Arts & Culture

When you view the current crop of Pow!Wow! paintings in Kaka‘ako, remember, that throughout history, artworks have revealed a lot about the societies that produced them.  Next week, a noted social historian will show how three famous Romantic paintings reflect the upheaval, and hope of their times. HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports, these messages from the Romantic period may resonate today.

The Best of Aloha Shorts Tour offered a chance to pop in on fun art venues in Hilo and Kahului.  HPR’s Bill Dorman debriefed Noe Tanigawa on The Conversation.

The East Hawai‘i Cultural Center is in a stately stucco building, white with green roof, that used to house Hilo’s police headquarters.  On the Wailuku River side of Hilo, this active community art center now offers art classes, a gallery, plus a theatre and café.   HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports, over the past couple of years, a slow regeneration has been underway.

The Tokyo Midtown Award was created to encourage Japanese designers, artists, and people off the street to submit their bright ideas for potential recognition.  The idea is to show case uniquely “Japan Value”.  HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports, the 2018 Tokyo Midtown winner does bring a particular esthetic to the current show at UH Mānoa’s Art Department.

Painter Kainoa Gruspe graduated from UH Mānoa in 2017 and has been showing consistently around Honolulu ever since.  His latest show at Ars Café on Monsarrat combines the naïve imagery of a house, a T-Rex, or a happy face, with a paint application technique that looks like stacked magazines from the side.  HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports some paintings have a hundred layers.

In 2017, Sean O’Harrow fondly recalled formative years at the old Art Academy, as he threw himself into implementing change as the Honolulu Museum of Art’s first Hawai‘i-born Director.  Just over two years later, many are surprised that O’Harrow is leaving.  HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports.

The staggering growth of digital media has not been the death knell for print that many people predicted.  Magazines, in fact, have found niche markets and new opportunities in formats that still lure readers and fans who seek them out.  HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports on a new magazine in Honolulu that may feel a little bit more like home.

In 2018, a host of factors led to the cancellation of Honolulu’s annual Night in Chinatown, held to honor the lunar new year.  This year, both the Night and parade are back, but as Chinatowns across the nation sputter and fade away, HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports, Honolulu’s Chinatown, too, is in the midst of a struggle.

The usual museum-going crowd on O‘ahu is joined by countless kids and families who remember Honolulu Biennial 2017 very fondly.  If the goal was to highlight local artists, bring in exciting international artists, and engage the community, it worked!  Thanks to the efforts of scores of local volunteers.  HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports, this year’s Honolulu Biennial, HB19, will run March 8 to May 5th.

Hawai‘i was a hotbed of change in the late 1800’s.  People were moving to the cities, as cholera, tuberculosis, and other diseases advanced, killing 70-90% of Native Hawaiians by the end of the century.  Foreign business interests were growing, and in 1874, Americans thought they had an ally when King Kalākaua ascended the throne.  HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports on the Honolulu Museum of Art exhibition that focuses on his reign.

The Oʻahu Fringe Festival is celebrating its sixth running this weekend in Honolulu.

Artspace Projects is a growing national non-profit that uses low income tax credits to build housing artists can afford to rent.  They are experts at keeping creatives in neighborhoods that are gentrifying beyond reach.  That has proven to be a strategy that cities, including Honolulu, are eager to try.  HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports.

The United Nations Climate Change conference in December faced urgent news from the UN Climate Change Panel, which had concluded that previous CO2 reduction goals are not enough to avert catastrophes.  In addition, our window of opportunity to act is shrinking---to a dozen  years or less.  HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports, we in Hawai‘i can contribute to the global transformation required.

A lifelong educator, the late Frederick “Bruce” Wichman was a descendent of the Rice family of Kaua‘i.  He began collecting stories and legends, especially about the Hā‘ena area, when he was a child.  In 2013, HPR’s Noe Tanigawa met him one evening in Kōke‘e where he had a home.  In part two of a look at Menehune, Hawai‘i’s “little people,” Wichman described them as short, and stocky, among other things.

