By Michael Robinson, Contributor 
SITTING BESIDE someone who has recently returned from the other side of the world, it's hard to grasp the adventure it must have been. To listen to Jennifer Gibbs tell it, soft-spoken and unassuming as her manner is, it takes a while to really get through to me. But the power of the experience is undeniable as she pieces it together.
In 2002 she was awarded the Commonwealth Arts and Crafts Award from a field of 250 applicants. The award is monetary and the programme is largely self-directed. Given the opportunity to go anywhere outside of her immediate neighbourhood of Commonwealth states, Gibbs chose New Zealand.
While a student at the Edna Manley College (EMC), the
spiral unconsciously found its way into the jewellery student's work. Over time, the shape came to have great meaning to the artist, who eventually researched it for her thesis. To Jennifer, the spiral signifies spiritual enlightenment and growth. Unlike the circle which keeps coming back to the same point, she says, the spiral moves forward with each revolution. "It is an idea that many people from different
cultures and geographies have been drawn to throughout history," says Gibbs, citing her EMC research.
Her connection to this primal shape piqued her interest in the Maori New Zealand's original settlers. Inspired by the shape of a growing fern, the Maori spiral is elongated compared to Gibbs's more spherical version, but they view the shape as
having the same significance. The prevalence of the spiral in the art and culture of these people played a large part in her choice of New Zealand as her host country.
GETTING TO NEW ZEALAND
The unenviable part was
getting there. An excruciating
15-hour plane ride from Los Angeles (which is already eight flight hours away) to New Zealand. During the flight,
passengers are advised to take a break from their TVs every hour or so to avoid embolisms. Nonetheless, she arrived in one piece only to find that November is the beginning of summer on that side of the globe. Schools were closing and apprenticeships were impossible with artists focusing on production for the Christmas season their biggest in terms of sales.
So her first weeks were spent getting a feel for her host
country, visiting art galleries and museums and generally "just seeing things I'd never seen before."
There was more than enough to see in a land that is home to one of the world's oldest
cultures and some of its most breathtaking landscapes. The Lord of the Rings trilogy was shot in New Zealand which, with glaciers, rain forests, geysers and large coastal plains, is still a
collection of islands. New Plymouth, where Gibbs spent about a month working, was the site where The Last Samurai was filmed last year. She laughingly remembers how there was no shortage of stories from the locals about the film's crew and its star Tom Cruise.
EXCHANGED HER SERVICES
Between Auckland and New Plymouth, both on New Zealand's North Island, Jennifer spent several weeks working alongside established jewellers Brian Adam and Rob Wright. She also found time to assist with merchandising at a gift shop, rent a bench and work with the equipment at a goldsmithing school, and exchanged her
services for studio time/tuition at a contemporary jewellery studio.
In what seems like a tireless quest for knowledge, Gibbs also visited with two carvers George Flavell, a Maori sculptor who works in indigenous woods to preserve the story of his
people, and Tony Logan, who showed her how to work with New Zealand jade.
The jade, also known as greenstone, is a different material than the jade with which most of us are familiar and was just one of many new materials added to Jennifer's repertoire while sojourning down under. Working with Brian Adam, she learned how to alloy silver and use precious metal clay along with several metalwork and casting techniques. At Rob Wright's workshop, she worked with titanium, fresh-water pearls and the iridescent paua shell.
A mollusk resembling a barnacle encrusted clam, the shell of the paua has traditionally been used as is for ash trays or trinkets. Rob Wright, says Jennifer, is an artist who specialises in using the paua shell, and the pearls sometimes found therein, as raw material for jewellery. Her penchant for using unconventional materials in creating her own pieces seems to have fuelled her fascination with the possibilities offered by the paua and by extension Jamaica's own conch shell.
Somewhere along the way, Jennifer also attended an art therapy workshop, a beading workshop and a Maori workshop on flax weaving. She visited with a Maori couple at their art gallery (getting a tattoo done in the process) and toured a Maori settlement.
Personally and professionally, it would seem that this intrepid sojourn has had a profound impact on the Jamaican-born Gibbs, who interestingly enough has a BSc in Cognitive Science from the University of Toronto. With the volumes learned there over such a relatively short space of time, New Zealand stands to be more than a Commonwealth award or a collection of stories for the artist.
She has come back, she says, with a new sense of her own power and a drive to be more aggressive in pursuing her markets. "I think the exposure has given me insight into what you really can do on your own." She says the people of New Zealand are not sitting around waiting to see things done; they're doing what they can to make sure it's done.
"It was a feeling I got from nearly everybody I met," she remembers. "Things are possible and it just needs you to start."
With a new-found perspective on ingenuity and the fire of inspiration freshly lit, there is no doubt that interesting times are on the horizon for Gibbs. She is maintaining a positive attitude despite what she considers the inherent frustrations of doing business in Jamaica where the economy is permanently in recession.
Back in Jamaica but in a new place life's spiral continues for Jennifer - ever forward.
