Mele Kalikimaka!

MELE KALIKIMAKA / MERRY CHRISTMAS / HAPPY HANUKKAH

From my home and studio to you and yours!

Greetings to all of you near and far away friends, in cold and warm places.  I think of each and every one of you and hope this finds you well as I am writing this from my computer corner in my studio looking out over the ocean.

More rain is pouring down outside. We are truly experiencing a Hawaiian winter here in the Kalaheo hill country! We have even had our fireplace on in the evenings more than once to ‘take the damp out of the air’ … Thinking back on all the sunny winter vacations we were fortunate to have on Kauai before moving here, I would say to the doubters out there: yes, I do believe in climate change…

Christmas on Kauai is a special time. Last week we attended performances by the Kauai Community College Jazz Band and the Brass Symphony. The evening went from Glenn Miller In the Mood  to Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker!  Never mind the clarinet section was a little weak…the charming little ballerinas made up for it as well as the spirit of community and aloha here, the like of which  I have not experienced anywhere else ever before. No room for pretense, I believe, or big city rush. The island will spit you out, back to where you came from, if the go with the flow way of island life does not sit with you…

It has been an exciting and busy year. In May our home was hit by lightening and we truly lost all our electronics! We were glad to not have had our house burn down. And, we were fine, even after the spaceship landed in the bedroom experience! The studio has been busy too. After shows this year at Halele’a Gallery in January and at Alley Kat Art in July, I am concentrating on playing with some new media. I am also doing some personal from the heart pieces processing some of the stuff that has happened in my life this year. I do hope for nine lives: too many exciting possibilities out there! 

My moth orchid originals are - since last week - represented by Amy-Lauren’s Galleries in Hanapepe and Hanalei.(www.amylaurensgallery.com) and I am very pleased.

My spider orchids are now also found at Cedar Street Galleries in Honolulu. (www.cedarstreetgalleries.com). 

Gicleé prints of my work are available through my studio.  Check out my listing in Kauai Dining Art Shopping, page 20-21. And, of course, my website www.liedekebulderart.com.

Sending you love and best wishes for health and happiness in the new year to come!

With aloha,

A hui hou!

EPIPHYTIC

Spiderwoman, mixed media on paper, 7" x 6"

I am back after quite a few months away from writing any blogs.  Sometimes life gets too overwhelming and dear friends, sorry, but I am not that much of the digital age that I can pour my heart and soul out on line for all to see…

Yes I am back and opening a new exhibit this coming Saturday at Kat Cowan’s delightful little place in the alley at downtown Kapaa on the East side of Kauai Island on Kuhio Hwy. 

The name of the show is EPIPHYTIC.  I have been asked by a number of people:  what is ‘epihytic’??

Epiphytic means:  not drawing nourishment from other plants or ground but from air/moisture in the air and therefore not parasitic.  I felt that to be a wonderful description for my orchid pieces.  For me orchids are  metaphors for us humans.  Here today, gone tomorrow.  We are earthbound with all our ego frills, vanities and needs yet spiritual  beings on a journey to a higher dimension.

In this exhibit I am still on my orchid binge. Not necessarily only moth orchids like before but EPIPHYTES for sure. The majority of orchids grow as epiphytes on trees where suitable regimes of light and humidity occur.  Most of the critters featured in this show are free floating, suspended in air, no roots.  There will be a few of my moth orchid images as well.  But the featured orchid is the spider orchid.  And, yes, I did have someone in mind when creating some of the new, smaller pieces.

Opening reception should be lots of fun with live music by the New Old School band, refreshment, pupus, fire dancing.  Kat throws a great party! 

Hope to see you there.  If not, the show runs through the summer and comes down 9/29/11.

Gallery will be closed, however, last week of August and first week of September!

A hui hou!

http://www.alleykatart.com/          http://www.liedekebulderart.com/

Hanapepe Cafe and Bakery

A few weeks ago I hung one of my orchid paintings titled “Bridge over Troubled Water” in the Hanapepe Café at the invitation of owner and book group friend Helen Lacono. With that title, a nostalgic memory to us baby boomers, the painting makes an appropriate (and elegant, I might add) backdrop on the performance stage of the Café. On Friday nights, and sometimes during the luncheon hour, Kauai artist Cindy Combs performs her beautiful slack key guitar music there.

