Hōkūle’a’s Pod

A few weeks before the re-opening they asked me if I had a piece that will fit the space by the Hōkūle’a lounge, being such a prime location, I thought it would be better to create a new piece, one that will contemplate the space, light and colors of the area, but most of all, it had to somehow relate to the name of the the location, which is the Hōkūle’a, the iconic vessel navigated by stars, which is a big part of the Hawaiian culture.

I first made a similar piece with my Malolos – Flying fish in Hawaiian – something that reminded me of my sailing days  as a crew with the legendary Woody Brown on the Mana Kai and how the malolos glided in front of the Bow as if they were showing us the way, I figured that the Hōkūle’a crew had the company of thousands of Malolos in their voyages. A couple of months after hanging the piece, I got an e-mail from a collector telling me that he had found my work on a surfing website and that the malolos seemed to be the perfect piece for his clinic in Connecticut, I must say that I was quite intrigued and didn’t make the connection with my art in a clinic on the North East coast, so I asked him why and the answer was really simple, I thing that it would make our patients happy!

That has been one of my main goals as an artist, to raise a smile when people looked at my work.

Now I had another challenge, ship this piece across the country but before that create a new one to replace the old one, again I had to create a piece that will contemplate the name of the double hulled voyaging canoe, their voyages as well as the surrounding area, again I remembered the old days sailing with Woody Brown and being surrounded by Spinner Dolphins, racing between the hulls, I remembered how happy that made me and this image popped into mind.