Arts & Culture

With immigration and citizenship under scrutiny now in the U.S., a Japanese-American artist is drawing attention to a time when citizens were imprisoned because of their ancestry.  Hawai’i’s Honouliuli internment camp was the final stop in Setsuko Winchester’s Yellow Bowl Project, an odyssey linking these sites of infamy.

A year ago, Hawai‘i Opera Theatre was adjusting to the abrupt departure of its executive director, and a debt of about $2 million. It cancelled one production this season, but a new leader is in place, and the season closer has all the makings of a hit.

Artist Mayumi Oda who lives in Kealakekua is represented in major international collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Since 1992, Oda has dedicated herself to a nuclear free world, and she’s showing some of her best work in Hilo now.

The live music experience is easy to fall out of, what with anything you want available, any time you want it, wherever you are.  The thing is, being in a room with musical instruments vibrating, and musicians leaning into their efforts, is a very different experience and Honolulu offers some bracing encounters you may not have expected. 

In gratitude for the thirty years Hawai‘i has nurtured his professional life, Hawai‘i Symphony principal oboist Scott Janusch came up with a novel idea. He would use a piece of endemic Hawaiian wood to create a very special oboe, one that can be passed on to future generations.

Elmer Omar Pizo was born in the Philippines, where he went to seminary school, then worked in Saudi Arabia.  Twenty nine years ago, Pizo immigrated to Hawai‘i and has worked in vector control, landscaping, carpentry, and security, all the while, quietly writing poetry.  HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports, his first collection is a window into Filipino life.

Today, the last day of Poetry Month, we hear from the late W.S. Merwin, award winning U.S. Poet Laureate. He spent his last three decades cultivating a palm garden at his home in Peahi, Maui.  His narrative, The Folding Cliffs, combines western epic poetry with Hawaiian chant.  In 2008, HPR’s Noe Tanigawa talked with Merwin about achieving that synthesis.

Graphic artist Byeok Song created propaganda for the North Korean regime in the 1990’s.  During the economic depression there, hunger led to prison time for him, and to his escape through China to South Korea.  Song now works under an alias to protect his family, using art to bring attention to his homeland.  HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports.

Painter Reem Bassous drew on history, psychology, philosophy, current events, and her childhood experiences in war-ravaged Beirut to create her current paintings.  HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports, her students at Leeward Community College are given tools for expression and an opportunity to do research and synthesize their own experiences too.

Honolulu is having an Art Moment, and now is the time to take advantage of it.  Many offerings are free!

Creativity is the number one soft skill sought by employers, according to LinkedIn.  Beginning today, HPR’s Noe Tanigawa looks at two artists who approach creativity in different ways – starting with artist and educator Duncan Dempster.

Recently, educators from Kamehameha Schools’ Ho’olaukoa Design and Strategies team gathered at Ho‘omaluhia Garden to experience a new teaching method called Arting and Writing.  This approach uses Hawai‘i based ideas and the environment to help learners find their own motivation. 

Twenty-six percent of adults in the U.S. have some type of disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s one in four Americans.  As part of a movement to understand people with disabilities, a new dance approach has emerged – and it challenges norms onstage.

Netflix’s popular Chef’s Table series introduces chefs worldwide who are creating fancy, eye-popping food.  Unexpectedly, a Korean nun’s episode about temple cooking proved a favorite.  Recently, Jeong Kwan was invited to Honolulu to cook and share her ideas with KCC culinary students and others.

When Governor Neil Abercrombie appointed Steven Kealoha Wong as Hawai‘i’s first Poet Laureate, he handed Kealoha a mission for the next year: promote writing, reading, and the appreciation of poetry among Hawai‘i’s people. Seven years later, Kealoha’s crafted a multimedia theatre production that’s a creation story for today. 

Hawai‘i’s artists, designers, and makers are being invited to pitch ideas for a new community art center in the City’s Chinatown Gateway Plaza.  Several key Honolulu arts organizations have secured a trial space for a pop up this Saturday, then for two and a half months.  If all goes well, HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports, a vibrant art center could make it easy for Honolulu’s business people to get creative.

Honolulu is having an art moment, with fine international artworks on view around town.  For example, the Sunday Times UK called Lisa Reihana’s “Emissaries” the best artwork at the 2017 Venice Biennale.  The work, representing New Zealand, left Venice with accolades and bookings in Paris, London, Vienna, and guess what? “Emissaries” is now in Honolulu in a particularly revealing installation.

The ARTS at Marks Garage is under new management.  The mission is still:  To transform downtown Honolulu with the power of the arts.  It was a nice mix of creative brains and skillful hands the other night at the opening of SymbioSEAS—an art-sci (art and science) collaboration.

The SaVAge K’lub of New Zealand has been staging unique cultural events in spaces around the world since 2010.  Fifteen members are in Honolulu now for the Honolulu Biennial.  HPR's Noe Tanigawa attended their opening in a storefront on Nu‘uanu Avenue in Chinatown.

Cities that host biennials soon find a lot of art events piggybacking on the excitement.  Last Friday night, a throng of party goers kicked off the Honolulu Biennial for its two month run at Ward Center.  Saturday night, another international art show opened in an unexpected space on Nimitz Highway.  HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports, the new iBiennale got off to an auspicious start.

After its amazingly successful first run, the second Honolulu Biennial opens tonight at Ward Center.  Biennials are all about activating a whole city with art, and now, just about every key city has one. In the 21st-century, Biennials proclaim a city is part of the creative economy, and visitors expect to be wowed by the art, and take part in panels, film showings, and pop up exhibitions, too.  HPR’s Noe Tanigawa visited The Honolulu Biennial’s HUB at Ward Center where opening festivities begin tonight.

The exceptional is expected at South By South West (SXSW), the global technology, music, and film festival, which starts next week in Austin, Texas.  Eighty thousand people attend South By, because important trends, like Twitter, surface at this event.  HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports 35 Hawai‘i representatives and groups will be going this year, including only one musician.

Ten local art connoisseurs got together recently to choose 25 Top Picks at the Hawai‘i State Art Museum, or HiSAM.  Their goal is to lure everyone into HiSAM, for fresh perspectives on art in our state.  HPR’s Noe Tanigawa asked two of the connoisseurs you probably know, about how they discovered art and what they get out of it.

Wahiawā in Central O‘ahu is home to about 18 thousand people, plus over 15 thousand soldiers at Schofield Barracks.  Over the last ten  years, a change has come over a central section of Wahiawā, where bars and porn shops ruled the block.  HPR’s Noe Tanigawa reports, a surfing nonprofit has brought a fresh wave into town.

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.