Academy of Arts designer's creativity, work ethic praised

By Wanda A. Adams
Assistant Features Editor

The day before he had to fly back to Japan for his brother's funeral in January, 1991, Fujio Kaneko labored through the night in his workshop at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, crafting special mounting pieces for a spectacular exhibit of Van Cleef & Arpels vintage jewelry.

Honolulu Academy of Arts installations designer Fujio Kaneko helped build this birthday cake gracing the lawn for the academy's 75th birthday. Festivities are planned to honor the academy's founder next Sunday. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

This anecdote says a lot about Kaneko, who, with his staff of seven, creates the setting in which the academy exhibits are placed. He is also charged with managing a rambling underground network of workshops and storage spaces, designing the academy's window at Borders Books & Music, mounting shows at the Hawai'i Convention Center and building such ephemera as the birthday cake that graces the lawn for the academy's 75th birthday.

The story of Kaneko's "all-nighter" reveals his dedication to a job he clearly loves and for which he seems ideally suited, requiring someone who is part-artist — sensitive to color, line and shape, familiar with historic eras and artistic styles — and part workman.

Kaneko, who is married with two grown children, is an artist who dabbles in watercolors, acrylics, oils, weaving, ceramics, laquerware and lithography. He can do anything from painting to wiring. And he sews, too.

The jewelry story shows Kaneko's inventiveness. This is a man who, when he can't find something — or, as often happens in a not-for-profit organization, can't afford it — builds it.

Kaneko is known for using clear plastic to display small objects in such a way that they appear to be floating, allowing viewers to see all sides of the pieces. But you can't readily buy such findings, so he makes them, with the aid of tools that are also his creations. Tired of hand-grinding and polishing Plexi-glass for frames and mountings, for example, he rigged a sanding gizmo out of a potter's wheel and a small engine, cooled by an ingenious gravity feed in the form of a length of tubing stuck in a gallon jug of water hung overhead.

The all-night incident is also typical of the tight and incessant deadlines under which installation crews work. Last week, Kaneko and his staff were busy on three imminent shows. In the average year, they build and break down 50 collections.

His willingness to work through the night hints at Kaneko's insistence on doing things his way. "Are you a perfectionist?" he is asked, and he looks away, smiling. "Well," he says. "Some."

Reiko Brandon, the academy's curator of textiles, laughs when she's asked about working with Kaneko. "It's always an adventure," she said. "He doesn't compromise. He has his strong idea. But his ideas are often excellent."

Brandon, who is also from Japan, said Kaneko has what in Japanese is called "shokunin katagi," the special character of a master craftsman. "That is sometimes difficult, but I respect it," she said.

Kaneko grumbles gently about curators in the manner of a husband whose wife is always hurrying him away from one task to get on to another. He enjoys his job, he says, when he's given enough time to do it properly.

The academy's curator of Western art, Jennifer Saville, has been arm-deep with Kaneko in a show opening this week, "Finding Paradise," one of the largest and most varied exhibits they have ever done.

"There's a lot of critical thinking involved, especially with a show like this where the objects range from a loose label — a flimsy piece of paper, no mounting, no frame, no nothing — to something as delicate as jewelry and something as big as a surfboard," she said. "He has both the design background and the practical background to solve these problems ... And he has incredible organizational skills," she said.

Next week, Kaneko is heading to Seattle to look over an exhibit of Korean objects, including an entire Korean house, that will come here soon. Management suggested he didn't need to see it, because he had previously built an entire Japanese house for the museum. But he insisted. "Japanese house I know, Korean house, I don't know," he said flatly.

Academy executive director George Ellis has high praise for the installations manager. "What I love about working with Fujio is I really don't have to second-guess him. If something needs to be done, I know it will be done with dispatch and creativity, whether it's an artistic problem or a mechanical one."

Both Ellis and Brandon commented on Kaneko's work ethic: "I have never seen anyone work so hard. Even when he's sick, he cannot stay away," Brandon said.

It wasn't until the 1980s that the academy could afford to send Kaneko to see traveling shows in advance. But it's important, he says. Seeing the works on display allows him to devise different ways to display the objects, as with a soup tureen collection from the Campbell's Co. a few years back, when he found a way to float the tureen lid a little way above the bowls. "Always I try make it different. I never follow anybody else's way," Kaneko said.

That 1991 all-nighter illustrates Kaneko's continuing connection to his birthplace in Japan, an across-the-water link that has benefited the academy. Kaneko has used his vacation time and own money to study art restoration and repair at museums in Tokyo, Kyoto and Uwajima. "If you know how to repair it, you know how to handle it properly," he says.

And he loves to work with exhibits from Japan. "Japan, easy for me, no need think," he said, in his idiosyncratic speaking style — still heavily accented and largely devoid of articles even after 30 years in this country.

Some time ago, Kaneko says, smilingly telling a story on himself, the curator of the University of California museum was so impressed with his house-made plastic holders that she invited him to speak at a museum conference in Orange County, Calif. "But to do that, you have to speak English," he said, smiling. "American English, not Hawai'i English. Somebody have to translate me to American English." The translation must have been effective: After that, he adds proudly, plastic fabrication became more widespread in museum workshops.

When Kaneko began working at the Academy, in 1967, he was a 23-year-old student at the University of Hawai'i. His intention was to take his degree back to Japan, where he had worked in a hotel in his native Yokohama. He came to Hawai'i to learn English and study travel industry management.

He took a part-time job in the installations department at the academy just to help pay for school. But his energy, artistic sense and inventiveness were such that, when he graduated, then-academy director James W. Foster Jr. asked him to stay on.

Foster, who retired in 1982, recalls a rather diffident Kaneko in those days: "a quick learner, good with his hands, easy to work with. He was willing to follow directions, but he would throw in his own ideas, too. He had that creative force, willing to take on a challenge, very inventive — with a good eye and good taste."