David Hamma: a year of Sundays (drawings, paintings, prints)
The Contemporary Museum at First Hawaiian Center
October 7, 2005 - January 24, 2006

Maui artist David Hamma is a skilled printmaker, as well as painter, who uses the nuance and variety of line to create sensuous and organically inspired works of art. Organized by Inger Tully, Programs Director of the Hui NoÎeau Visual Arts Center in Makawao, this exhibition of works from 2002 to the present includes recent drawings, paintings and prints. Hamma's choice of a technique depends on what type of image he wishes to achieve.

At first glance Hamma's work look fairly simple to execute, however as you look closer it's hard to see where each line begins or ends. These large continuous gestures moves across the paper in a fluid and deliberate fashion, a process where each mark lends itself to the next, creating a composition which is balanced and vibrant. For the most part, these gestures come in rapid succession while others are worked on over several days or weeks.

Hamma uses sketches to practice drawing a certain form that he is trying to perfect before he executes his final image onto a copper plate. Etching elicits a linear quality and delicacy, which are unique to the medium. He also employs multiple plates and processes such as spit bite, hard and soft ground and drypoint. Hamma often prints on gampi, a very thin translucent Japanese paper, which is then adhered to a stronger backing sheet using the chinecollŽ method. This produces a layering of marks and often warms and enriches the tonal effect of the print. This technique can be seen in his most recent prints Ear Circuit, Sweaters in the Stream and Ray Garden.

The process of printmaking allows Hamma an extended period of time to work out various problems presented by a given image or thought, whereas drawing and painting is a more spontaneous process for him.

Hamma goes back and forth between wanting to include recognizable imagery and wanting a mutated version of the original source. He is interested in cycles of growth and decay, death and rebirth. He states, "Sometimes my work is loaded with personal iconography relating to both the mundane and the mysterious. Other times it is a sparsely populated place intended perhaps to produce a calm reflectiveness." Natural and organic elements are seen within his work but are meant to be non-representational. Hamma is not so much interested in trying to replicate the beauty of plants, trees and ocean in nature, but rather attempts to extract a perceived essential quality from each of them.

Hamma was born and raised in Los Angeles and studied art at Pasadena City College. He is also a talented musician and has released several albums, some under his own label, Skinny Chest, founded in 1995 as an art and literary journal. During this time he designed or co-designed many of the album covers.