9 Hawaii Artists to Collect
Anyone looking to start or expand an art collection can book a flight to New York or Tokyo and buy something beautiful. But what if you’d rather spend that money supporting local artists whose work will resonate more with your Island lifestyle? On the following pages
is a round-up of some of Hawaii’s most bankable contemporary artists, whose work will grace your walls without breaking your budget. Everyone on this list sells museum-quality artwork starting well under $2,500.
Disco Ball, 2006. Screen-print with crushed glass, edition of 14, 11″ x 11″, $500.
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VINCE HAZEN
BORN: Casper, Wyo. LIVES: Kaimuki. CURRENTLY: Outreach programs coordinator, Honolulu Academy of Arts; board member, Honolulu Printmakers; founder, A.V. Club of Honolulu. Prints, ceramics and “the unusual” available between $100 and $2,000. www.vincehazen.com
| Imagine a Willie Wonka for whom everything is an idea for art, humor is essential, and, paradoxically, the ultimate object is only uniquely original if it can be mass produced. Then picture a colorful cottage with a truly unruly orchid collection, and you can envision yourself in the wonderful world of Vince Hazen. It’s a place where creepy-crawly creatures are included in prints as either ingredients or collaborators and images of disco balls and water fountains are highlighted with crushed glass and metal. Inspired by Marcel Duchamp and influenced by Walter Benjamin, Hazen says: “Striving never to repeat myself, I create primary objects through mechanical reproduction.” |
SUSAN SCOTT
BORN: Milwaukee, Wisc. LIVES: Kailua CURRENTLY: Ocean Watch columnist for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. “Beach junk,” she says, is available for “whatever you think it’s worth.” www.susanscott.net
Susan Scott has walked the beaches of countless islands as well as nearly every continent (including Antarctica) and she’s found a lot of waste amid the beauty. “Seeing albatrosses feed plastic cigarette lighters to their chicks is just one example of our often bizarre relationship to marine wildlife that has inspired me to recycle mankind’s castoffs into environmentally conscious artworks,” she says. These artworks, making their debut here, are the result of years of effort shaped by the action of the sea and the free spirit of a creative soul.
Lighter Buoy, 2006 mixed media, approx. 20″ x 10″ x 6″, $250.
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JOHN KOGA
BORN: Honolulu LIVES: Makiki CURRENTLY: chief preparator, The Contemporary Museum. Otherworldly artworks of plaster, bronze, stone and wood, available through Fine Art Associates, Honolulu, from $35 to $12,000.
Spirit Tree, 2007 cast resin, $2,400.
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| John Koga may be Hawaii’s most well-known living Modernist. He also might be the only local artist you can commission to create a one-of-a-kind object and then provide it with museum-quality installation. His whimsical sculptures are thoughtful extensions of the experimental modes within 20th-century sculptural abstraction established by Noguchi and Moore, while also being vaguely intergalactic; some of Koga’s pieces feel like objects George Lucas might include in the next installment of Star Wars. |
The Artist.
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BRADLEY CAPELLO
BORN: Honolulu LIVES: Kaimuki CURRENTLY: Assistant director, Honolulu Academy Art Center. Paper-based drawings, paintings and installations constructed from ephemera for $250 to $750. www.bradleycapello.com
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If the saccharine-sweet, post-Pop, TXXXT-MSG-OMG!!! glamazons needed someone to brand their look for their latest Generation-Y fall fashion extravaganza, they would surely choose Bradley Capello. Part queer porn-shoot, part LSD and all spectacle, there’s not much going on around town that’s edgier than Capello’s collages, installations and designs. These affordable pieces look best in fetishistic displays of multiple artworks arranged as tongue-in-cheek shrines to rainbows, butterflies and sex.
Snake, 2006 Collage, $250.
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CAROL BENNETT
BORN: Los Angeles; LIVES: Omao, Kauai. CURRENTLY: Member, Kauai Society of Artists, Honolulu Printmakers; journeyman scenic artist, I.A.T.S.E. Paintings, drawings and prints from $200 to $20,000 available through Fine Art Associates, Honolulu, and TimeSpace, Kauai. www.cbennettpaint.com
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Leash, 2007.
10 3/4″ x 10 3/4″, oil, ink, graphite, enamel on wood.
$1,800.
