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...

Art Music and Dance at Kalani

Every few months Kalani hosts an art event. Last night was the winter celebration.

Oils by Leno Laure.
Kehena Beach scene by Justin.
I didn't catch the young guy's name that did these cool graffiti caps. He was also taking custom orders.
Don Young's Red Road painting.
Carol Delano's Oils.
Surf board art by Roy.
Arthur's most recent landscape and his "sketch" for the St. Regis Hotel project.

I actually had some new stuff to show (new meaning never been displayed).


Richard painted these doors that will adorn Kalani Mauka and Kalani Kai. Please go to his kalani website for more info.




I shot more videos but the files are too big, I'm just uploading the smaller files. You get the idea.

And then we all danced to Marimba.

Ho ho ho

Season's Greetings

This is the little beach that started to form around 20 years ago when the Kalapana lava flow started and pushed out the famous surfer's beach that had been there for centuries. I've never braved out there myself but on the Solstice our friend, Roger, decided to give us all a show. We clapped when he got back to shore (for me a relief as well as admiration).

holiday party at the gallery

Kehena lock down

From about 4 AM until 4PM today there was a road closure into and out of our little village of Kehena due to a report of gunshots in the middle of the night. At first I heard it was a sniper and that the police were looking for him. Then I heard he had a machine gun. We went down to the beach and saw the blockade on our way down. At the beach we heard that a guy had barricaded himself in his home and had guns and explosives. It kept escalating. We don't really know the truth yet because until less than an hour ago the police couldn't get the guy to come out of his house (about 2 blocks from us--lovely). We did our usual big swim (beautiful day and super calm seas, I didn't even need my wetsuit, it was that warm). On our way home the police told us we couldn't even go through the jungle to get home. So we had to go back down to the beach and then go to our friend's house and hang until they had the situation handled. We even saw a big swat mobile. What a day. Hope no one was hurt. Someone interviewed our friend, Roger, for the local paper. We'll have to look for the story in tomorrow's edition (www.hawaiitribune-herald.com) for more information.

Update: the man was killed. Here's the link.

Max

We had a sweet yogi from Seattle today. Here's my 25 minute sketch. Can't wait to do this for real in Barcelona (Arthur's jk).

Happy Halloween

We get to be ridiculous at least one day a year! We made these costumes for a party last weekend. Great that Arthur had extra card board.

Dog Eat Dog World

Recent concept for a graduation card- you know, it's a dog eat dog world out there...

Another trip to the lava flow...

I don't usually get up before 7, but if you want to see the lava, you gotta go when it's dark and the best time is before sunrise. You walk out in the dark so you can see the lava flowing from the mountain (it was), see the glowing fireworks (we did), see the sunrise (actually, the plume from the smoke obscured the sunrise, but still cool), and then a relatively easy hike back to the car. So yes, I did get up at 4:30 this morning. Totally worth it. I couldn't believe how close we got (and yes, I was a little frightened as well as awed by it).


















This is what I saw as I was leaving the area...

Portrait drawing at Arthur's studio

Arthur jokes that maybe he and I should take a trip to Barcelona and do portraits on the streets. Sounds like fun to me.

Obon in Pahoa

I've been kinda getting sucked into life drawing and beach sketching world and haven't really had much to report lately. This weekend Bon dancing came to Pahoa. Actually, Saturday was very busy but I'll just talk about the Bon dance. It's a Buddhist festival to honor the beloved departed ancestors. Pahoa was once a sugar cane town with a lot of Japanese workers. There's even a Japanese cemetary that I didn't know about located in the back areas. I never saw so many Japanese come out to one location in Pahoa (because now it's been taken over by the come lately hippie types that cruise the health food store and a few other shops. The town really has potential and it keeps trying to make it but it's pretty scruffy and has a ways to go before it's another Paia or even a Hawi. And bringing in a Long's Drugstore and some national chain fast food places on the other end of Pahoa isn't exactly amping up the charm meter.

Back to the Bon dance, held in the Buddhist (temple--it's hard to call it that because the building is very sterile and lackluster) parking lot. Here are some videos from that event. I especially loved this boy who really knew the moves. I tried to join in a little, along with my friends Y and C but we don't know the dances, at least my attempts were too feeble and I get embarrassed very easily, so I opted for being the camera person.



In the end we watched from outside the chain link fence (more minus charm points - ha) as we spotted a couple of friends dance by. Our friends acknowledged that they'd been practicing for weeks. Well, of course.

My friend, Y from Japan, was telling me that it wasn't so popular any more for the young to mix with the old in the real Japan. Similar to language (I studied linguistics a long time ago), how people who move to another area keep their old phrasing and don't "change with the times" of the original culture. So too must a cultural phenomenon that's huge in Hawaii and other parts where in this case the Japanese transplanted themselves many generations ago the traditions haven't changed so much in the host country. A kind of historical "artifact" of what the people brought over (a hundred years ago). It must be true in other cultures. That would be a fascinating study.