The Halekulani Art Gallery has been home to “Nanea i ka Hulu” for the past month. The title means “delight in the feathers."
When you walk into the exhibit, various forms of featherwork flock the walls. Enoka Phillips, 24, is the hand behind all the artistry.
The young featherworker from Lahaina is taking his first steps out of the nest. This is his second solo exhibition.
Phillips gave HPR a tour of the exhibit, where he recalled a dream about a bird taking a bath in a pot of mud. That dream sparked the creation of one of his favorite pieces — feathering pots. The two ceramic pots feature birds' feathers sticking out of the pots. Phillips said that each one encompasses a different bird.
"I think birds are playful," he said. "I think we're playful and ... I hope I show that in my work, that it doesn't just have to be serious. It could be playful, and it is playful because birds are playful."
He works to keep the process of his featherwork traditional, even though it may not always look like it.
"What our kūpuna would do is that they would take the feathers, maybe like two to five feathers, and bundle them together. And that was like your one feather," he said. "But that was like the foundation for everything, from kāhili, from leihulu, from ahuʻula, mahiʻole and it's taking that traditional techniques and using them in contemporary forms."
Phillips started featherwork in 2018, when he was a sophomore in high school. He said he asked his kumu at the time who recommended Florence "Aunty Flo" Makekau to teach him. The very next day, he was at her house learning the art form.
"When I got to her house, she was sitting in her garage drilling seeds with a cigarette in her hand. She just sat me down, and she just taught me how to make leis. And I think from there ... it felt so natural."
He said that he would go to her house after school and in the summertime, just to make lei.
"It was always just the conversations that kept on bringing me back as well. Like, we'll talk for hours. During the summertime ... my Mom would drop me off in the morning time and Aunty Flo would take me back home, and it was already like nighttime."
Phillips said learning the traditional forms of featherwork was his main priority before mixing in contemporary art forms.
"It could be so much more because I feel like I dream in feathers, you know, like, it never stops," he said. "My mind is always writing about like all these different patterns and different ways of how to make featherwork in different ways, but using those traditional techniques."
Phillips' featherwork exhibit at the Halekulani Art Gallery will be closing Feb. 26, but you can catch him teaching classes in lei hulu making. Find out dates and more on his Instagram, @enokaphillips.
This story aired on The Conversation on Feb. 25, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Tori DeJournett adapted this story for the web.
