In the early 90’s i was walking with Maria on a small island in Fiji and we came across someone obviously not local cleaning a boat. A short conversation led to an invitation to visit his nearby humble home a small palm thatched bamboo house a short walk from the beach. Close enough but far enough not to be immediately spotted by passers by and un-observant tourists. It was his home and his studio. He was an artist. Charles Van Sandwyk. An illustrator and story writer.
Some years later I found an article about him in a magazine and an interview where he explained that not long after we had met he was involved in a terrible car accident on the main island of Fiji where he had gone to do some business. It had left him hospitalised for some months and during those months in hospital and on medication he had vivid dreams and one dream in particular he later illustrated. It became a small book titled The Dream Island Of Birds.
Through the same article I learnt that he spent half of his year in Fiji and half in Vancouver Canada where he would often rent empty shops and use them as pop-up galleries to sell his hand printed illustrated books and drawings. I had a friend in Vancouver and I sent her this information and said if she ever came across him or one of his pop up shops to go in and buy something or just say hello.
Shortly after I received a message back from her saying that she had been reading my letter (it was pre-internet time for us) at a bus stop and had turned around to find she was in fact standing in front one of his pop up exhibition spaces and that she had gone in and he was there. She told him our story and he remembered us visiting him. He gave her a signed postcard to send to me which has been on my studio wall for many years. It is a reproduction of a page from The Dream Island Of Birds.
In 2012 I spent a month as an artist in residence for The Artists Village organisation on Pulau Ubin a small island between Singapore and Malaysia. One of the most profound months of my life. I made hours of recordings while there mostly of birds and insects. Pulau Ubin has over 300 resident or passing species of birds. This a mix of some of those recordings, digitally processed, and electronics. My ‘Dream Island Of Birds’. I have chosen as titles for the pieces some of the more exotically named of the 300. They are not recordings of the actual birds named and in fact one track is not of live birds at all but is a dream bird dreamt in the digital realm.
