Beauty All Around: Young Kohala Artist Elijah Rabang

By Jan Wizinowich

Entering Hāwi, on the North Kohala coast, just past Kohala Coffee Mill, you are stopped in your tracks by a wall mural with a stunning scene of frolicking humpback whales. You’ve just stepped into the realm of young artist Elijah Rabang, who beholds the natural world and cherishes it with his art.

For the past few years, along with greeting cards and pet portraits, Elijah has shared his visions of nature in community murals located at the Kamehameha Park pool, Figʻs restaurant (now closed), the Hāwi Post Office and most recently the wall across the street from the Kohala Trade Center in Hāwi, commissioned by Richard Elliott, owner of Paradise Postal and Kar Tow.

About six years ago Elijah approached Richard. “He came into the store to see if I wanted to sell his cards; he had heard I was only having local artists in my store. I loved his work immediately and it was a ‘no brainier’,” said Richard.

Nourishing Roots and Mentors

When Elijah was diagnosed with autism at the age of six, art became a way for him to understand his world through a meticulous focus on the details of the environment around him. Elijah grew up nested in a loving family and a supportive community, where his early artistic talent was noticed, supported and appreciated.

Elijahʻs mother, Robby Victorino reflects, “He was so young [when he started]. In elementary school he used to draw animals and what really caught my eye was the details. He would draw these pirate ships and he wouldn’t lift the pencil off the paper. It was like one continuous line and he had so much detail with the shape of the cannons and everything on the ship.”

Elijah’s artistic ability continued to grow and in middle school his art teacher, Trish Bryan, recognized his abilities. She asked him to create a design for the May Day program and by the time he reached high school he was well on his way with an art career.

At Kohala High School, Elijah was a student of art teacher Margaret Hoy for four years. “He took Painting 1 and 2 and Ceramics. He was already really talented. You could name any kind of animal and heʻd say, ‘Okay, I can do that,’ and heʻd go to work. He has a great memory for details.”

While Elijah’s first favored media was colored pencils, his time at Kohala High School gave him the freedom to explore and broaden his art. Margaret remembers, “He was always willing to try something new or work independently. We never reached the boundary of what he was able to do in my class. Iʻd say, ‘Here, letʻs try this out,ʻ and he was always open to it. We try to make sure school is positive and reinforcing and something that they want to do.”

Mural artist Patrick Ching worked with Elijah in middle school on the Art Miles Murals project. “I first got involved with him because of a mural peace project. He painted some murals to contribute to that project that traveled all over the world and was showcased in Egypt,” shared Patrick.

A few years later, Patrick worked with Elijah as part of the Hāwi Post Office mural project and saw his developing sense of design and how he had matured as an artist. “He came to contribute to the mural on the Hāwi Post Office wall,” said Patrick. “Elijah painted the train. He was really focused and I just let him go and he got it done. He really knows what he’s doing with his art and his style.”

Natural Connections

For the past seven years, Elijah has participated in ʽĪlio Lapaʽau, the therapeutic horsemanship program directed by Fern White. There, Elijah has experienced the natural world in a very tangible sense that has fed his artwork.

“He was one of my first official ʽĪlio Lapa‘au participants. It’s helped him find his way, find his confidence, find who he is. He started by learning how to just be around horses, massage them and whatever else he could do for the horse, and then he started noticing details. His first horse was Cool Ed, a beautiful palomino and he actually made some drawings of Cool Ed,” said Fern.

Reflecting the aloha Elijah has received from the community, he thrives on caring for others. The horse program has provided him with an opportunity to expand his caring nature. Along with connecting to younger participants and caring for the horses, he looks after the goats and two rescued Kona Nightingales, Cutie and Patootie. “They kind of rescue each other,” said Fern.

One of Elijah’s favorite subjects is the white Siberian tiger, Namaste, whom he visited many times at the Pana‘ewa Zoo in Hilo. Namaste, who passed away in 2014, is featured in one of Elijah’s first murals located at Kamehameha Park Pool. Although Namaste lived in captivity, Elijahʻs mural depicts him free in his natural environment. “He was always coming in and talking to me about the zoo. We spent a good part of a semester just doing homage to the white tiger, Namaste. That was something that really made an impression on him,” said Kohala High School art teacher, Margaret.

Periodically, Elijah and his assistant Sarina Seidel visit the zoo. They were on hand in March, 2016 when two new tiger cubs arrived, which inspired Elijah to make the cubs the subject of one of his water color designs for greeting cards.

Artistic Process

After Elijah graduated in 2009, his artwork became part of the Kohala community scenery. The large canvas of mural walls gave him a chance to explore a larger creative vision. Working from photographs, Elijah does a sketch of his design and then uses that sketch to enlarge and transfer the images onto the mural wall.

One of his first murals was at the Kamehameha Park swimming pool, a project organized by community artists Cathy Morgan and Sarah Kobayashi. The entire project resulted in one small mural featuring Namaste and a larger one that includes some of Elijahʻs favorite sea animals (dolphins, tiger shark, sea lion, sperm whale, and monk seal) along with a depiction of the first Polynesians arriving on the island. The canoe is laden with plants and animals and is placed in such a way that the viewer feels they are watching an historic event from their own canoe.

In 2011, Tracy and Fred Figueroa (owners of Figʻs Restaurant) asked Elijah to create a mural on the walls fronting their building. The result is a Kohala pastoral scene with “Mr. Fred on the horse over there,” pointed out Elijah. And even though the restaurant is now closed, Elijahʻs mural can still be enjoyed by all who pass by.

His latest effort, which is not yet complete, came about through the desire to beautify main street Hāwi. “Kar Tow put up a new fence. I had the idea, in talking with Elijah, about doing murals on the fence, as it was looking very industrial here in town,” said owner Richard.

The subject of the mural was inspired by a whale watch cruise that Elijah and Sarina took in the winter of 2018. The mural depicts humpback whales swimming and breaching. You can imagine seeing the whales from the perspective of being onboard a boat and approaching a pod of whales. “That whale painting—that’s a really deliberate graphic sense Elijah has. Design is one of his geniuses,” said Patrick.

Elijah has created a number of watercolor paintings that are reproduced as cards, which are sold at the Saturday farmers’ market in Hāwi and at Paradise Postal. Elijahʻs use of color in his paintings is vibrant and invites you in, making the subjects seem three dimensional; this is an innate talent that emerged from his experience with artist mentor, Angel Teodora, whom he worked with doing watercolor painting for five months.

Grown with Aloha

Rather than presenting a difficulty, Elijah’s autism enables him to see and recreate the world around him in his own unique way. He lives in the moment with a keen sense of all beings around him. Elijah’s story could have been very different; however, his natural talent has been nurtured by the aloha of the Kohala community and the enveloping natural environment that has allowed him the opportunity to evolve as an artist. His latest Hāwi mural will be finished soon and he hopes to continue doing more mural art. ❖

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