Fallen Trees Turn to Art with Tai Lake and Family—Fine Furniture and Art Collaboratives
By Margaret Kearns At the very top of an unmarked, dead-end road in charming Holualoa Village lives a unique family of Lakes, five in all. Fired by vision, passion, and inextinguishable energy, this family is headed by internationally-acclaimed artist and…
Crafting Papahe‘enalu: From Tree to Sea: Traditional Wooden Surfboard Shapers
By Hadley Catalano Every surfer remembers that first surfing experience… When Bob Russell began as a child, he surfed on blue and yellow canvas rafts along the Kona Coast. When Keith Tallett grew up in Hilo his father couldn’t afford…
Herb Kawainui Kāne, Larger Than Life
By Karen Valentine Setting sail in the weather and sea conditions of home port, we begin our journeys in life. As we stretch out across the vast seas of experience, our course is adjusted with input from sources that reveal…
At Home with Mary Koski: Artist, World Traveler, Lover of Fairies
By Catherine Tarleton In the Waimea home of artist Mary Koski live flowers in windowsills, in bottles and pots on cupboards and table tops. There are two overstuffed puffy cats in the chairs, and smiling children framed on every wall.…
High-Tech Textiles Feature Hawaiian Cultural Motifs
By Denise Laitinen Hilo, Hawai‘i, might not be the first place that springs to mind when you think about cutting-edge clothing manufacturing, but one local company is changing that. Punawai, a digital textile printing company, is using state-of-the-art technology and…
Bringing Hawai‘iʻs Scenery Indoors: Plein Air Painter Sita Soesman Finds Joy in Landscapes
By Margaret Kearns Long-time Hawai‘i Island resident and O‘ahu native Sita Soesman is a rare talent—one of those fortunate individuals gifted equally with excellent business, marketing and sales skills, and amazing artistic talent. Mix all of that with unbridled enthusiasm,…
Master of Light: Artist Kay Yokoyama
By Alan D. McNarie Kay Yokoyama seldom seeks the limelight—which is ironic, because her paintings are all about light. A Yokoyama painting will immediately stand out, even if it’s in a wall full of other paintings. Hers is the one…
The Many Expressions of Mayumi Oda: The Goddess Garden Path to Saving the Planet
By Marya Mann “I just returned from Japan. I arrived there the day of the earthquake. I had traveled to Japan to visit a village where I had been asked to come and help create a Buddhist utopia.”–Mayumi Oda, Hawai‘i…
Ocean Trash Art: Ocean Debris Becomes a Work of Art
By Devany Vickery-Davidson Few people have the talent and the vision to literally take trash to an art form. Hawai‘i Island was fortunate to have a visitor here in January that did just that. Aurora Robson, an artist who was…
Gilmore Art Inspires Native Plant Renaissance: Jamie Gilmore’s Botanical Portraits Reflect Nature’s Brilliance
By Marya Mann At 3:15 on a sunny day in Ka‘ū, Jamie Gilmore sits at her table, meticulously painting every petal, flower and sand granule in her watercolor portrait of hinahina, a hardy yet vulnerable native plant indigenous to Hawaiian…
Capturing the Ephemeral: The Passions and Palettes of Painter Rod Cameron
By Karen Valentine The eight-year-old boy stood, transfixed, as the rest of his friends ran ahead during their tour of Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. They turned around, worried about young Rod Cameron. The object of his fascination?…
The Mindscapes of Ken Charon
By Marya Mann If we could climb inside Ken Charon’s dreamy paintings for a fantastic journey, we might feel the summer breeze on our faces as we trek up an emerald green volcano and wake up in a manger where…
Lee Michael Walczuk: the Man Behind the Mask
By Alan D McNarie It’s evening in Hilo, a couple of nights before Halloween. In the workshop space in the utility building behind East Hawai‘i Cultural Center, Lee Michael Walczuk is holding a special mask-making class. It’s not to make…
Dancing with Paint: Artist Kathleen Kam Choreographs the First of a Series of Downtown Hilo Murals
By Alan D. McNarie “I can paint faster than I can write. I have a nickname: “Dances with Paint,” jokes Kathleen Kam, as she works in a face of a lauhala weaver that she’s painting on the wall of downtown…
Crafting Hawaiian Woods
By Denise Laitinen Milo. ‘Ohi‘a. Koa. These are just some of the beautiful woods native to our island. As interest surges in using all things local, so does interest in using Hawaiian woods. Big Island woodworkers are turning out dining…
Folk Art of Bobbi Caputo Brings Family Coffee-Picking Memories Back to Life
