Hawaii art lovers can enjoy watercolor, comic book-inspired art and a new way of looking at the landscape of Hawaii this month at galleries and museums around the island.
Watercolor worlds
At Downtown Art Center in Chinatown, the Hawai‘i Watercolor Society opened its 2023 Members’ Exhibition on Tuesday. The show, which runs through April 29, features 67 paintings by 39 artists, all of them members of the 250-member organization. It’s one of five major shows the society hosts every year.
Society president Dwayne Adams said the show includes traditional watercolor, acrylics, gouache and other water-based media. Many artists combine them, he said, such as this year’s winner of The Best in Show Golden Callus Award, Darold Ramelb, in his work “Red Regalia.” “It’s a great abstraction of figures,” he said. He also liked Inshil Song’s painting “Daylight,” a bird-of-paradise that’s “simple, clean and absolutely beautiful.”
He said it was “a real surprise” that more than a dozen of the works are of figures or portraits, saying such paintings are challenging in watercolor.
“Everything is happening, and it’s happening all over your paper, and you’ve got to see it and take advantage of these little things that are happening,” he said of the dynamic nature of the paints.
Downtown Art Center, 1041 Nuuanu Ave., second floor. Open 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays. Free. downtownarthi.org or hawaiiwatercolorsociety.org
‘Pineapple Man’
The Arts at Marks Garage is once again playing host this month to “Pineapple Man,” one of the first Hawaii-based comic books. Comic book artist Sam Campos will be on hand to greet fans of the character he created in the mid-1990s, which still occupies a cherished place in the local comic book community.
“We consider Sam to be one of the true old-school, Hawaii-based comic artists,” said Lorenzo Trinidad, a cartoonist and a Honolulu Star-Advertiser employee.
Campos has gone on to become a mentor to many comic book artists, and some of them will also be exhibiting their works, including Trinidad.
“I’m going to have the originals from when I was really young and then a modern-drawn version of some of those characters,” Trinidad said.
Look for Campos, Trinidad and the other artists at pop-up events on Saturdays throughout the month (noon to 5 p.m.) and again on April 28 for the Final Friday pau hana event (5 to 8 p.m.).
The Arts at Marks Garage, 1159 Nuuanu Ave. Open noon to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. Free. artsatmarks.com
Art of Hawaii
On April 27, the Honolulu Museum of Art will open a major reinstallation of its Arts of Hawaii Gallery, a “landscape” exhibition that will look at the islands from a political and social perspective rather than just its scenic beauty.
“We’ve installed these works not in a chronological way, they’re more thematic,” said Tory Laitila, curator of textiles and historic arts of Hawaii at the museum. “The paintings can kind of talk to each other and bridge 19th, 20th and 21st centuries together, talking of people and resources and agriculture and plantations, and then some of our political systems, from the kingdom on.”
The exhibition will feature works by contemporary abstract artists such as Satoru Abe and John Koga, Laitila said, and present traditional landscapes in unusual contexts; for example, a painting of Diamond Head by Jules Tavernier will face a work by John Kjargaard that depicts the Mokulua islands as seen through a barbed wire fence, a reference to Hawaii in wartime.
“It’s a variety of ways of looking at Hawaii without looking at a beach or palm trees,” Laitila said.
Honolulu Museum of Art, 900 S. Beretania St. Open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursdays and Sundays and 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Admission: $20, $10 for Hawaii residents. honolulumuseum.org
Other ongoing exhibits:
Bishop Museum
“ ‘Ola Ka No‘eau: Excellence in Hawaiian Artistry”: Bishop Museum explores how artistic knowledge is passed down among Native Hawaiians through the generations. On view through Oct. 29.
1525 Bernice St. Open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Admission: $10.95 to $28.95. bishopmuseum.org
UH exhibit
“Ai Pohaku, Stone Eaters,” the contemporary Hawaiian art exhibit that links the art galleries at the University of Hawaii campuses across Oahu, opens April 30 at East-West Center Gallery on the University of Hawaii at Manoa campus. Some 40 contemporary Native Hawaiian artists are featured in the exhibit, the first of its kind in 23 years. Other galleries taking part currently are Koa Gallery at Kapiolani Community College and Gallery ‘Iolani at Windward Community College. Ho‘ikeakea gallery at Leeward Community College will participate beginning in May.
Various UH campuses on Oahu. Check with specific galleries for hours. Free. hawaii.edu/art/ai-pohaku