Hawai‘i’s Menehune are not very much like Christmas elves, but children in the islands all knew stories about them, growing up.  Menehune were said to be about 3 feet tall.  They lived in the mountains and when they felt like it, they helped Hawaiians of old to build temples, roads, walls and fishponds.  HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports, the island of Kaua‘i is rich with Menehune stories, and evidence of their industriousness.

Now that it’s the time of year for special gifts, lovers of fine craft and locally made art are wondering what has become of Nohea Gallery, formerly in Ward Warehouse.  Far from fading away, Nohea moved into the Hyatt Regency, and now, Nohea Gallery has opened a flagship store in Kāhala Mall.  HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports they’ve been connecting artists and art lovers for the past 28 years.

Families from around O‘ahu have been checking out the new Victoria Ward Park in Ward Village, currently adorned with 25 thousand LEDS in a blend of art and technology entitled Light Garden:  a Thousand Year Bloom.  This marks the opening of Victoria Ward Park, and reflects a continuing effort by the Howard Hughes Corporation to use art to animate spaces.  HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports.

Now that everyone can order anything they want online, getting that special gift for those few meaningful people can actually be more fun.  HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports there are surprising options you’ll enjoy perusing in O‘ahu’s art galleries, including in Kailua and Hale‘iwa.

Abandoned buildings, urban blight, it’s common knowledge now that undesirable neighborhoods with low rental rates attract artists and creatives.   What tends to follow, are eating places, galleries, bars---and gentrification, which ends up pushing the artists out.  HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports, an 84 unit, affordable, live/work rental space for artists is coming up in Kaka‘ako.

Does Honolulu really need more chamber music?  Emphatically, yes! According to one young musician who has already staged a string of successful concerts this year.  HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports bassist Christopher Yick wants local families to close the year on a classical note.

A new show at the Commons Gallery in the Art Department at UH Mānoa makes a powerful case for abstract painting.  Established painter and educator Debra Drexler is showing works with a newly minted professional painter, Kalani Largusa.  Largusa offers thoughts about how to approach an abstract painting.

Painter Lynda Hess discovered clay recently, and while she was working, she thought about the Biblical origins of men and women.  This idea developed, becoming her new installation at the HiSAM Gallery x MORI Shop in the Hawai‘i State Art Museum.

The simple sign for Kobayashi’s Art Enterprise was a familiar sight on 12th Avenue in Kaimukī for decades.  The small second floor frame shop was a hangout for one of Hawai‘i’s most important artists, Satoru Abe, who encouraged the owner, Hamilton Kobayashi to paint.  Now they’re both featured in a show at Saks 5th  Avenue in Waikīkī.  HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports.

Hawai‘i’s history with cattle started in 1793, when Captain George Vancouver gave King Kamehameha six cows and a bull.  With a kapu protecting them, wild cattle became a nuisance by 1850, so the kapu was lifted and Spanish vaqueros were brought in to manage the animals.  HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports a new Honolulu Theatre for Youth play explores the story of Hawaiian cowboys.

Audiences accustomed to stories about rising sea levels in the Pacific, are introduced to another sort of rising tide in the Kingdom of Tonga.  Leitis in Waiting presents the high spirits of a transsexual beauty pageant alongside religious fundamentalism that condemns both the pageant and the lifestyles it represents.

On Election Day 2018, Americans exercise a right of citizenship that has been evolving over the last 200 years.  When the Founding Fathers invoked ideals of liberty and justice, democracy was still under consideration as a means to get there, and, it remains a work in progress.  HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports.

Museums have traditionally been repositories of knowledge, places where objects and facts would be found and preserved.  On closer examination, museums can also be seen as trophy cases for conquerors, a place where colonizers exhibit their spoils.  HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports, a symposium in Honolulu is looking at issues and ideas for museums in the 21st century.