I love the Hanapepe Café and Bakery. Especially the Bakery!! Helen and her daughter Andrea have made the Café an anchor of historic Hanapepe Town with its collection of galleries and businesses and famous swinging bridge.

Our book group is reading Sara Miles' spiritual memoir "take this bread".  An amazing book about a left-wing, lesbian journalist's conversion to Christianity.  Food for thought while we are being fed in the flesh by Helen's lovingly prepared breakfast spread one morning a week.  Kauai is an amazing place. I could have never imagined in my wildest dreams about 'retiring on this island' to find such community, such sharing and beauty on all levels...

Every Friday night Hanapepe town comes alive with musical performances in the street and people browsing the galleries during the weekly Art Walk. And that night Helen Lacono puts on a feast at the Hanapepe Café. The place feels like having dinner at grandma’s house… Comfort food, healthy food, deserts to die for…

Recently, we took my ‘baby’sister and husband there. They had come to visit me all the way from the Netherlands. It was their first time in Hawaii and their last meal on island before their return the next morning. We feasted on wild mushroom soup, paella and the best pineapple parfait ever.

Thank you Helen, Andrea, Mary and all the wonderful staff!


Reservations are a must for two seatings at 5pm and 8:30 pm.
　

Shipwreck Beach

It is in the blood.. Born in a country where so much of the land has been reclaimed from the sea, I now live in a place surrounded by ocean and equally threatened by the elements of wind and water.

One of the gifts of having visitors come to see us here, is that I get to see the beauty that surrounds me with fresh eyes. While winterstorms rage all over, we walk barefoot in the sand.

Recently my 'baby'sister and husband came to visit all the way from the Netherlands. I took them on our favourite walk from Brennecke's Beach to Shipwreck's Beach along the ancient Hawaiian  fishing grounds.  There is so much mana in those old rocks..  We see a glimpse from days of old in a local fisherman throwing his net or casting a line...  Much has changed but the smell of seaweed, the salt and the wind surely remain the same...

I painted this location once shortly after moving here. I wanted to capture everything there was to see in this beautiful place in a painting then. Something you can take home and say, I was there.. The people who own the original loved it because their girls grew up surfing on Shipwreck Beach.

I remember being inspired to paint the location: it was a late afternoon and kind of overcast. Black mountain mostly in the clouds. It was fun to try and capture the force of the surf in acrylic paint on canvas. I am not a plein air painter per se. So I sketched and photographed and then made it my own in the studio later on.  
The prints of this work continue to bring joy as as a memory to take home.  You can find it on my website, http://www.liedekebulderart.com/. in the gallery 'Kauai Skies and Stuff'.

I am trying to learn from the sea turtles swimming around the coves of the sacred fishing grounds at Shipwreck Beach.  Moving on. Going with the flow of life. Once wanting to capture it all in a pretty picture. Now letting go of certainty and definition. Oh my goodness, do milestone birthdays have something to do with that??

Spider Orchids

Spider Orchids 


Free Fall, mixed media on paper, 30" x 22"



Spider Orchid



The picture on the invitation of my ongoing exhibition is of a mixed media painting called Free Fall.

I was asked to write a few paragraphs on the work.

As an artist I have mixed feelings about that.  Of course, I like to talk about my work but also I feel that the work is there for an audience.  The viewer hopefully will connect with the piece.
He or she will feel pulled in and connect with their own story.  A title is an entrance but art is not a formula..

Having said that, I love orchids.   And, in Kauai they grow without (almost) any effort! I plant them by my front door after their indoor shine has worn off. The spider orchid obviously liked where I put it because it recently has shown its gratitude calling out to me with many budding stems..

I could not resist:  out came the sketchbook then the camera.  Then into the studio.. I went to work in my usual way:  preparing paper with gesso.  Applying a bistre wash.  Waiting to see what the paper was telling me:  first I thought spider shapes, then they became stars, then dancers, then skydivers, or whatever.  I had fun keeping the shapes and patterns taut and tight against the looseness of the flowing wash. 

Free Fall:  no roots, no stems, no nurturing leaves.   Just out there:  letting go.  We are all like flowers...