A gas mask was the first thing I noticed on the tiny apartment lanai. Then my attention was grabbed by heat guns, piles of plastic silverware and fluffy shapes crocheted from grocery bags. "The butterflies are in the kitchen," explained installation artist Maika'i Tubbs. That's not a line an artist can use very often. But, in this case, the butterflies really were in the kitchen, waiting to fly away to Maui and land on a gallery wall. They are made by melting clear plastic picnic forks, knives and spoons. "I can only work when the neighbors are gone," he said. "Fumes, you know."

Tubbs is one of 11 contemporary Hawaiian artists invited to create at least three works of art inspired by the epic tale of Hi'iakaikapoliopele, "Ka Mo'o-lelo O Hi'iakapoliopele," written by Ho'oulumahiehie in 1905 and 1906 as a daily Hawaiian language newspaper series and recently republished in Hawaiian and translated into English, for the first time, by Dr. Puakea Nogelmeier.

The works — small to monumental in size — will fill the cavernous Schaefer International Gallery of the Maui Arts & Cultural Center in Kahului through Oct. 24.

Neida Bangerter, curator of the exhibit, said she along with MACC coworker Hokulani Holt and artist-educator Maile Andrade "wanted to challenge these young, emerging artists." Holt suggested using the new Hi'iaka epic, which the three agreed was perfect, and as the artists reported to Bangerter, the source of epic adventures and for the artists told the story through their chosen media.

Maika'i Tubbs, inspired by the demigod Mahiki's attempt to kill the goddess Hi'iaka with legions of spirits, re-envisioned the spirits as butterflies. Hoaka Delos Reyes carved great mo'o, lizards and a beautiful woman, describing the story in stone. Pualani Lincoln, an artist and craftsman known in the voyaging circles, created kapa from wild wauke of Kalopa to recount the great voyages.

WOVEN TOGETHER

Family ties inspired Mikioi Wichman to do her work on Kaua'i. Her great-grandmother, Juliet Rice Wichman, started the famous Limahuli Garden and Preserve and inspired Mikioi's love of plant fiber.

Always weaving from his na'au, Marcus Hanalei Marzan had a vision of the powerful pa'u skirt of Hi'iaka. His material of choice was dried pig gut. "You obtain it cleaned from a butcher, fill it with air like a giant balloon, let it dry in the sun and begin to weave sections into the pau skirt," he said, laughing that most people respond with "you're weaving what?" He said, "after the show I would be pleased if kumu, teachers, might want to use the skirts for their dancers."

FOUND OBJECTS

Artist Mark Chai, known for "Dumpster diving," said, "I considered ancient material of kapa and grass and what a Hawaiian in the 21st century would utilize to tell the story." His ancient-yet-modern curved, fiddlehead fern design appears in nearly everything he creates. A passage in the book, naming the winds of Ni'ihau and Kaua'i, led to an 8-foot-in-diameter swirl of carved wind, spiraling 6 feet deep. "My piece is a vortex," he says, "hanging over 14 feet down like a funnel of the turbulent winds." Visitors at the opening gasped and commented the piece, suspended from the rafters, was "as big as a bus!"

The Dumpster at a school woodshop is Neiman Marcus for printmaker Matthew Kawika Ortiz. His abstract story comes in 4-by-4-foot prints, each printing plate cut from found plywood in the reduction print method, carving away after each layer of ink to find colors for the lights, darks and ghost images created by the slight variation in his "found wood" printing plates.

HAPPY SURPRISE

The epic adventure book was just the right size for Abigail Lee Kahilikia Romanchak. Known for her room-sized prints, she found her inspiration in the akua and hua phases of the moon that allow Lohi'au to move from the supernatural state to the human state as Hi'iaka works to save him. "In 'Hua' my print tells of his transition to a man," she says.

Puni Kukahiko chose painting, a light installation and wood carving for her Hi'iaka challenge. "The fact that I am not a carver did occur to me, as did the thought of a small work shrinking away in the monumental space of the Schaefer Gallery." She describes taking a friend to sunrise at Haleakala as the beginning of her inspiration. "I was totally filled with emotion that I didn't expect. I went off to a side area and chanted. Tears were falling." She says that her carving held a happy surprise. "An ant nest left the hollow that I didn't know how to carve. It told me that the story is already in the wood, ready for discovery."

Solomon Enos, known as a painter of epic legends, including all the illustrations for the Hi'iaka book, wondered what he had not already done. "My answer to myself was to do what was missing in my own mind, some part of the story that I did not paint." He surprised even himself by interpreting the three great mo'o, Pana'aewa, Piliamo'o and Kilioeikapua, in fast-drying epoxy clay, rather than on canvas.

EXPLORING DARKNESS

The dramatic black and white images by artist and Kamehameha Schools art teacher Carl Pao hang in long vertical panels and talk of po, the darkness. He says they describe the dualities of good and bad, life and death, and what he feels toward the level of responsibility each Hawaiian artist has to recount the mo'olelo. "Maile Andrade is always pushing us forward, pushing us to push the limits of Hawaiian art," he says. His mastery of printmaking may show in these Conte and pencil creations. His "canvas" is black building paper. His inspiration was the first telling of the Hi'iaka story. He had a reprinted copy of the 1861 original. Like the 10 other selected artists, the tale was simply waiting.