Bali is filled with intense dynamic tension between Western commercial values, and traditional island village culture, where "Bali Time" does war with the machinations of the Western corporate commercial maw. This tension is nowhere more clearly embodied than in the nervous, intense, frustrated, creative outpouring of ideas and designs, and casual conversation of Wayan Jiwa . . . .

After an afternoon of seeing what he does, you are exhausted by the sheer volume, breadth and ambition of his ideas . .and so is he . .

While he has managed to make a decent living, the Balinese economy has radically changed. The recent SE Asian currency devaluations in the late '90s left Balinese money worth about a fifth of what it was before then. So too, the character of the Balinese tourist has changed, from Western cultural explorers, and/or dilletantes, who spent weeks or months in Bali, experiencing and buying as much of Balinese art and craft as they could possibly truck back to their western lairs, to South East Asians intent on a good time and a short respite from their everyday work. They are usually only there 3 to 5 days, the result of which, Balinese artists have lost a signifigant proportion of their fan base, to the trinket sold at the corner stall, and the restaurant within a block of the "tourist" hotel.

Jiwa, while he has lost income from all that, seems more impassioned by a want of time to produce everything he thinks about, and a want of enough customers to produce for. He often sends us emails filled with many more ideas and departures from anything we have seen elsewhere. While it would take a web site devoted to him alone to keep up, we do plan to showcase some of his ideas, if only to give some of his passion a vent.