Convention center displays students' art
By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer
Picasso, Hawai'i Convention Center Manager Joe Davis said yesterday, said it took him four years to learn to paint like the Renaissance master Raphael, "but it took my whole life to learn to paint like a child."
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser
Picasso would have been in his element yesterday at the center, where 96 paintings by youngsters in grades 7-12 went on display at the 2002 Student Art Exhibit.
Ty Yamaguchi, left, Eric Newhouse and Stephen Esaki check out their art work on display at the Hawai'i Convention Center along with Stephen's mother, Amy Esaki, second from right. The boys are seniors at Kapa'a High School on Kaua'i and came to O'ahu for yesterday's unveiling ceremony.
The state also accepted three ceramic wall murals of ginger blossoms from 61-year-old artist Bob Flint, a California man who came to Hawai'i to surf 42 years ago and made the Islands his artistic home.
Flint's three murals were the latest pieces purchased for a collection of $2.5 million worth of original art that makes the center one of the most remarkable meeting places in the world, Davis said.
Hip huggers, bare midriffs and baggy cargo pants appeared to have eclipsed the artist's beret and smock of Picasso's day, but the enthusiasm and energy were still the same as lei-bedecked young painters crowded around their works with proud friends and family.
"This is my idea of an ideal place where I would like to be at the end of my life, a place where it is calm," said Savannah Kane, a 17-year-old 'Aiea High School senior, pointing at a peaceful painting of a small cabin near a pond surrounded by trees and flowers.
The scene, entirely imagined, was Kane's response to the redundant if not grammatical exhibition theme, "My Island and Me," set forth by the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts for students "to express how they feel about, look at, or interpret their island home."
"I was very surprised my painting was selected, and I'm very proud it will be on display for a year," Kane said.
The public may view the art and the center by calling 943-3587 to arrange free group tours Wednesday and Thursday mornings, Davis said.
Although Hawai'i has been home for Kane since she was born, relative newcomers also offered captivating images of "my island."
Nghia Nguyen, 14, a Waipahu Middle School student who emigrated from Saigon, Vietnam, with his family two years ago, created a cleanly drawn collection of fish and dolphins surrounding a skin diver off Punalu'u.
Nguyen has never been diving, never even snorkeled at Hanauma Bay, but created the images out of his dreams of what Hawai'i must be.
"I always thought of Hawai'i as underwater adventures and fascinating creatures," he said. "I was hoping, I would like to meet a dolphin in the ocean."
Adam Tansey, 14, of Mililani, who came to Hawai'i from upstate New York when his father Tim moved here to work on the Marriott timeshare project at Ko Olina, quickly became a defender of the 'aina.
At the foreground of a soft landscape of the Wai'anae mountains under a blue sky filled with white billowing clouds, Tansey planted in a fallow pineapple field a small, bold warning sign with skull and cross-bones underneath the red slashed circle symbol of something banned or prohibited.
"I did a project on pesticides in school," Tansey said, "and I wanted to show we don't want dangerous chemicals in our environment."
The Mililani middle school student said he'd like to pursue art in college, as his mother did.
Norma Tansey, who studied interior design, was as delighted as scores of other parents at the ceremonies yesterday.
"I didn't know he had this much art in him," she said. "I hope we can get a lot of friends and family to come see the display."
Does she look over his shoulder and coach him?
Not really. It's not just that Adam is a budding artist, she said. He's also "a teenager. They don't think mothers know much about anything."
Reach Walter Wright at wwright@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8054.
