. I am pleased to get the idea from the natural shape of the tree.

Then I put down there, “the light of the world”.

I mean everybody and the whole world needs to turn and this root must have light on it to prove the light is a wonderful thing and accept Jesus as Saviour of the world. So this part with just the arm and the hand with a nail through it is a modern crucifixion.

Down the bottom there on those roots I put two Fijian people, a man and a woman. They’re lifting, that represents Fiji supporting the USP.

M.C.: What about this big projection with the croco dile?

A.P.; That’s a crocodile with a man’s leg sticking out of his mouth. People doing bad things don’t know they are in the favour of Satan. That’s Satan’s big mouth swallowing them. But I put down there the strong fingers, it may be the last of Satan in the world, trying to smash sinners to take them with him.

I put down there the foot print. The clay cannot mix with iron, that’s why today we know some people in the world are of plain colour. I put two colours there. The natural art of the tree has got the white part and the dark part. That means today some people prove the dream of Nebuchadnezar that one day, that’s the last day, the clay can’t mix with the iron. This one here is a baby angel—he’s got a trumpet to warn every body to prepare. Maybe soon will be the time for the end of the world when Jesus will come again.

M.C.: What’s the meaning of the skull there?

A.P.; People have sex, may be some mixing like that happens in all universities in the world. The teenagers, that’s the time they like to be like that. But they can’t keep doing it because sinners are going to suffer death.

This means the skull of death. Everybody is going to die. That’s why I put the skull.

M.C.: What’s all that on top of the skull?

A.P.: That’s the scorpion, that’s a deceiver of the people. Everybody wants to sit on top of everybody.

So people talk friendly to you, but when you go they talk to the others differently, like a scorpion poisoning people. Today nearly everybody is like that.

M.C.; Where did you get the idea of a scorpion?

A.P.: I don’t know, but when 1 put the skull, I wanted to carve the scorpion next to it, near the modern crucifixion. Christ was like this, they put a crown on him, not a real crown, but the bad crown of thorns, like a scorpion.

M.C.: So you get a lot of ideas from the Bible.

A.P.: Yes. That big root there, the biggest root of

the tree, 1 think that root’s duty is to bring more strength to the whole tree, so I have carved all the prime ministers of the South Pacific along it, Ratu Mara of Fiji, Tu’ipelehake of Tonga, Sir Albert Henry of the Cooks, Mata’afa of Western Samoa, the President of Nauru, Hammer Deßoburt, and Michael Somare of New Guinea.

M.C.: Have you done anything as big as this before?

A.P.; No. This is the biggest thing I ever did and I love the natural art. There must be millions of trees all over the world but only this one is like this, that’s why I love this tree. I want to take it to my bedroom and sleep with it. A lot of artists in the world, if they write a poem it is very hard for other people to know the depth of the artists’ words. I’ll put the meaning in the carving.