Artwork Detail

Waa'aka': The Bird Who Fell in Love With The Sun tells the story of a beautiful bird who falls in love with Tamet, the sun, and tries to follow him up to the sky. Waa'aka' is written by Cindi Alvitre and illustrated by Carly Lake, and is available at Heyday Publishers. Birthplace of the People: A Tongva Origin Story is a 14-minute 360 virtual reality film which tells the story of Weywot and the creation of the world. The film illustrates the birth of the Tongva people on the site of Puvungna, what is now the California State University, Long Beach campus. Puvungna—which means place of the great gathering—was the site of the world's creation, but also its first death and funeral. This 360 degree VR experience immerses the viewer in the spiritual place of Los Angeles' original inhabitants—in a mythological space that transcends time. By connecting this physical place to its spiritual past, the film is intended to remind us of histories we may have either forgotten, or may have never known. The film is narrated by Cindi Alvitre, Carly Lake produced the artwork using Tilt Brush technology to paint in the 3D virtual space, and Scott Wilson directed and edited the film.

Puvungna Collective consists of three artists: Cindi Alvitre, Scott Wilson, and Carly Lake. In this artistic collaboration Alvitre holds the role of Tongva storyteller, Lake is the visual artist, and Wilson is the cultural anthropologist with a history of developing virtual reality films. Their collective name refers back to Puvungna, the source of inspiration and the site on the campus of Cal State University Long Beach (CSULB) where indigenous community members continue to hold ceremonies. Cindi Alvitre is a mother and grandmother and has been an educator and artist activist for over three decades. She is a descendant of the original inhabitants of Los Angeles & Orange Counties and served as the first woman chair of the Gabrieleno/Tongva Tribal Council. In 1985, she & Lorene Sisquoc co-founded Mother Earth Clan, a collective of Indian women who created a model for cultural and environmental education, with a particular focus on traditional art. In the late 1980s, she co-founded Ti’at Society sharing in the renewal of their ancient maritime practices of the coastal/island Tongva. Cindi is currently NAGPRA Coordinator & Faculty at CSULB American Indian Studies Program. As a cultural curator, her work extends beyond the physical manifestation of museum exhibition and into ceremonial performitivity, a genre of expression that engages participants into native landscapes as a dimensional refocusing of our cultural lens. Dr. R. Scott Wilson is a cultural anthropologist at California State University at Long Beach. He received his PhD from Stanford University in 1995 and has been at CSULB since 1993. He was elected Chair of the Anthropology Department in 2019. His dissertation research was on race and ethnicity in East Asia—and the impact of these concepts on the ethnic Hakka community of Taipei, Taiwan. At CSULB he has taught courses on identity theory, the history of anthropology and the cultures and customs of China and Taiwan. More recently, Dr. Wilson has been working on the role of new media technologies like augmented reality and virtual reality in the research and presentation of ethnographic data. Alongside students, he produces virtual reality installations and paper-based augmented reality objects (books, magazines and posters) that immerse the viewer in the cultural worlds of a range of people. His two most recent works in virtual reality explore the relationship between burlesque and the performance of gender (The Body of Prix), and illustrates the origin myth of the Tongva people, who are indigenous to the Los Angeles area (Birthplace of the People). Carly Lake is a painter, illustrator, and fiber artist working with natural dyes. In her work as an illustrator, she has created images for the chapter book Candice Can Go by Edward Valladao and Waa’aka: The Bird Who Fell in Love With the Sun by Cindi Alvitre. She also works as a storyboard artist and has created editorial illustrations for magazines and print art. Carly self publishes zines and comics exploring environmental and spiritual subjects, as well as surreal narratives. Her most recent work in narrative art has been for the virtual reality film Birthplace of the People. She has been a teaching artist for the past 5 years and currently teaches art to chlidren K-8 at Creative World Art Center. She facilitates public workshops that engage people in the process of drawing as meditation and teaches weaving with a focus on natural dye practices and ethnobotanical topics.