NEW DISPLAY EXHIBITS SCIENCE AND CULTURE

BY MAYRA MARTINEZ
Editor

The Rosenberg library exhibit will be on display until mid-September and describes the Polynesian Diaspora and the Asian Pacific Island community in the Bay Area. MELISSA MA / GUARDSMAN

For students who don’t want to go far for some culture and cool exhibits, two Ocean campus exhibits provide just that this month.

The Rosenberg Library presents "Tapa, the Cloth That Binds Us: Stories from the Oceanic Diaspora.” The show is a mixed media installation that gives a glimpse into Polynesian and Asian Pacific Island culture and into the lives of the members of the younger generations.

On display on the second floor of the library is a collage of black and white photos of older Islanders mixed with colorful tapa cloths and the photos and words of the new generation.

Tapa cloth is a cloth made out of bark, usually from paper mulberry trees, primarily in the Pacific islands of Tonga, Samoa and Hawaii.

Tapa cloths are usually painted in geometrical patterns with repeated motifs such as fish and plants and are still often worn on formal occasions like weddings and celebrations and given as gifts. They are also highly prized for their decorative value and are often hung on walls.

The exhibit includes migration stories, poetry and personal photos as well as contemporary art by Pacific Islander artists. City College students contributed some powerful poetry dealing with the challenging issues that the newer generations face in finding a balance between the history of the Old World they came from and the American community to which they now belong.

"It's a great show. I think it's one of the best, if not the best, we've had in the library," said Library Exhibition Curator Kate Connell.

One poem in particular by John Tunui talks about the power of being bicultural, embracing and belonging to both communities and living in the middle between both communities — ideas that many American children of immigrant parents can relate to.

Also on Ocean Campus, in the Science building, lie the answers to some important questions about the beginning of life on Earth.

"The Story of Life and Time" is an ongoing exhibit in two windows of the fossil gallery in the Science building’s south basement, with plans to expand it to a walk-through exhibit.

Panels donated from the California Academy of Sciences explain how scientists get the absolute geologic age of rocks and fossils by measuring the radioactive elements found in them. The panels follow the rise of life from single-celled organisms for the first two billion years of the earth to 430 million years ago when life forms moved onto land.

The California Academy of Sciences also contributed the long-term use of some very special fossils, including a cast of a dilophosaurus, which is related to the infamous tyrannosaurus rex.

e-mail: a_e@theguardsman.com

ENTERTAINMENT