One of the state's few juried art shows, the Honolulu Japanese Chamber of Commerce Annual Exhibition, has become one of the most prestigious in Hawai'i's art community.

The exhibition features invited artists, renowned and established artists of Hawai'i, including Satoru Abe, Reiko Brandon, Sean Browne, Vicky Chock, Satoko Dung, Dorothy Faison, Charles Higa, Anne Irons, John Koga, David Kuraoka, Rochelle Lum, Hanae Uechi Mills, Rick Mills, Mary Mitsuda, John Morita, Marcia Morse, Fred Roster, Mamoru Sato, Stan Tomita, Cora Yee and Doug Young.

The late Tadashi Sato is an invited artist.

This is the first year that the chamber is featuring one of the invited artists: John Koga.

Abe has called Koga "a pure original. ... There is no one else like him in his generation."

For this exhibition, Koga created two untitled pieces in a larger-than-usual scale.

One piece — lovingly invoking the familiar design vocabulary of Sato — was still unfinished when I met with him. With white plaster applied over a hewn foam core, the piece's eerie totemic presence speaks of a petrified forest of blasted trees, transformed perhaps by a nuclear blast that both annihilates and yet somehow transfigures.

The second piece, consisting of slices of layered blond pine lozenges cut from the bark-stripped trunk of a found tree, sandwiches a series of cast bronze meditating figures, imagery that troubles and puzzles and amuses, all in equal measure.

Koga has said that his personal mission is to carry a sense of personal responsibility to his contemporaries in the art community for his own generation.

"We are all in this together," he said.

Koga is committed to making art happen within this community and to make sure that the energy is always evolving.

Chief preparator at The Contemporary Museum, Koga has accomplished a great deal for a man of 41.

After earning his undergraduate art degree from the University of Hawai'i-Manoa, he worked at the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, hanging the portable art pieces in the state art collection. He also was exposed to and immersed in the works of every significant artist in Hawai'i's history.

Koga laments the fact that the UH art department still does not offer course work in the history and tradition of preparation.

He earned his master's in ceramics, but somewhat typically he relates that "issues" he had with faculty caused him to produce a thesis show with not one piece of ceramic.

In his position at The Contemporary Museum, he conceptualizes each exhibition at both the Makiki Heights and the First Hawaiian Center locations and is in charge of putting up and taking down the works of art.

Koga considers himself a spatial artist, rather than a sculptor, even though most of his work certainly is three-dimensional and sculptural.

He said he's interested in the spatial relationships between form and environment, and creating a sense of place in terms of culture and the arts, tradition and community.

He considers meeting Abe through family connections as one of the most important moments of his life. He continues to be inspired by Abe and Tadashi Sato, not only in terms of artwork, but by their sense of personal responsibility to their contemporaries in the art community.

He feels especially in tune with contemporaries such as Sanit Khewhok, Sean Browne, Greg Northrup and Fred Roster.

This exhibition will provide an excellent opportunity to experience this deeply felt commitment and remarkable talent in the context of the very community Koga has pledged to honor and perpetuate.

In its 27th year of its existence, the show — which opens tomorrow evening with an invitation-only reception and awards presentation — features a number of firsts.

Servco Pacific has for the first time committed to purchase $5,000 worth of artwork from the show and will present a new award of $1,000 for the show's most outstanding work.

This is the first time that the chamber has had a monetary commitment of this kind, and let's hope the example will be followed by other potential corporate sponsors in the future.

The fact that works will be purchased from the show is extremely encouraging to artists, as evidenced by the increased number of entries this year.

With modest entry fees, the competition sees more than 600 pieces entered each year by artists throughout the state. About 125 pieces are selected for the exhibition.

Other awards that will be presented tomorrow are awards for two- and three-dimensional works: first place, $500 each; 2nd place, $300 each; 3rd place, $200 each; honorable mention, $75 each; and a Newcomer Award of $100.

The judges are Tom Klobe, Mary Mitsuda and Wayne Morioka.

David C. Farmer holds a bachelor of fine arts degree in painting and drawing and a master's in Asian and Pacific art history from the University of Hawai'i-Manoa.