An isle Easter egg will get Grade A treatment at the White House
SHIRLEY YAMAMURA is more surprised than anyone in Hawaii that her childlike drawing/painting of Aloha Tower on a chicken egg will be on display in the White House Visitor Center.
"Ai yah!" she said when she first found out she won from a newspaper article April 11. "I'm not an artist but I did my best. It's not easy to draw on a chicken egg."
The 75-year-old Pearl City resident felt the honor was undeserved. "Shame! My painting was not that good -- crooked," Yamamura said.
Her egg will represent Hawaii among 50 other entries, including one from the District of Columbia, as part of the 2006 White House State Easter Eggs Collection until April 30. The American Egg Board selected the winners.
Although two glass cabinets in her living room are chock full of decorated eggs she has made over the past 20 years or so, she regards her self mainly as "a crafter" who sews things to give away to friends and relatives.
DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM
Shirley Yamamura, who decorates eggs, held one of her creations yesterday that actually rotates. Behind her were other items in her collection. Yamamura decorated an egg with an Aloha Tower design, below, that was selected to represent Hawaii at the White House during Easter celebrations.
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This was the first year she entered the contest along with six of her friends who get together for several hours at one of their homes every Saturday. They used to take classes but went on their own more than 10 years ago.
"They're better than me!" she said about her friends.
Her eggs show intricate work on eggs as tiny (three-fourths inch) as canary eggs that came from her own birds. Her favorite size to work on is the canary eggs because "I like tiny things."
One of her favorites consists of four canary eggs hanging in four little windows cut into a larger goose egg that twirl around when she turns a little screw on the top. The entire egg is covered with gold swags and ornate carvings, something reminiscent of the golden carriage that Cinderella rode to the ball in.
Most of her eggs have large windows cut into the shell, in which a doll or a scene are mounted. The inside of the egg is decorated, too.
"You gotta be patient. Hard, you know ... (but) I love this."
Her Husband, Kazuo Yamamura, said his wife's work is "amazing, yeah? Every day, she does this."
But he didn't seem too impressed that his wife won the contest. "Maybe she got lucky. Maybe it's because she made something different."
Yamamura's winning egg can be viewed with other entries at www.nps.gov/whho/pphtml/events.html.