Another reality

Snow or palm trees? Winter Park or Lanai in the distance?

We are actually back on the Big Island after a few days in beautiful Maui. I heard we missed 44 inches of rain in 3 days...

Snow

Last week we went up to Mauna Kea to see the snow.

This week we are in Colorado in the snow...yes, that's zero degrees. This morning we woke up to minus 10 degrees. Fraser is known as the Nation's Ice Box...





And to think just last week we were at Kehena Beach...

Dolphins again

Sorry to be so boring but we swam with dolphins again. The water was so calm...someone said too calm but not for me... Some people like to roll in the waves as they pound you onto shore. And the sun finally came out for more than 30 minutes. We heard that northern California was getting slammed with a huge rainstorm. Maybe the one we had earlier this week. We have our share but when we get a day like today we get amnesia about all that...

Parting shots from 2007

Starting with Craig cutting back more jungle, a constant task, Arthur and John came over yesterday to harvest some bamboo for a fence. Moving on to Fireworks. People buy them by the truckload out here. Hawaiians love their fireworks. We went to a party at Uncle Roberts in Kalapana last night and it was non stop. The sulfur in the air was thick. Luckily it wasn't near the music.


We drove to the Kona side over the saddle and were treated to a view of Mauna Kea with all this snow. It's been a colder winter... can't beat seeing another rainbow...

Happy New Year!

Fairy Art

Happy funny fairy...

copyright©2007 by tuko
(as usual, all images here are the property of the artist)

Swimming with a turtle

The weather finally cleared for about 30 minutes yesterday and maybe a couple of hours today so it was a dash down to the beach for a long overdue swim... Over to what we call 'Bali', the second set of rock 'islands' that jut out beyond the beach (first set we call 'Tahiti' as an endearing inside joke because it's closer). I saw a small green sea turtle on our way to 'Bali'. Though this image doesn't show it, truth be told I was wearing a wetsuit to keep from getting too cold.
Image copyright 2007 by Tuko

Cold & Rainy Hawaii

Mauna Kea has snow. It's been raining for weeks and enoughs enough. But here I am sitting in our little jungle abode in the tropics in polar fleece. Having finished my assigned projects for the day I decided to do a little sketching with my handy dandy wacom pad. A little one I bought years ago (like 3 computers ago). I hardly use it but I think I'm going to use it more. I finally updated the software from their website, the thing that stopped me. So here's what I'm looking at out my window.

Kalani Art & Fashion Event

Paris? London? Milan? No, it's Puna!!!
















Okay, so let's not forget all the art...









and there was Arthur, and Richard and my art too.

Show at Maui Hands

Arthur Johnsen, Gerald Murai, and I will be representing the Big Island (as well as our gallery) in this juried show opening next Saturday, in Paia. Wish I could be there in person to attend, I love Maui and especially the cute town of Paia.

Hula Girls

Last night Richard (owner of Kalani resort) came over with a couple of volunteers and a movie. We frequently have movie night at someone's home because the nearest movie theater is 45 minutes away in Hilo. Last night's movie was Hula Girls, a Japanese movie by a Korean director (Korean but Japanese born). The movie is about a coal mining town named Iwaki which is located in Fukushima which is north of Tokyo and even though they made it out to be a teeny village it's really a big city if you Google it. But still, it ain't Tokyo. It's supposed to be the 60s and based on a true story. Iwaki was a coal mining town for generations, but now with demand being lower the mining company has to slow down it's operation and lay off it's workers. The town also has natural hot springs so someone gets the brilliant idea to build a huge Hawaiian Village with swimming pools and palm trees, all indoors. They hire a sophisticated dancer from Tokyo to teach the local daughters of coal miners how to dance. Trouble ensues because most of the miners are upset about the change in the town. Good movie with lots of drama and good character development. The teacher (Madoka Hirayama) reminded me a lot of our friend, Yumiko san who also teaches hula in Japan, in Yokohama (not that I picture Yumiko san yelling at her students or slapping them and others around-- I think it was just the hair, the "do"). Of course Richard here who teaches hula at Kalani let us know that in some scenes they were dancing Tahitian style, not Hawaiian. The dancing and costumes in the movie was very reminiscent of watching the Japanese dancers that come to the Merrie Monarch Hula Festival in Hilo (in the spring).

what could've been...

Here's one of my ideas of an ornament I was going to make with my sculpey clay... Oh well, maybe next year...

Update - Swimming with dolphins

Before going in for my day at Arthur's gallery (every Saturday I sit in) we went down to Kehena Beach. Arthur called up at 8 AM, I still had sleep in my eyes but went down anyway and to my surprise and delight there were pods of spinnaker dolphins. They were so lively, jumping and showing off. It was a fun way to wake up! The water was pretty calm though it was a little murky, probably from all that dolphin spinning.

Dolphins at the beach

At Kehena Beach there were dolphins supposedly, but all I could see were big giant waves and with my back feeling like I'd been lifting 50 lb weights I didn't venture in. I don't like to go in alone anyway and my buddy Arthur is lately busy making beautiful pareos for our gallery...

Parade

I was on my way to the Arthur Johnsen gallery when what do I run into again but another parade. Two weeks ago it was the Veteran's Day Parade which made it so I couldn't go down the routes I usually take, they being the parade routes. Today I thought I'll go the bay front way, but of course they had the streets going into Hilo blocked off so I had to go up Hamakua way and make a U-turn back towards town. By the time I got back I saw Santa on the Big Yellow Hilo Fire truck so I knew the parade was over....

Creative Black Hole

Sometimes I go through a period of letting anything else distract me from what I should be doing, like making Christmas ornaments or finishing any number of paintings sitting in my newly cleaned studio space (thereby reducing that excuse)... So yesterday I baked cookies and then went swimming in my wetsuit because the weather is cooling down and it was a very rainy day...

Portrait sitting

I was the subject of an Arthur Johnsen portrait today. Sitting for a painting wasn't easy and I felt a bit like Mona Lisa. Well, I thought this week was better than next week, I wasn't getting any younger...


I got this frame image from pictureframes.com. They sell frames, you can upload a picture and then see what it looks like with either their ready made or custom frames before you buy... way cool. Of course they think this is a 3 inch by 4 inch painting, I didn't give them the dimensions ( I think it might be 16 by 20) and they framed it with a 3 inch thick frame.