Kay Mura's ceramic figure, "Taking a Chance on Love,"
is a reflection on her experiences with men.

First, you gotta
kiss a few frogs

By Suzanne Tswei
Star-Bulletin

---

C'mon baby.
Just one little kiss.
I swear, I'm a prince.
Trust me. Look at this face, would I lie??
No, I don't have a girlfriend.
I love you, of course I'll respect you.
I'm not like all of the other guys, I swear.
I'll call you really, please baby, please.

---

Lies. All lies. Those words out of the mouth of the frog hoping for a juicy kiss.

"Haven't we all heard those words before?" Kay Mura asks before blurting out her own answer, followed, without a pause, by another rhetorical question. "We all have, haven't we?"

Not that all the men in Kay Mura's life turned out to be frogs by design. They just were.

"I grew up believing all the fairytales. I always dreamed my prince will come and I'll fall in love and blah, blah, blah ... but that kind of romantic love doesn't last."

Not that she's bitter or anything. She's fine with the fact that her two marriages ended in divorce and she's without a relationship. "I am in the process of forgetting about men," Mura says, "not that I am not interested in having a relationship with a man. I am just at a place in my life where I don't feel I need a man to make my life complete.

Jodi Endicott's installation, "The Boars,"
mixes sculpture with drawings.

"I always jump into a relationship thinking the guy's a prince, but he always turns out to be a frog, or something else - worse, like a beast. Not a friendly beast but a nasty beast."

But no matter how many disappointing frogs she's kissed, Mura's willing to give the next frog a chance. He may be the Prince Charming she's been waiting for.

"Yeah, you can say I am willing to kiss another frog one more time," Mura says.

That's exactly what her clay alter ego does in Mura's latest exhibition, aptly titled "Wo/man and Beast." The show includes 12 other artists whose works focus on human and animal figures.

"When we started out, the show was going to be called something like 'Figuratively Speaking' or 'Go Figure.' But we thought those titles were too boring,' " Mura said.

Someone suggested calling it "Wild Weenies" but that was too racy and not serious enough. Perhaps Mura's experience with disappointing men had something to do with it, or perhaps not, but Mura was the one who came up with the clever title.

Also part of the "Wo/man" exhibit are
Vicky Chock's low-fire ceramic, "Tea Dance."

"I finally made the executive decision. I thought the 'wo/man' was good in that it included all humankind. And the beast, we all have that in us, man or woman."

Mura, a third-generation Japanese-American born in an internment camp and reared in Denver, has a difficult time showing the beastly side of herself.

She made five near-life-size female figures and one beastly creature for the exhibit. The lone beast is more friendly than scary. The bear-like animal has a toothy grin, horns and electric blue claws. It's meant to be an outdoor play sculpture for children.

"You know, it's this Japanese thing. If you are a nice Japanese girl, you have to be nice and cute and polite. You want to be liked. It's important to please everyone," she said.

As a consequence of her ethnicity, her sculptures, which centered on cats and frogs, tended to be a little too cutesy, she said. But as she gets older, Mura, 58, finds it easier to break out of that mold. And as an artist, she felt a need to explore the beastly side of herself.

Rochelle Lum's clay stoneware, "Puppy Sit,"

"We all have a dark side, and we have to learn to dance with it. Rather than drive it out, we have to accept it and just be who we are. That's where I am today, and my art shows that," Mura said.

Her pieces in the show reflect her contented state, a woman wise with life's experiences and full of joy for what she has. Her ceramic women are peaceful, happy and humorous. And a little sexy too.

Mura pointed out that she took a bold leap away from her cute animals when she sculpted "Leda and the Swan" based on the mythology of the god Jupiter who assumed the form of a swan to impregnate the beautiful mortal Leda.

"You see the black swan is wrapped around Leda's head. To me that's very erotic. It's not something a nice Japanese girl would do," Mura said.

Mura had used a whimsical cat as her alter ego after her second divorce, making the cat an adorable, adventurous figure.

Jo Rowley's "Bound, not Gagged.

"Tabitha the Cat Dancer - Tabitha wanted to dance, Tabitha wanted to have fun, Tabitha wanted it all, because I felt like I had been in this cave the whole time I was married," Mura said.

The lovable cat was well-received, but Mura wanted to do something more serious. She said she thinks she has succeeded with the pieces in the show, finally brave enough to use human figures as mirrors of herself.

"For some reason we all have our patterns that we can't break out of. We are all set in our habits but we can't grow if we don't change our habits," Mura said.

That holds true for art as well as love. Next time a would-be Prince Charming shows up, Mura will make sure he isn't anything like the frogs she's kissed in the past.

Wo/man and Beast Works by Vicky Chock, Jodi Endicott, K. Everett, Kazu Kauinana Fukuda, Jon Hamblin, Michael Harada, Rochelle Lum, Kay Mura, Fred Roster, Jo Rowley, Esther Shimazu, Maile Yawata, Cora Yee Place: Academy Art Center at Linekona, Honolulu Academy of Arts, 1111 Victoria St. Hours: 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturdays, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays, through April 15 Admission: Free Call: 532-8700

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