Performers clean up the streets
By Suzanne Tswei
in pursuit of their art
Special to the Star-BulletinThe four janitors in government-issue brown jumpsuits look perfectly official. With fluffy wool dusters in hand, they march through Chinatown with a mission. Everything in their path gets a thorough dusting: an abandoned Chinese restaurant sign, a noodle factory store front, boxes of fruit and vegetables for sale on the sidewalk, even fire hydrants and trees.
People stop and stare, but only for a moment. An official-looking emblem and the words "STATE OF HAWAII, CITY AND COUNTY OF HAWAII, DEPARTMENT OF BEAUTIFICATION" printed on the crew's uniforms seem to satisfy the curiosity of passersby.
"Oh, I guess they are from, maybe the prison, here cleaning up the place," a man hurrying home on a Friday says to himself.
But wait! Something's wrong with this picture. There is no City and County of Hawaii on Oahu, let alone a Department of Beautification. Upon closer inspection, each of the crew members is identified with the same number, 27804, printed on the front pocket.The janitors are entirely too happy and too diligent in their chores. Then, the dead giveaway. One of them, a young woman, is dolled up in model-perfect makeup and three-inch platform shoes.
It's absurd, it's funny, it's subversive, it's incomprehensible! Need we say more? It's ART!
"This is exactly what I want," says Saint Marko, artist, mystery prankster, surfer, waiter, Navy brat, Radford High School alumnus, New Age minister, officially designated saint in the avant-garde Universal Life Church based in California, and master mind of the "Chinatown Dusting Project."
Marko brought his irreverent, cutting-edge art to Honolulu as one of five Maui artists participating in the inaugural exhibit of Salon5. The gallery, in the old Sisu Gallery space on Nuuanu Street, is owned and operated by Rich Richardson, whose artistic light box was featured in the Hawaii-based "Real World" series on MTV.
Throughout the exhibition, adventurous gallery visitors became artists themselves by donning the jumpsuits and dusting a total of 28 blocks of Chinatown. The art show is closed now but the gallery is still selling "DEPARTMENT OF BEAUTIFICATION" T-shirts for $15 each.
Commerce aside, Marko, who won't reveal his real identity and is known only by his high-school nickname, is utterly serious about his art. He hopes to jostle his unsuspecting audience to reconsider the mundane, and get a few chuckles in the process.
"My work is fun. It's engaging. It gets people wondering what's going on. It's on the fringe," says the 44-year-old artist who wants to redefine art.
Pretty pictures to match the sofa are not in his vocabulary. Instead, his resume lists him doing jumping jacks on the pyramid in Giza in 1977. The exercise was an act validating his earthly existence. He compares it to leaving graffiti to mark where one has been, only he didn't leave any physical marks.
Preservationists might argue with him on that point, but impermanence is an essential ingredient of his art, he says. Ideas and the acts of carrying out the ideas are more important than creating objects.
Along with the humor, there is always a bit of danger. Once, he took a 40-minute swim in shark-infested waters off Fiji before an audience and called it performance art. He completed "Shark Bait" unscathed. On Maui, where he earns his living as a waiter, his art has been mistaken for pranks.To create "landscape paintings," Marko took paint mixed to a perfect match of Maui's bright red dirt and covered abandoned cars with it. No one called it art, and the cars were towed away.
On a road to scenic Honolua Bay, Marko installed a sign proclaiming "MORE BEAUTY." Near the site of a terrible traffic accident that resulted from tourists stopping to look at whales, he put up a sign warning, "WHALE WATCHING IS NOT AN EMERGENCY, KEEP DRIVING," next to a government "emergency parking" sign.
Marko sneaked a miniature toilet into the Lahaina Hard Rock Café, famous for its collection of rock 'n' roll paraphernalia. He installed the toilet in a restroom along with a plaque declaring "ACTUAL TOILET WHERE ELVIS PRESLEY WAS FOUND THE MORNING OF HIS DEATH."
"I heard the people at Hard Rock thought that was pretty cool. They didn't know who did it, but they really got a kick out of it."
Marko is getting the same reaction to his latest art project, "Self Historification," six bronze plaques marking his innocuous encounters with celebrities during his youth in Honolulu.
On the pavement at Kalia Road and Maluhia Street in Waikiki, Marko marked the spot where he noticed Don Ho walking past him in a crosswalk.
Using industrial-strength glue, he installed a plaque that says, "SAINT MARKO AND DON HO BUMPED INTO EACH OTHER ON THIS STREET CORNER SEPT. 15, 1969."He installed the plaque a month ago, and when he passed the corner last week he was happy to find the sign still in place. And, best of all, it was getting a lot of attention from passersby, Marko says.
"That was just great. There were all these tourists. They were all looking at it. Some were taking pictures. I couldn't ask for more."
Actually, Marko does want more out of his latest art -- not to get arrested. His plaques can be easily interpreted as vandalism, although he is careful not to cause damage to any property, he says.
"I want to get a buzz going, to get my name out there. I know getting in trouble with the law is a distinct possibility. I'll have to deal with it when it happens."
Maybe he'll turn that experience into art, too. "JAILBIRD," the concept of going behind bars and carrying it off with panache.
If his luck holds out, be on the look out for Marko when he returns to Honolulu to keep his plaques looking spiffy. He will be the official-looking guy in a "DEPARTMENT OF BEAUTIFICATION" brown jumpsuit, carrying a caulk gun and a big tool box.
Look for Saint Marko's plaques at these locations: Plaque attacks
Hotel and Nuuanu streets: Directly across the downtown police station, where "JACK LORD TOOK A BREAK FROM FILMING 'HAWAII FIVE-O' AND STOOD BESIDE SAINT MARKO AT THIS LOCATION 1971"
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