By Hadley Catalano It’s summer vacation for Bobbi Caputo. It’s the late 1950s and though she hasn’t yet reached adolescence she’s already versed in the ways of the coffee farming world. Sandwiched between Leonora and Faustino Orpilla, her mother and…
Terri’s Vision: Showcasing Native Hawaiian Art
By Prana Mandoe “I want our people to know we can succeed,” says Terri Napeahi, proprietor of Papa Mū Gallery and President of Perpetuating Indigenous Hawaiian Arts, or PIHA, a nonprofit venue for Native Hawaiians to develop and show their…
Hollywood Calls Local Boy from Hilo; Still, His Heart Stays in Hawai‘i
By Cynthia Sweeney Pomaika’i Keko’olani still shakes his head in disbelief. A local boy arrives in Hollywood, and fresh off the plane, he is greeted by a chauffeured limousine that whisks him off to a major studio for an audition…
Slammin’ at the Gym: Local Youth Discover the Sport of Poetry
By Alan D. McNarie The bleachers of Pahoa High School Gym are packed with cheering, clapping students. The noise is deafening. But this isn’t a basketball game, or even a pep rally. It’s…a poetry reading? It’s Guinevere Balicoco’s turn at…
He Knows the Uke from the Inside Out: Sam Rosen—Craftsman, Teacher, and Historian
By Margaret Kearns Longtime Hawai‘i Island resident Sam Rosen is preserving one of Hawaii’s cultural treasures, one student and one ‘ukulele at a time. Soon after relocating to Hawai‘i Island 33 years ago, Rosen found he finally had the time…
Inspiring Visions in Glass: Artist Calley O’Neill Teams with Stained Glass Artisan Lamar Yoakum
By Catherine Tarleton If eyes are windows to the soul, then windows must be the eyes of a house’s soul, particularly a house of God, where stained glass windows cast cascading colors to illuminate the people. In the quiet little…
Catching Fire: The Watchful Lens of Bryan Lowry
By Marya Mann Oh play catch with the sun, Your feet to the fire, building on the run. Incandescence in the skies, Captured by attentive eyes. Bryan Lowry, watchful and calm, wedges his boots into warm fissures on the south…
Creating Ha with Bolo: He’s “Been There, Done That,” and Made the T-Shirt
With Music Correspondent Colin John Bolo Mikiela Rodrigues, or “Bolo” as he is best known, greets me at the gate of his family home—which also serves as his design workshop and inspirational hale—with a friendly smile and an affable, ”Howzit?”…
Fluid Ocean Portraits: Victoria McCormick’s Images Reflect a Trusting Relationship with Marine Creatures
By Marya Mann Dances with the Ocean Heavenly light filters through the ocean surface into the underwater world, birthplace of life on Earth. Fine art photographer Victoria McCormick slips into this liquid womb of coral reef and eagle rays, swimming…
Angels of the Dance: Talented Big Island Youth Aspire to New Heights Under the Tutelage of Angel Prince
By Kim Cope Tait A young woman emerges from darkness, taking tentative steps along the railing of a balcony; sunset sky sends a pale strip of fiery light along the horizon, apparently far below her precarious heights. “I never loved…
Crafting the Sacred Pahu Drum
By Fern Gavelek The drum selected him—not vise versa. Kumu Hula Aloha Victor of Halau Kala‘akeakauikawekiu recalls when he purchased his first pahu (drum) from Rodney “Uncle Kala” Willis as if it were yesterday. It was October, 2005. “We were…
Used Veggie Oil Fuels Fabulous Glass Art
By Andrea Dean and Karen Valentine In their studio on the Hamakua Coast, glass blowing artists Hugh Jenkins and Stephanie Ross move around each other in an intricate dance done with hot glass on the end of metal pipes. They…
More Than a Wooden Big-Top: Soaring High at S.P.A.C.E. in Puna
By Alan D. McNarie Juggler Graham Ellis, who founded Puna’s Hiccup Circus in 1984 to educate and inspire local kids through circus arts, longed for a home base. For nearly two decades, Ellis, his performer friends and students had performed…
An Amazing Thing Is the Humble Gourd: Ipu and the Rediscovery of an Art Medium
By Fern Gavelek With no pottery, metal or glass, early Hawaiians found a myriad of creative ways to use gourds. From water carriers to ossuary urns, from musical instruments to canoe bailers, they could be plucked from a vine in…
Feng Shui Hawaiian Style: Earth Energy for Stability and Success in a Changing World
By Marta Barreras, Master Feng Shui Practitioner Have you noticed a rising sense of anxiety in the air lately? Changes in jobs, changes in economic status and especially changes in our Earth’s atmosphere are provoking millions of people to be…
