POW! “It’s the impact art has on a person — a punch in the face.”

WOW! “It’s the reaction someone has to a particular piece — a sense of awe and wonder.”

“Together they form ‘powwow,’ a Native American term for a celebration of art, music and culture. It’s the perfect fit for our mission, which is to provide a forum for contemporary artists to engage with the broader community in the creation of art and music.”

Jasper Wong is passionate about POW! WOW! The Honolulu-born artist and graphic designer is the founder and lead director of the weeklong festival, which is held annually in several cities.

POW! WOW! blossomed in Hawaii but traces its beginnings to Hong Kong. In 2007, holding a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in illustration from the California College of Arts in San Francisco, Wong moved there, hoping to find opportunities to exhibit his work.

“But I couldn’t convince anyone to give me a chance because I was the wrong kind of Chinese,” Wong said. “Basically, artists from Beijing and Shanghai were the hot commodities, and since I was Chinese-American, gallery owners saw less potential in my work.”

So he and a partner opened their own gallery in an old building on the outskirts of the city. They changed the facade, fixed the plumbing, painted the walls, added windows and lighting, removed the flooring, coated the underlying concrete and began displaying the work of emerging contemporary artists from Hong Kong, Melbourne, Australia, San Francisco and other major cities.

POW! WOW! was born in 2010, fulfilling Wong’s desire to go back to the time when art was created purely for the joy of it, with no thought about making money.

“We set up blank canvases in the gallery; had five artists from London, Paris, Taipei and Hong Kong paint them collaboratively; and invited the public to watch the process,” he said. “It went on for a week and drew a lot of interest.”

When it was over, all the art was destroyed. “We covered everything with black paint,” Wong said. “By doing that, it really was solely about process, collaboration and love of art.”

The following year, he brought the event home to Honolulu, turning the spotlight on Kakaako, which, in his words, “was a forgotten district at the time. It’s between busy Waikiki and downtown Honolulu, but no one spent much time there. The fact that it’s an industrial area made it ideal for murals: The buildings there have more walls without windows, doors and other obstructions. Restaurants, warehouses, car dealerships, retail stores, alleys, auto mechanic shops — wherever there’s a wall, we’ll paint on it, with the owner’s permission, of course.”

Twelve artists were featured in the inaugural Hawaii event. This year 80 artists from the islands, the mainland, Germany, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, Japan, China, Australia and South Africa will be participating thanks to grants and donations from private and corporate sponsors.

“POW! WOW! Hawai‘i’s mission is, first, to beautify Kakaako through art — to change the cityscape by adding color and vibrancy to spaces that were once overlooked,” Wong said. “Second, we want to connect internationally renowned artists with the local community and build bridges between countries by exposing the world to what’s happening in Hawaii’s visual and performing arts communities and vice versa. Third, we want to educate the public about art and music.”

Artists will be painting murals, both beautiful and bizarre, on just about every block in Kakaako. Some creations are replaced with different ones every year; others wind up being permanent because the property owners like them so much they don’t want to change them.

Also planned are exhibits, lectures and a concert. Students age 13 through 18 from the POW! WOW! School of Art and the POW! WOW! School of Music — which Wong established in 2012 and 2013, respectively — contribute, too: The young musicians perform at the closing concert, and some of the fledgling artists volunteer as assistants to their prominent counterparts.

In addition to Hong Kong and Hawaii, Wong and his team usually stage POW! WOW!s in Texas, California and Asia. If all goes well, the event will expand to Austin in March (SXSW Festival, www.sxsw.com), Long Beach in July, Japan (city to be determined) in October and Taipei in November.

Right now, though, Wong is focused on POW! WOW! Hawai‘i. “Kakaako is undergoing major changes with new residential developments and shopping, dining and entertainment venues,” he said. “We’re hoping to keep art a vital part of the neighborhood.”

Cheryl Chee Tsutsumi is a Honolulu-based freelance writer whose travel features for the Star-Advertiser have won several Society of American Travel Writers awards.