The lines that runs through the work are known as orriseegé (paths/pathways) and provide a compositional framework for the design. The main design is Si’hai’u’e, representing the fruit of the Sihe tree. Sihe is a yellow fruit found in the rainforest and often eaten by cassowaries. In the time of the Ancestors during times of tribal warfare, the Ömie male warriors struggled to find food while they were defending their borders in the forest far from their villages so they survived by chewing the sihe fruit, swallowing the juice and then they would spit out the pulp. Stella’s husband Randolph taught her this very old design and tells how it belonged to his mother and grandmother. Very similar designs can be seen on a kukuhone, an Ömie smoking pipe which was collected around 1931 and is now in the collection of the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Randolph and Stella live in Asapa, the neighbouring village to Enjoro where the smoking pipe was collected. (See: Aguirre, Edward; and Beran, Harry, The Art of Oro Province: A Preliminary Typology, The Oceanic Art Society, Sydney 2009, p. 136)

Copyright for the text remains with Ömie Artists Inc.

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