A creative life, by design

David Kemble helps Bishop Museum tell its many stories through 3-D exhibits

David Kemble Title: Senior exhibit designer Job: Works with a team of artisans to create three-dimensional, informational exhibits for Bishop Museum

David Kemble hadn't planned to be an exhibit designer for Hawaii's foremost museum, but when the opportunity arose, he was ready and willing.

At the time, in 1977, Kemble was an illustrator in Bishop Museum's entomology department. Kemble last week explained that back then, each museum department had to create its own exhibits, but after the museum put together the Hall of Hawaiian Natural History, it decided to form a division devoted solely to creating exhibits, and Kemble was asked to lead it.

Kemble credits his varied college liberal arts education in preparing him for the opportunity, as well as his own curiosity that led him to pick up useful skills informally.

For example, when he wanted to learn how to silk-screen T-shirts for the museum, he asked Rodolfo Valera from the Honolulu Zoo (now retired) to teach him.

"Rudy used to do all their exhibits," Kemble said.

Kemble moved to Hawaii from Boston with his family when he was 6. He is a graduate of Punahou School, as well as the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where he obtained a bachelor's degree in liberal studies. He also attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison for two years, before returning to Hawaii to attend UH..

Kemble said that while at UH, he took on an independent-study project of making a book of his own writings and illustrations, which got him interested in bookbinding, which put him in contact with Bishop Museum.

"I came back here to study under a master bookbinder at the museum (Paul Schneller), and that was my first contact with Bishop Museum -- other than when I was going to grade school here."

After forming the museum's exhibit department, Kemble stayed at its helm until the mid-1990s, when he stepped aside to become its senior designer.

Now 57, Kemble is married to Carolyn Oliver, an occupational therapist at the Hawaii State Hospital. They have a dog, Ally, and reside in Kailua.

Mark Coleman: As senior exhibit designer at Bishop Museum, what exactly are you expected to do in your job?

David Kemble: Well, the exhibits are team efforts. They involve content people, education staff, exhibit staff ... So an exhibit designer is basically an expert in the medium of exhibits, which is a medium in its own right, like books or films, but it's a three-dimensional medium.

So basically, we're the ones that say, "This is the story you want to tell, this is what you have to tell it with, and this is how we can put it into a three-dimensional space to make it work as an exhibit."

It is a little, specialized nook of the broader design universe. Most people don't think of it when they go to school to become designers. Most people who think of graphic design are thinking of advertising and things like that. But it is a very interesting and specialized field of design.

Q: Do you help with coming up with the ideas for the exhibits, or do you just help execute them?

A: Again, everything is part of the team process, and I'm part of the team.

I guess the scheduling of exhibits is done by a team that has people from different parts of the museum, and I tend not to be a part of that. But when they put an exhibit on the schedule, then I'm on that team.

It's the in-house exhibits that we do ourselves. So, like, when we have an exhibit, like dinosaurs, a lot of people don't know that that's a borrowed exhibit. I don't generally work on the borrowed ones that we bring into Hawaii. We do more the ones that tell about Hawaii to the world.

We're just about to set up an exhibit about the brain, but that's an example of a borrowed exhibit; it's set up by our technicians and our ground staff, but it's nothing that's done in-house in terms of exhibit design. We still have to figure out how to make it fit in our space, but you're installing something that was made by somebody else.

Q: What exhibit are you working on now?

A: The big renovation project we're working on right now is Hawaiian Hall, the one with the big whale hanging from the ceiling.

Q: I remember that from when I was a kid.

A: A lot of people tell us that. But anyway, in the Hawaiian Hall's case, it's a building that opened in 1903, and over the years, little changes have been made, but the integrity of the hall as an integrated exhibition had broken down. We had individual exhibits, but we weren't telling properly the story of Hawaii.

Part of the challenge of the hall is that we're working in a historic architectural interior environment, so we view the hall itself as being an historical artifact in its own right. We're not working in a black box that you can make into anything you want; you're working in a Victorian architectural setting.

For example, there's all these koa cases, with the big glass windows, so the tendency is to think that whatever is put in there is dead and preserved. But what we're trying to do now is tell the story of Hawaii from a Hawaiian point of view, which means trying to bring it to life. So that's the fundamental challenge of the design: how to bring the story to life. We're trying to bring the jewel back to shining, and also it's a special thing of timing where we're trying to make it like you're stepping back into the past.

So that's unusual, when you're constrained by the architecture -- unlike when we opened the Mamiya Science Adventure Center two years ago, where we could do anything we wanted. We were building a new building from scratch.

Q: How long have you been with Bishop Museum?

A: I've actually been with Bishop Museum since shortly after graduating from UH in '72. I started off (in 1973) as a part-time illustrator in the entomology department. My job was to draw mites, ... so I was having to draw with a microscope, since mites are so small. I only did that part time, because it would be really hard to do that full time. When you're looking through a microscope for so long, it's hard on your eyes.

When I started here in '73, there was no exhibits department. So botany would make their own exhibits, and entomology would make theirs, and so on.

So I was in the entomology department as a scientific illustrator at the time, and the chairman of the department, Dr. Frank Radovsky, wanted to make a new Hall of Natural Hawaiian History, so he drafted me into service to make this new exhibit because there was no exhibit department. So he is the one who gave me my break in getting going in the making of exhibits. It was a field I happened into, not what I planned to do. I got into it pretty much through the back door. Nowadays, you pretty much have to have a degree and credentials to get into it.

Q: When was the exhibit department formed?

A: After the opening of the Hall of Hawaiian Natural History in 1977. They brought together an artist from anthropology, a cabinet maker, a preparator (who basically makes mounts and props) and me, an artist in entomology, and we started a new department. I was then in charge of it until the mid-'90s, when I stepped aside to become senior designer. The manager of the department these days is Kathy Izon.

Q: Where did you learn to be an illustrator?

A: I had an art adviser at UH, but basically, like I say I'm self-taught in exhibit design for the most part.

Q: Do your illustrator skills still come in handy?

A: I don't do that any more, actually. Sure, in doing sketches, it helps, but the part of exhibit design that appeals to me, where I think my strength is, is using the medium to help tell a story. You're trying to tell a story by using objects and space. I

Q: What other skills do you need? Blueprint reading, carpentry?

A: Yeah. Basically it's very much a generalist job. I mean, I carry a little tape measure in my pocket. Everything is about space and making things fit in that space. There's a whole bunch of different aspects to it. Lighting and color. But it's gotten very sophisticated. We're no longer a four-person department; we're an 11-person staff now, so if something has to be drawn, we get the illustrators to do it. Plus, we have technicians and graphic designers.

Q: What are some of your favorite exhibits that you helped create?

A: Well, I guess I'm pretty proud of that science center. And now also on the Hawaii Hall project. They're very big projects, and we're working with mainland exhibit design firms. So in that case, I'm a liaison between the staff and the exhibit design firms. That's a very different role from when you're doing everything yourself.

Q: If you've been there 34 years, how many more years do you expect to keep working there?

A: I'm now 57. I still have some life in me yet. (Laughter) But I think one of these days they'll put me in one of those (koa) cases because I'm getting to be an artifact in my own right.

Q: Do you ever get tired of going to work there each day?

A: That's the best thing to tell about my job. What makes it so interesting and enjoyable is each exhibit you learn about something different, and what's more, the technology and medium has changed so much that there is no boredom whatsoever. Unlike when I was drawing mites, I would go, "OK, that's all I can take of that," but with exhibits, it's constantly interesting. And you also have those deadlines where you move up to make it into a real thing, and then you move on. So you get a lot of fresh starts.