Honolulu to New York

This exhibition comprises 15 former Hawai�i residents currently living and working in New York City. New York has been known as a major art center; however, each artist has found inspiration and comfort in their ties to the islands. The exhibition features a variety of media including, painting, sculpture, prints, photography and mixed media.

Painter Ralph Iwamoto�s art career began in high school in the mid 1940s. His works have gone through several variations from organic to bold geometric forms. Brendt Berger�s brightly colored abstract Kapa paintings and monoprints are influenced by Hawaiian visual history and by his personal geneology. Robert Yasuda is concerned with the qualities of light and color in his almost monochromatic fabric and acrylic works and strives to create surfaces that seem to glow from within. The paintings of Charles Yuen take a closer look at the human psyche and at the unexpected ups and downs of daily life. Paintings on paper by Willa Cox involve multiple layers of watercolor, gouache, pencil, ink and acrylic and are influenced by the tide pools of her grandparents� cottage on Kihei Beach. Sheila Fletcher Kriemelman�s work in this exhibition presents three series of paintings ranging from abstract cityscapes, watercolors of tropical florals, and one large work from her Americans of Japanese Ancestry project.

Sculptor Robert Kobayashi works with raw and rusted pieces of tin, attaches them together with brads and paints them with oil to create two and three-dimensional sculptures. Dennis Oppenheim�s Stage Set for a Film is a construction approximating a set design of a building fa�ade. Perched at the top is a precariously propped house which seems to be waiting for the moment when it will fall.

Gordon M. Sasaki and Lawrence Seward exhibit both paintings and sculpture. Sasaki�s work continues to explore dynamics of human interaction as well as repetition and time. One of Seward�s recent paintings depicts a tropical environment and looks as if it is a scene under a highway in Hawai�i; however these places do not actually exist. Chris Churchill uses a variety of printmaking techniques in a series of self-portraits, as well as in a large work which criticizes smoking. Paul Pfeiffer�s prints, the result of a collaboration with Charles Cohan�s printmaking class at the University of Hawai�i at Manoa, draw upon the imagery in his recent series of photographs.

Lynne Yamamoto exhibits photographs of a complex of abandoned homes where her father grew up in Honolulu. Each room was photographed as she found it�the torn curtains, the refrigerator and the chairs all remain. In Allen Maertz�s photographic project Encyclopedia, he specifically focuses on political and cultural influences that construct modern perceptions of knowledge. In her mixed-media works, Kimberely Rector uses multiple layers of glue and translucent pigments and embeds vibrant colored silk threads in delicate and meticulous patterns.