Left Field Wander: Hawaii Craftsmen Exhibition, Part 1

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Hawaii Craftsmen Exhibition, Part 1

Yesterday, I took care of business. I’d been meaning to check out the Hawaii Craftsmen 45^th Annual Statewide Juried Exhibition at the Honolulu Museum of Art School at the corner of Beretania and Victoria Streets, near downtown Honolulu, but there always seemed to be something that got in the way.

Well, all it took was a slightly determined effort and I soon was forking over $3 to the attendant at the parking lot next door.

There are some amazing things on display at the small exhibition, and I recommend it highly. For one thing, other than paying for parking (you can park free on the street if you can find a spot and don’t mind a little walk), it’s absolutely free. Not only that, but there’s a nice little extra exhibit of locally produced Japanese tea implements (Chanoyu) upstairs. I’ll tell you about that one another time.

Jo Lauria, a former decorative arts curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, was the invited juror who selected the award winners. Some of the artists received pretty nice cash prizes – the $1,000 O’Neill Award of Excellence and the $500 Stephan Jost Award of Excellence, for example. In addition to the 284 artists who displayed their works, multiple works by three additional invited artists are on display.

I spent more than an hour wandering among the works, snapping pictures at every turn. When it came time to cull them down to a half-dozen or so, I couldn’t get past 13. So I’ve decided to split the posting – half today, and half tomorrow.

Today’s offerings: