If you happen to see Lawrence Seward on the waves, don't let his placid surfer's mien fool you. Beneath his low-key demeanor is a mind that zips along at Olympian speed and, once settled in a work studio, hands that move just as quickly. Carpe diem? Forget it. In his art, Seward is intent on seizing moments.

Oh, and competitive he is, admitting that part of the reason he lived in New York City so long is because he wanted to outlast other Hawaii artists he had met, who worked in the city before returning home.

“;I could have easily moved back after 15 years, but once I hit 18 years I thought I was safely past the mark,”; he said.

Nuuanu Gallery at the ARTS at Marks Garage is marking Seward's return with a solo homecoming exhibition through Oct. 17 and an opportunity to meet the artist during First Friday festivities tonight.

The prolific artist will be showing works inspired by Hawaii created while in New York and during summer trips home. What immediately grabs attention is the variety of media Seward employs in his work. While many artists are comfortable with one or two mediums, Seward is able to switch from drawing, painting, sculpting, casting, assembling, whatever a piece demands for getting his ideas across.

The centerpieces of the Nuuanu Gallery show are a watercolor painting and two plaster sculptures of hula dancers, one male and one female, viewed from the back. These works drew inspiration from Duty Free Shops and a dream the artist had in which he kept trying to move around a dancer to see her face and was never able to. For viewers of the work, the frustration is contagious.

In another work, coconuts are embedded with bumper stickers that read, “;WhatEv'ahs.”;

“;I like the way they travel on the ocean, with the weather, tides and currents on the way to their destination.”;

Seward's work has been exhibited at New York's Andrew Kreps Gallery and Ten in One Gallery, California's Richard Heller Gallery and internationally at Galerie Edward Mitterrand in Geneva. His work also was included in the traveling exhibition “;Situation Comedy: Humor in Recent Art,”; curated by Dominic Morlon and Michael Rooks and installed at the Contemporary Museum in Honolulu in 2005.

His work ethic might register in the manic territory, but Seward talks about an unremarkable childhood. Although he had “;an interest in art on a primal level,”; his energy was directed toward the outdoors and surfing.

He said he had a great ceramics teacher at Pearl City High School. “;It wasn't anything specific she taught, but she was easygoing and never tried to put any barriers in front of us.”;

A turning point came when he enrolled at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

“;Fred Roster opened my eyes to sculpture. I didn't do so well in sculpture, but I was bitten by the bug,”; he said. “;UH is a good school to be an undergraduate student in that you have the facilities and space to work, and faculty that is willing to help you work on an object, because at the end of the day, you have to produce an object.

“;At other schools there's a lot of talking about art and not a lot of making because there's this side of art education that's cerebral for the curators, the critics, the writers, the historians. There's so many facets.”;

After talking to artists here who had spent time in New York, he was motivated to make the move, finding the city fueled his obsession, and not always in a healthy way.

“;New York is not an easy place. There are the big artists, the big galleries, the big critics. Everything is big there, and you always think success is right around the corner, I can be a part of that, which keeps you going. At some point, if you think about it, you wonder if you really want to be a part of that.

“;I think in New York everybody has to be a little crazy to be there. Thank goodness for that. I met some really interesting people.”;

He moved home to raise his family, and far from trying to talk him out of making the move, his New York friends felt his heart was already here.

“;I romanticized my life in Hawaii so much, they wondered why I didn't make the move sooner,”; he said. “;Now that I'm here, maybe I'll start making art about New York, switch it around.”;

His biggest fear about returning home is the potential sacrifice of productivity to the lure of the ocean, but he has enough on his mind to keep him busy for a long time.

“;I feel like I'm making art at the end of the world,”; he said. “;I have to stop myself from sounding too cynical because I have kids now, but I feel like we can't just talk about solutions anymore. If you want to end global warming, you have to do something about it. You can't just recycle plastic bags. At this point it's not enough.”;