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| Carol Bennett says her world is one where life and art blend in a seamless continuum: “I don’t know where art ends and life begins.” Whether creating a monumentally sized mural for Nawiliwili Harbor or small-scale, intimate studies for her waterscapes, Bennett’s work is epic. Curators and collectors—including The Contemporary Museum and the Hawaii State Art Museum—appreciate her sensitivity to a variety of materials in creating images and surfaces that seduce the viewer. Her recent paintings use buoyancy to reveal a deep and meditative connection with the ocean’s flow of revitalizing energy. |
NOE TANIGAWA
BORN: Ann Arbor; LIVES: Aina Haina. CURRENTLY: Art and culture correspondent, Hawaii Public Radio. Encaustics, oils and charcoals from $200 to $10,000, available through Fine Art Associates and Cedar Street Galleries, Honolulu. www.noetanigawa.com
| With her “whatever it takes” philosophy, Noe Tanigawa has carved out a niche in the local art scene not only as someone who produces beautiful things, but also brings others’ efforts in visual art, music, theater and film to the public as an award-winning journalist. That suave voice familiar to many via radio can also be found in her own art, which appears in collections including American Savings Bank and the W Hotel. Her process is rich with ancient and long-lasting materials and techniques like wax and gold leaf. Working with Buddhist imagery filtered through her Hawaiian upbringing, Tanigawa’s often symbolic pieces, whether of lotuses or octopi, present a joyous spirituality that echoes her understanding of the world as “awareness clothed in biology.” |
He’e – Lovers leave their cave,
2007 charcoal on vellum, approx 12″ x 12″
$300.
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ROGER WHITLOCK
BORN: Seattle LIVES: Kaimuki CURRENTLY: Instructor of watercolor at the Honolulu Academy Art Center. Watercolors available from $95 to $5,000 at The Gallery at Ward Centre; Fine Art Associates, Honolulu; Cedar Street Galleries; and the Kirsten Gallery, Seattle. http://www.gwcfineart.com/ga_whitlock.html
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SE, Manoa Road, morning, 2007
watercolor, $750.
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| Roger Whitlock’s watercolors—you may have seen them at Queen’s Hospital, the Halekulani, HECO and Chef Mavro—are disarmingly gorgeous. Watercolor is considered by artists worldwide the most unforgiving medium because of its immediacy; Whitlock takes this challenge and, through quick brushstrokes, makes easy work of it by his virtuoso blending of foreground and background, information and materials. Like the master chef who reinvents steak or potatoes, he mixes up something fresh and ethereal while using old standards like rain on a street or sun across a vineyard. “It’s all about the light,” he says, “about the way it can make you see any subject, even the most mundane, in a new way.” |
PUNI KUKAHIKO
BORN: Puunui, Oahu LIVES: Kalihi CURRENTLY: Community education coordinator of Hooulu Aina, a land-based health program of Kokua Kalihi Valley Comprehensive Health Center. Mixed-media installations and paintings from $250 to $2,000. Contact her at puni@kkv.net.
Calrice #2 – Puanani, 2007
24″ x 24″, acrylic on rice bag
$500.
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Puni Kukahiko aspires “to grow toward truth and light, evolve toward patience and love, and walk with the knowledge and consciousness that my steps make a path for the ones who follow.” Her art incorporates historical Hawaiian iconography while addressing complicated questions, including what it means to be a dreamy Hawaiian storyteller in the age of globalization. Kukahiko’s work, along with that of others from the second generation of the Hawaiian Renaissance, has begun to be recognized internationally as the artistic component of a cultural revolution. As a result, her art will be exhibited at the United Nations in 2008.
NOREEN NAUGHTON
BORN: Schenectady, N.Y.; LIVES: Kaneohe. CURRENTLY: Professor emeritus of art at Kapiolani Community College. Paintings from $500 to $2,500 available at Cedar Street Galleries, Honolulu; Balcony Gallery, Kailua; Art Treasures Gallery, Honolulu; and FCID Gallery, Honolulu. Contact her at noreennaughton@hawaii.rr.com
Haleiwa II, 2007. 9″ x 18″, oil on linen, $750.
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| Noreen Naughton’s stunning cathedral studio laboratory is pure white and nestled up against the Koolau mountains, giving her views from Kualoa to Kailua. Her recent works are inspired by Renaissance, Impressionist and Modern masters including Piero della Francesca, Corot and Hoffman. “My orchestrated palette gives me the freedom to go beyond myself,” she says. As a concert cellist and daughter of a scientist, Naughton speaks freely of the process of preparation but is reserved about discussing her artwork, letting the images speak for themselves. They are tightly composed explorations of color and line that playfully belie their classical rigor. Her work is in collections of the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, and the Honolulu Academy of Arts. |
Andrew Rose is an artist who lives in Honolulu. www.andrewrose.org
