Local Color
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The diamond jubilee anniversary of the Honolulu Academy of Arts is an occasion to celebrate the museum's 75 years as an icon of arts and culture in the islands. And it is unexpectedly becoming a showcase for gifted artists who have chosen to live and work in Hawaii rather than more glamorous and lucrative cities on the mainland. Having their cake
Island artists decorate the Honolulu
Academy of Arts with birthday-theme
works to mark its 75th year
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As part of the anniversary celebration, the museum has enlisted 51 regional artists to create artworks based on a birthday-cake theme. The artworks will not be displayed in a traditional gallery setting. Instead, they will be scattered throughout the museum's 20-plus galleries for visitors to discover.Artists had to draw their locations from a calabash, and the locations determine the style of the work. For example, if an artist drew the Chinese art gallery, then the artwork should have a Chinese flavor.
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The works are to be unveiled today during the museum's Founder's Day festivities (which feature free admission). They are for sale, and some also will be offered during Showcase, the museum's annual art sale fund-raiser in August. Judging from the early results that poured in the last few days, the works should generate a healthy income for the museum and a visual treat for art lovers.Popular island artist Pegge Hopper, known for her paintings of regal island women, is offering a slightly scandalous female figure admiring herself in a mirror while wearing a colorful pareau, lavender stockings and silver high heels.
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The mirror is real, allowing the viewers to gaze at themselves gazing at the artwork. "I think of art as a circle. Artists form one half of the circle, and the audience form the other half. Without each other, there wouldn't be art," Hopper said.Brenda Cablayan, a favorite still-life painter, hung out in Chinatown to get inspirations. She returned with fortune cookies, colorful paper and cards, which she painted with the image of a horse to indicate the year of the museum's anniversary.
Place: Honolulu Academy of Arts, 900 S. Beretania St. "You Say It's Your Birthday"
Time: 0 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, noon to 5 today, otherwise 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, through August 11
Admission: $7, $4 for seniors, students and military; free to members and children 12 and under; free on the first Wednesday and Sunday of the month, free today
Call: 532-8700
Koi Ozu, an emerging conceptual artist, raided secondhand stores for metal forks and spoons. He forged them into a cake -- more like a futuristic tower -- presented on a silver platter complete with dead (plastic) flies.
The flies are good-luck symbols -- he read that on the packaging -- and add a humorous icing to his cake of utensils.
Sculptor Kay Mura offers a light-hearted congratulatory note with her trademark frog -- in big red lips, a coconut-shell bikini and grass skirt. "Hoppy Birthday HAA," it shouts as it jumps out of a birthday cake.
Gardening Calendar
Suzanne Tswei's art column runs Sundays in Today.
You can write her at the Star-Bulletin,
500 Ala Moana, Suite 7-210, Honolulu, HI, 96813
or email stswei@starbulletin.com
