Satoru Abe held several positions after he graduated from McKinley High School in 1945 — dishwasher, lumber transporter, magazine distributor, Dairymen's laborer — and all of them left Abe with a nagging question.
"I asked myself, 'Is this the rest of my life?' " Abe told The Advertiser in 2002.
Far from it. Unwilling to submit to a future marked by menial job after menial job, Abe, a marginal student with an earnest interest in art, spent a summer at the California School for Fine Arts then left for New York to study at the Art Students League.
After returning to Hawai'i in 1950 with his wife, Ruth, and daughter Gail, Abe met pioneering local artist Isami Doi, who would become a close friend and mentor, and began a series of copperwork experiments with fellow artist Bumpei Akaji.
In 1956, Abe returned to New York and found a creative home at The Sculpture Center, where his original work attracted the attention of gallery owners and others.
Abe spent 15 years in New York, surrounded by an expanding circle of Hawai'i artists that included Jerry Okimoto, Tadashi Sato and Harry Tsuchidana. The subject of five one-man exhibitions during this time, Abe received a John Simon Guggenheim fellowship in 1963.
Abe returned to Hawai'i in 1970 and has continued his distinctive yet always innovative explorations in sculpture and painting. And while Abe's name may not be familiar to all, his public works have long been a part of the state's visual landscape, from the copper-and-bronze "Volcano" at Aloha Stadium to the bronze-and-gold leaf "The Seed" at Farrington High School to the bold copper sculptures at the downtown First Hawaiian Bank.
