The Other Entrepreneurs: Turning Trash Into Art in the Solomon Islands

Wally Faleka, 46, has run Village Level Art and Graphics since 1989 in his home village of Fo'ondo on Malaita, one of the Solomon Islands. An artist, screen printer, sign writer, teacher and occasional taxi driver, he lives and works in a small house with his wife and seven children, four of them adopted from other relatives.

Despite the island's lack of running water and electricity, Wally has developed his own screen printing technique, recycling x-ray plastics and surgical knives from a nearby hospital for making and cutting his stencils. Whenever he can get his hands on some emulsion, he uses sunlight and water from his water tank to expose his designs onto cloth screens.

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