Happy Holidays

Finally it's the year of the rabbit!! Hope it's even more terrific that 2010!!

Inspiration

I wish I could say it always comes from within but having been commercially working for the past 20 years, a deadline is a strong motivator. And so there is this show that is coming up, a juried one at the Wailoa Center, a state sponsored and operated gallery in Hilo. The theme was companion animals. I don't have a pet here but there are plenty of people who do and so I saw this sleepy guy at a cafe down the street from where I live. Well it's about 4 miles down because I have no cafe in my neighborhood actually.

At first I started to do something a little more shall we say realistic. It wasn't really because I did my usual 'abstract' coloring to it. But then I decided to do a more fun doggie. And there we have it. The show is being judged this weekend (deadline) and opens next week.

You know you've been in one place too long when...

I was visiting the mainland. I was going to go to lunch with some friends so I put on my favorite Hawaiian dress and one of them stopped me and said no. Oops, did I lose it? So I had to change into a nice tank and cute matching pants (it was a hot day).

I remember when I lived in New York City and no matter how hot it got you never went downtown wearing shorts. I also always wore black back then, but then I always used to wear black even when I lived in California before that. The point is I used to know these things.

So when in Rome... and now that I'm back on the islands I'm wearing my favorite dress once again and feeling good.

A warm evening in Hilo

I didn't take any photos. If you want to see photos of our Opening go to the gallery blog. I've been trying to upload a video that Everett shot of our gallery, but for whatever reason it doesn't want to come up. I'll have to try later.

Meanwhile...

Hilo hasn't been as rainy this year (climate change?) so we've had a great summer. We had a nice run of strawberry guavas (which a lot of people consider a weed tree because they seem to be taking over and smothering other plants out). From our yard--we made our own juice. But with all the work of harvesting (like coffee farmers), grinding and filtering out seeds, to get a little bit of juice, well, it's good it's seasonal. Later the sweeter yellow ones will come to fruit and it will be this all over again...

Opening Sept 3rd

We will be celebrating 5 years since the opening of the Arthur Johnsen Gallery. This fantastic singer that I first saw at Kalani (she was a volunteer there) will be singing for us. Her name is Natasha Helen Davies, she's only 19 but a rare talent. Our gallery opening will be from 5-7 and all the artists should be there. We're also thinking about having an auction of some of the art. Stay tuned for more details.

Abba in Hilo

Over the weekend the Puna Men's Chorus played at the Palace. It was fun to see our friends singing (and dancing).

AJ Gallery Opening

Deborah Beaver (painter)

We had an opening 2 Fridays ago, on July 2nd to introduce our newest artists. Unfortunately I didn't photograph everybody, but here a some of them (they are wearing pink leis)....

Emily Herb (potter) on the right

Leslie Sears (painter) on the left

Gail looking happy as her husband entertained us....

When the model doesn't show up.

It's been awhile since I last posted. Lots of visitors, stuff to do, Merrie Monarch, etc. Too many to post now, this late, so I'll just start with last Saturday's life drawing session. Our scheduled model didn't show up so we decided to just take turns and draw each other. Clothed and unclothed depending on our comfort level. I actually kind of liked having a different model per drawing.

Photo Tunnel

The software my camera came with let's me do this cool thing called photo tunnel. It takes a folder and turns the photos on it into a tunnel that scrolls through the photos so I can see them all at once. I can't upload it here but I did do some screen captures so you can see what I was up to yesterday (cutting bamboo, making pareos, going to Kalani's Art event, oh and life drawing in the morning which I didn't photograph). If you click on the photos they enlarge somewhat, thus saving me the time of uploading them all... ;p

Downtown Hilo Dot Com

I just found out Downtown Hilo has a website and we are on it. Check out this page: http://www.downtownhilo.com/Gallery/tabid/59/AlbumID/380-7/Default.aspx and click on the Art Gallery photo, it's us!! Yay, but I guess we were closed, Boooo.

BTW

With all this tsunami craziness I forgot to mention that the weekend before there was the yearly canoe race that starts in Pohoiki, about 8 miles away, ending up at our little beach. This year they were treated to extra calm waves, not the usual thrashing that's normal here. Good thing they didn't race the following (tsunami) weekend!

Tsunami morning in Kehena

I thought something was up when I got a call before 6AM Saturday morning. It was my sister from the mainland asking if I knew about the tsunami. I was still half asleep and thought she was talking about the one for Japan because of the Okinawa earthquake. She said no, the Chile earthquake, there was one coming maybe to Hawaii. I had no idea. Then, right at 6AM the first tsunami sirens started to go off. This is something I'd never experienced. The siren regularly goes off every first Monday of the month at noon, that's the only time I'd ever heard it go off. It's just a drill.

I walked over to Arthur's house armed with a camera and binoculars. We're on pretty high ground so I didn't think even if a tsunami hit it would affect us (at 800 ft. from the beach but probably the equivalent of 8-10 stories up), the cliffs being maybe 5 stories high. Plus lots of jungle in between to offset a tidal wave.

Normally, we have life drawing on Saturday mornings but since the roads were closed along most of the Red Road (our main road that runs along the coast) I didn't think anyone would be coming and so by default the session would be cancelled. But right at 9AM (with sirens now blaring every hour), Richard showed up with participants and a model. So with the pending tsunami we still had life drawing. Of course, by 11AM I was so distracted that I couldn't continue and Miss Yumiko and I went down to see if we could watch the tsunami roll in. Arthur just laughed and stayed with the class. Here's what we saw....










The only clue that something was amiss was this civil defence road flag left from when civil personnel weren't letting people into certain neighborhoods.

There was a group of us spectators waiting to see and just watching the surf surge back and forth kind of like normal, maybe slightly higher but not really too different from our normal high surf.

Well, it was kind of a rush, the expectation and all but after the appointed time came and went without a tsunami it was life back to normal.

The coolest thing that happened yesterday is that we did spot some whales later that day cruising by.

Happy Heart Day

Thought I should get this in before the day passes...