Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 20, Number 04, 1 April 2003 — Carving a Hawaiian Aesthetic [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Carving a Hawaiian Aesthetic

By D. Māhealani Dudoit Editor's note: The following is excerpted from "Carving a Hawaiian Aesthetic," published in 'Ōiwi: A Native Hawaiian Journal, volume 1 (1999). Every moraing before I get down to work, I go through a ritual of sweeping and dusting, walking through my garden and, if I remember, praying to the 'aumākua. This lāst act is perhaps the most important, yet the one I most easily forget. The 'āumakua, I figure, will be here despite myself. That is the excuse I give for my laziness, partly because I believe it to be true, but also because the praying has yet to achieve the kind of reality that, say, sweeping the floor, already possesses. Nā 'aumākua mai ka lā hiki akalā kau, Mai ka ho'oku'i a ka hālāwai... From the bedroom window of my small house in the middle of Mānoa valley I ean see Kōnāhuanui, the highest point in the Ko'olaus. Kōnāhuanui is also the source of the waters that run through the little stream near my house that my eompanion and I dug open in spots among the clusters of Job's tears and reeds to create paddies for taro. I am not sure if the taro will live. They depend on the good graces of both humans and gods. Yet I refuse to believe that their condition is fragile, although I more and more believe that it will depend on my remembering nā 'āumakua. Recently I have been saying these words as I work at my table that sits beside my patch of parsley and beets and behind a screen of trees that borders a path running alongside the stream. My work these days has been to plait strands of hau for the making of a eape. After soaking the strands in water, I twist them into a strong cordage between whieh I will weave aerial roots of the banyan tree, a traditional kapa design in marine-blue cloth, strips of paper with words and photos imprinted on them, and the delicate skeletons of leaves I gathered in the mountains nearby. The eape is my first pieee of "contemporary Hawaiian art." I have made other things I eall "art" — bamboo nose flutes, kīkepa. But these are largely recognized as traditional Hawaiian objects, despite the use of acrylics or cotton. The eape would also normally be considered "traditional," but what distinguishes it from my flutes or kīkepa has to do with the direction it is reaching towards. Traditional Hawaiian art reaches back — with

the goal of rediscovering or recreating something from the past. Contemporary Hawaiian art also reaches towards the past, but in order to translate our traditions into the language of today. Iam not the only Hawaiian who is new to this kind of work. 'īmaikalani Kalahele, one of the founding fathers of Hale Nauā, told me, "Fo' us guys in contemporary times, it's been a trip. From the '70s Hawaiians have been redefining who we are. So things started changing. The cultural view of our people, the 'ono, all of a sudden became something that we wanted to define, not the 'ono of da haole. When we talk about 'art' — yeah? — what dat *art' as maoli people? What is our taste? What feel good to us?" In elaborating on his work, he spoke about the eoneepl of the image: "When you read da word ki'i, what dat mean, ki'i, image? Ki'i is take pictcha, ki'i is pound rock, ki'i is also being in da right plaee when da shadow hit da right spot, and you go, 'Hol' Image is ... song. Image is ... poetry. Image is whatevah stimulates something inside of you, whether you see it, hear it, feel it, smell it, taste it. These are all images. And den maoli images? These are our images. Da European images were color, shape, form, halanee. We dealt with these other things. Fo' me art is 'ono. Art is not doctrine." Art is not about color or shape or form. It is ultimately not even about the thing that gets put down on paper, or made into an object, or carved into a stone. Art is the life that made that thing of paper or clay or stone. It is that individual life moving forward into another stage of being. I am one of those lives. I am right now making the eape for our first project. The theme: the story of our ancestors. Before I begin, I try to remember my prayer: Nā 'aumākua mai ka lā hiki aka lā kau... Eia ka pulapula a 'oukou, nā 'ōiwi o Hawai'i nei. E mālama 'oukou iā mākou... In this eape there will be stories of life and death, birth, marriage, a man who pledged his loyalty to his sovereign, another man who defied that sovereign. There will be murder, insanity, desertion. There will be love and happiness. There will be homelands left, homelands returned to, homelands in whieh to be buried. There will be stories, many stories. The eape itself will be one of those stories. ■