Constructive creativity

From up close the construction wall along Ala Moana Boulevard near Waterfront Plaza looks like a series of undecipherable black-and-white patterns that wouldn’t get a second glance from passers-by.

But take a few steps back and images start to emerge from the squares: an enormous aku fish, for example, with an eye near the door where construction workers enter the site from South Street. Also, a row of bicycle wheels, the profile of a Hawaiian stilt bird, a Quonset hut, a newspaper boy wearing a hat and a girl fishing.

The 1,500-foot-long wraparound mural, called “Kaka‘ako Pixel Wall,” is by .5ppi, an artists collective specializing in collaborative printmaking installations. It was commissioned for an undisclosed price by A&B Properties, developer of The Collection, a residential high-rise.

Putting art on construction barriers has become a common practice at many high-profile projects as developers seek to beautify the untidy sites and generate goodwill among neighbors in the face of community upheaval.

In the case of the pixel wall, “It was an opportunity to add visual richness and excitement to the area during a period of change,” said Rick Stack, A&B’s senior vice president of development.

Stretching around the entire construction site bordered by Ala Moana, South, Auahi and Keawe streets, the artwork is made up of a collage of Kakaako scenes hand-printed on about 9,000 sheets of 11-by-15-inch paper.

The installation blends the past with the present, according to designer Justin Davies, who used images from the archives of Honolulu Iron Works, which stood on the site in the early 1900s, as well as photos of present-day Kakaako, where a number of construction projects are underway.

“This neighborhood may look like this now, but it has all these layers of history,” he said. “A collage lets you juxtapose different moments in time and gives you that historical depth that’s hard to capture with a photograph at a given moment.”

More than a dozen printmakers from .5ppi, under the direction of Duncan Dempster, started printing and gluing the papers onto the construction wall with homemade wheat paste in November, finally finishing in late May.

City building codes require developers to put up an 8-foot barrier and covered walkways around construction sites. Some contractors erect solid, plywood barriers, while others put up chain-link fences covered with black mesh screens.

Maile Meyer, owner of Na Mea Hawaii at Ward Warehouse, said construction-site artwork can create a connection between builders and the community and provide opportunities for artists. Meyer was involved in a 2012 project in which young artists painted a 300-foot-long mural on the construction wall for the new Pier 1 Imports on Auahi Street, a Howard Hughes Corp. property. The public was invited to a community paint day, and parts of the mural were salvaged and integrated into artwork at Nanakuli High School.

Also at Ward Village, the developer installed a panel of photos and text explaining the area’s history at the construction site of the Waiea high-rise condominium. The information was collected in collaboration with Bishop Museum, according to Katie Ka‘anapu, director of community and retail marketing for Howard Hughes.

A replication of a mural by Native Hawaiian artist Solomon Enos, titled “Keaomelemele,” the goddess who took on many forms, is also on the wall, and there are large-scale images of a sunset, a verdant valley and other scenery.

The “Kaka‘ako Pixel Wall” should remain up for at least another year. Artists plan to color in parts of it in the coming months and will save portions of it when construction is done.

It was a labor-intensive effort, according to Noah Matteucci, one of the lead printmakers who installed the work from beginning to end with a team of other artists and volunteers. He hopes the public will take time out to enjoy the mural.

“I don’t think there’s ever been a print installation this big on a construction site where everything is hand-printed,” he said. “Just take a look. Stop, get out, look at it close, go back and look again.”