Painting in the sand

By Wayne Harada
Advertiser Entertainment Editor

Eddy often paints from photographs of hula dancers. He has incorporated that passion into his new love, sand painting. The Art of Eddy Y Exhibit at Island Art Gallery, Aloha Tower Marketplace Reception from 6 to 10 p.m. tomorrow; Henry Kapono to perform Gallery and store hours, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sundays 536-5369

Eddy Y is Eddie Yamamoto, a Japan-born, Big Island-raised, self-taught artist, and you will soon be seeing even more of his works: on a mural at Henry Kapono's yet-to-open Pier Bar endeavor at Aloha Tower Marketplace and on a new batch of aloha shirt-shaped note cards.

Eddy's newest wrinkle, however, is sand painting, a technique involving painting over sand that has been laminated onto a board. An exhibit of his sand paintings opens tomorrow at the Island Art Gallery at Aloha Tower Marketplace.

"When you look at my new sand paintings, you can tell it's sand — it shows through," Eddy said. "It's a medium I invented over the last five or six years. I've used the technique to create Merrie Monarch posters but my sand art has never been shown to the public 'til now."

Eddy, 48, fell in love with hula through an early meeting with kumu hula Ray Fonseca; he often paints from photographs of dancers from Fonseca's Hilo-based Halau Hula 'O Kahikilaulani. He also fell in love with the landscapes and the Island people when he was a student at the University of Hawai'i; all of this would eventually trigger his creative juices.

Sand painting, he said, is tedious. "You have to wear special gloves and you have to laminate actual sand on a board. Then you paint, but after that, it's my trade secret."

He hit on the sand notion when he saw other local artists incorporating the material into other forms, such as petroglyph sculptures. He wanted to use natural island material in his art, and managed to formulate his own technique, working with sand but translating it into a traditional painting.

"I experiment a lot with techniques. Took me about five years to get this sand painting thing right," said the artist.

Eddy's sand technique requires a glazing process not unlike what the Dutch masters used in the 17th century, "where there are thin layers of paint on top of each other, to create other colors — like blue over yellow to get green. But there's the sand element; you can totally touch and feel and know it's sand," he said.

Jeff Liu, proprietor of the Island Art Gallery, is assembling Eddy Y's works for an indefinite run at the Aloha Tower site. "I really liked his subject matter — especially the accurate presentation of the hula dancers," said Liu, who also operates another gallery by the same name on Nu'uanu Avenue.

"I don't see any other artist doing what Eddy is doing now with the true-to-life look," Liu said. "On sand, imagine."

Eddy grew up in Japan, where he lived until he was 14; his artist mom encouraged him to dabble in art "ever since I was a little kid of 3. In elementary school, I took lessons; she pushed me, but I really liked it," Eddy said.

He said he enjoys working with Hawaiian lifestyle images the best. "I did one poster for the Waimanalo Health Center showing a guy with a rainbow, and it has been my most satisfying work," Eddy said. "It was for a nonprofit, a community thing, and I made the poster and T-shirts, working with (kumu hula) Frank Hewett (who works at the center) who is shown with a rainbow between his hands and male gods on the top, females on the bottom, healers and the Waimanalo range (the Ko'olaus). And a voyaging canoe, because life is a voyage. It wasn't my effort; it was directed by these people." (He'll autograph these posters at the gallery show, with all proceeds going to the Waimanalo Health Center).

While in college here, Eddy met the members of Kalapana and was asked to create the cover visual for the group's second album, released in 1976. That started a ripple of interest that evolved into a wave of opportunities.

Eddy created a line of designs for Hobie T-shirts that reflected the California lifestyle and similar Island images for Reyn Spooner shirts. He has had a big boost lately with aloha shirt creations for Island Heritage, which have been filling the souvenir bins in a variety of guises, from note cards to key chains, mouse pads to clocks, pot holders to gift wrap, and coffee mugs to refrigerator magnets.

His designs end up in busy locales like Waikiki and Honolulu, but he loves the tranquility and isolation of Laupahoehoe, where he does most of his work. "My wife and I live in a very remote area; we have no neighbors; this is just a wonderful place to create," he said.

He said he took on his professional name of Eddy Y while living on the Mainland. "It sounded much cooler than Eddie Yamamoto, and one of the reasons was that I feared — how shall I say? — racial discrimination. I felt it was easier to sell a million shirts to Hobie under the Eddy Y name."

A charitable sort, he has allowed local Big Island music acts such as the Joe Battery Band and Larry Dupio to utilize his art on their album covers. "I like to help out the local kids," he said.

He has done numerous commissions, notably for the Senior PGA Tour and the Ironman Triathlon, with his images dotting brochures and gracing keepsake posters. For the PGA, and the MasterCard underwriters, Eddy also has done portraits of famous golfers, most of whom he has never met, including Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino and Hale Irwin.

Eddy also created the Merrie Monarch Festival posters from 1997 to 2000, capitalizing on his interest in hula. One year it was a wahine, another year, it was a kane.

His newest project begins soon at Kapono's Pier Bar night spot, which is set for a June 1 opening at Aloha Tower Marketplace. It will be a tropical nightlife image that will be a focal point of the space.

"His style is cheerful, happy, like his personality, which is positive," said Kapono about the wall art. "Eddy puts that energy and feeling into his painting, and I wanted to get the spirit of friendship on the wall, based on the expression in 'Friends' (one of his signature tunes)."

The mural will be 33 by 40 feet, and Eddy will do it in a week, with help from friends, Kapono said.