THE LEFT LANE
Academy naming gallery after director
Advertiser Staff and News Services
George R. Ellis will leave the Honolulu Academy of Arts next January, but the director and his wife, Nancy, will be remembered there long afterward. The academy's board of trustees has voted to name a new exhibit space in honor of the Ellises. The George R. and Nancy Ellis Gallery for the Art of the Philippines is expected to open at about the time of Ellis' retirement.The art of the Philippines was Ellis' specialty when he was associate director and curator of African, Oceanic and Indonesian art at the UCLA Museum of Cultural History. He conducted field research in northern Luzon on the art of the Ifugao people and he has been buying pieces from the Philippines for the academy's collection for the past 20 years.
Cutting-edge writer will discuss her work
Writer/poet Carolyn Lei-lanilau produces work that pushes boundaries, leaving little middle ground. Intentionally provocative, this much-lauded author, who grew up in an English-centric Hawai'i household, embraces her Chinese and Hawaiian heritages.
In her best-known book, "Ono Ono Girl's Hula" (University of Wisconsin Press, 1997, $17.95 in paperback), she writes, "Don't ask me if I'm Amy (Tan) or Maxine (Hong Kingston). They are sane. I am SHAMeless." Her book "Wode Shuofa (My Way of Speaking)" won the 1989 American Book Award for Poetry.
Today, Lei-lanilau gives a free talk at 7 p.m. in the Yukiyoshi Room, Krauss Hall, UH-Manoa, to discuss what results when the Chinese and Hawaiian languages combine. For information, call 956-3836.
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Since the early 1990s, American women have been more inclined to mix the cheap, however brazenly, with pricey chic. A Gap T-shirt with a Chanel jacket or Target capris with Weitzman sandals? Who cares? So for the July issue, editors at Marie Claire magazine asked Vanessa von Bismark, a New York socialite and great-great-granddaughter of a prince, to take a shopping trip to Wal-Mart and then test her discount duds on her friends.
She spent $159.70 for four outfits and the totally predictable happened. The first test was in a two-piece suit by Kathie Lee (Gifford) Apparel ($29.96) at a cocktail party. Sure enough one guest asked, "Is that Prada?" From another: "Is the designer French?"
