Repaired mural finds new life at UH
By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer
The Jean Charlot mural "Night Hula," nearly destroyed after a storm tore it from a wall at Kamehameha Schools, has been restored and is on display at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa.
Advertiser library photo • Feb. 5, 1998
A dedication for the rescued work will be held in Saunders Hall tomorrow at 2:30 p.m.
A thunderstorm resulted in damage to many of the tiles that made up Jean Charlot's "Night Hula" when it was at the Kamehameha Schools. After painstaking restoration work, the mural is once again on display.
Charlot created "Night Hula," a 9-by-15-foot ceramic tile piece, in 1961. It shows hula dancers, chanters, drummers and onlookers against a background of green foliage, blue-black sky and a crescent moon.
It was commissioned for the Tradewinds Hotel in Waikiki. When the Tradewinds underwent renovations in 1991, the mural's owners, the Aluli family, donated it to Kamehameha Schools.
It remained on display at the school until January 1998, when a thunderstorm ripped tiles from the wall, breaking some into small pieces. Removing the remaining tiles damaged the mural further; Only about 80 of the 135 tiles were left intact.
After sometimes-heated discussions between the school, the Aluli family, the Jean Charlot foundation and family members of the late Charlot, the decision was made to restore the mural instead of displaying it in damaged condition or discarding it.
Kamehameha Schools raised some money for the restorations, and Laura Ruby, an artist and faculty member at the University of Hawai'i Art Department, worked with ceramic artist Martha Ridgley to restore the work, which was donated to the university.
The process was like working a giant jigsaw puzzle with some of the pieces missing, Ruby said.
To make matters worse, none of Charlot's original sketches could be found.
The two artists worked from a photocopy of a snapshot that had been taken of the mural as it was displayed at Kamehameha, Ruby said. The photocopy was blurry, and a plant obscured one corner of the mural, but it gave the women an idea of the artist's conception.
The tiles that were chipped or cracked could not be fired a second time, so the two artists painted the damaged portions and used an epoxy coating to mimic the appearance of glazed ceramic. New tiles were created to replace the missing pieces, but some of the chemicals used in the original work, such as lead and uranium, no longer were available.
To get the colors right, the artists painted and fired six tiles for each missing tile and chose the hue that best fit surrounding tiles.
Although they had help from students and experts in various fields, the work was long and painstaking, Ruby said. The women kept a drawing of the mural on a graph, and crossed out each square as it was completed.
One of the most exciting moments came when they discovered what had been hidden behind a plant in the Kamehameha photograph. In the lower right section was a small dog watching the dancers perform.
Ruby said she was pleased with the outcome.
"Unless we tell people what has been replaced," she said, "they won't know."
