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• Daraee, Khewhok, Kim & Ramos
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Saba Daraee |
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Saba Daraee |
Sanit Khewhok |
Sanit Khewhok |
Jinja Kim |
Jinja Kim |
Rebecca Ramos |
Rebecca Ramos |
Small Works on Paper: Works by Saba Daraee, Sanit Khewhok, Jinja Kim & Rebecca Ramos Sanit Khewhok was born in Thailand in 1944. He studied painting, sculpture and printmaking at Silpakorn University in Bangkok and later traveled to Rome to study painting and restoration techniques at the Academy of Fine Arts. In Bangkok, he served as Assistant Director of the National Gallery. He has lived in Honolulu since 1986 and currently works as both Collections Manager at The Contemporary Museum and Curator at the Hawai'i Pacific University Art Gallery. He has exhibited at numerous galleries in Honolulu and at the Bhirasri Institute of Modern Art and the Alliance Française Gallery in Bangkok. At the age of 40, Khewhok lived as a monk for 100 days. This experience proved pivotal to his life and art, teaching him to look inward and become more aware of his emotional and physical being. This current body of work consists of subtle watercolors on gessoed paper. The images, drawn from Khewhok's memory, depict ethereal abstract landscapes. Each work utilizes a horizon line. At times architectural images appear, buildings inspired predominantly by Tuscan landscapes, where villas and churches dot the country sides. Some works do not contain these structures; rather, a body of water or a mountain range may appear. In these delicate works, Khewhok is able to capture a sense of both mystery and beauty. Jinja Kim was born in Korea in 1943 and received her BA in painting from Ewha Women's University in Seoul. After graduating, she traveled to Hawai'i to visit her sister and then attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York for graduate studies in painting. She relocated to Hawai'i in 1965, and earned her MFA in printmaking in 1975 from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. Kim later furthered her education when she received an artist's fellowship to study in Paris, France at the Cité Inter-nationale des Arts. For Kim, art is like meditation, allowing her to connect with a deeper consciousness. Her work is a reflection of her inner experiences. Most of her current mixed-media works are based on a grid pattern, which serves as a structural framework for each piece. She also utilizes rub-on letters, codes, numbers and small images that relate to her experience of witnessing the "magical transformation of mere shapes into meaningful thoughts" while learning the English language. Rebecca Ramos was born in Alaska, grew up in Honolulu, Hawai'i, and currently works and resides in Monterey, California. She received her BA from California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland in 1987 and her MFA from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1992. She currently teaches drawing, book arts and printmaking at California State University, Monterey; the University of California, Santa Cruz; and Monterey Peninsula College, Monterey, California. Her works have been exhibited in Hawai'i, California, Colorado and Florida. The artist uses photographic and historical resources to develop her subject matter; her drawings represent the "interconnection between the landscape and cultural preservation." Ramos works in series or suites in order to tell a story. Her drawings depict the horizon of either the Jimenez Mountain Range in New Mexico, where the atomic bomb was developed, or the Hawaiian Islands. Both locations play a historic and political role in the American consciousness: the bombing of Pearl Harbor marks the beginning of WWII and the development of the nuclear bomb marks the end. Ramos uses a monochromatic palette of graphite and charcoal, touched with a gold pencil that references the element, a coveted and precious natural resource. With this gold pencil, the artist renders stages of the children's game, Cat's Cradle, as well as scientific diagrams, flowers and other symbols that reinforce her stories. Ramos considers her drawings as narrative depictions, "…reliquaries where the details of cultural memory lay on the brink of extinction or in wait for reflection, and in some cases resolution." |
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