Exhibit invites viewers to plunge in

Printmaker Laura Smith says, "Come on in, the water is fine!" Fans of her exhibit of pool-inspired prints and books describe the experience as "small kid days, when we swam at the Y pool" or "my water aerobics class" or even their college swim meet.

Ektopia, a gallery in an unlikely Kai­muki location, feels so much like an indoor pool you can almost feel the splash, hear the diving board spring back and smell wet towels.

Walking in, the ceiling immediately draws the viewer’s eye. It is crisscrossed with bright cords, each strung with pennants; these were individually woodcut-printed on Tyvec, a polyethylene material. Smith calls them lane markers for life, explaining that the pool is her metaphor for the world. The lanes are the guidelines, the shallow end is easy and the deep end, risky.

Twenty-nine cutout swimmers race across walls, heavy into competition. Four others engage in their own race in the opposite direction, stroking against the crowd. Each 6-by-21-inch figure is an original woodcut print.

A final wall features 16 12-by-12-inch woodcut prints, enhanced with stencil, screen printing, drypoint etching, collagraph and monoprint techniques. Smith’s color pallet is numerous shades of blue employed with red-orange. She says she gave herself a limited pallet to allow the texture and design of each print to make the statement of movement. The prints are unframed, mounted on walls with tiny magnets. "The most important thing," Smith said, "is to let you see the art."

In a smaller gallery in the back of the space, pages of Smith’s handmade, hand-printed books are filled with more swimmers, moving from light morning water to the dark, deep water of twilight. One of the books is the only Hawaii entry featured in the international book "500 Handmade Books," by Lark Publishing.

Gallery owner Allen Jim says the Ektopia space was a bit of chicken and egg.

"I came back home to Hawaii from years in New York, where art was a spectator sport, to refurbish this building my grandfather built so we could show art," he said.

In 1947 the building housed the Deluxe Market; later it was home to Lucky Chop Sui, followed by a kim chee factory and, eventually, a sushi catering company.

"Now we cater to good taste," Jim said.

In the process of joining the Hawaii art community, Jim enrolled in his first art class: Smith’s printmaking class at the Hono­lulu Museum of Art School. Smith was executive director of the Hono­lulu Printmakers for 20 years and still teaches and prints at the school, where the Printmakers have a work space.

The works in Smith’s show represent a solid year of printing. Then Jim gave her the keys to the Ektopia gallery. After a visit, she built a scale model and found she needed more flags and more swimmers.

Smith describes the repetition in swimming as a reflection of the repetition in printmaking.

Moreover, she said, "the pool describes life, always looking for boundaries that enable us to make decisions and resolve tricky situations in a race to the finish line."