2024 Special Guest Artist/Teacher Participants
This year, Hawaii Artist Collaboration awarded two grants for the purpose of training teachers to use collaborative strategies in their curricula and classrooms. Grants were awarded to Angaea Cuna and Abbie Rabinowitz, both Fine Arts teachers, who will participate in the 2024 Hawaii Artist Collaboration event. Angaea, who is from Ocean View, HI, specializes in fiber art and book-binding. Abbie is a painter who resides in Pahoa, HI.
Outcomes for the ‘Teach the Teacher’ initiative are to put more tools into the hands of teachers via our projects and develop a curriculum that engages students to collaborate together on projects larger than one person can accomplish.
Angaea is a multi-media artist and Filipino immigrant focusing on fiber arts, bookbinding, and immersive installation. With a bio-centric process and the use of natural materials, Angaea resurfaces her ancestry’s connection to nature, producing work layered with personal narrative and historical research.
Abbie paints pleinair landscapes and abstract paintings based on nature. She is insanely inspired by the Big Island of Hawaii where she's been painting landscapes on for over 25 years. She paints in an expressive, painterly style, allowing the rich colors, exotic foliage, and vibrant hues of the tropics to inform her art.
2024 Participating Artists
A true craftsperson, Nash creates fanciful, playful miniature goblets and sculptures with beautiful iridescent and translucent glass. Born from sand and fire, the tiny whimsical pieces are an embodiment of the craft of flameworking. He works with Borosilicate Glass and specializes in flameworking.
Danielle Burnside lives on Hawai’i Island and creates ocean inspired art in multiple mediums including painting and copper leaf.
Adam has a life long curiosity and dedication to jewelry making. He received his Bachelors of Fine Arts from Maine College of Art and then apprenticed with several renowned metal artists. He also teaches wedding ring workshops and founded Scintillant Studio, a community space dedicated to teaching and supporting all levels of jewelry artists and metal craftspeople.
Matthew designs and creates custom and original furniture, works of art, and architectural woodwork. He has more than 30 years of woodworking experience specializing in local and exotic hardwood.
Aspen Dewey is an oil painter deeply rooted in the Hawaii Art community. Aspen recently embarked on the stewardship of One Gallery in Hilo, which proudly represents over one hundred local artists. She has been instrumental in bringing new life to the gallery and exploring innovative ways to bring local art to life.
Amy is a stone cutter and silversmith living on the Big Island of Hawaii. She has been making jewelry for over fifteen years, enjoying the full process from mining to fabrication and marketing. Her jewelry is hand made and she cuts and fits many of the stones she uses.
Mike’s current work relies on his metalsmithing skills and his love of rocks and the out-of-doors. His kinetic sculptures consist of moving metal components mounted on stone bases. Mike primarily works with hammered brass and copper disks mounted inside metal rings.
Ethan is a Blacksmith and Sculptor in Hawaii. He enjoys working with the hammer and chisel to leave his mark on the metal. He gains inspiration from nature and enjoys the challenge of trying to bring it back into the metal in some form.
Greg is a modern Renaissance man: Farmer, Physicist, Engineer. His skills range from design engineering, prototyping, and product design to hydroponic and aquaponic crop production, and cultivating traditional Hawaiian plants for cultural practitioners. His artistic endeavors include making tools for Kapa production and traditional printing and specialty woodworking.
Lyonel is a New Zealand Māori master carver and sculptor. He learned under master carver Hōne Taiapa at the New Zealand Māori Arts and Crafts Institute in Rotorua. Lyonel has exhibited both internationally and nationally. His work is held in the collections of The British Museum and The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.
Alex is a fine artist and illustrator living on the Kona coast of the Big Island. Hawaii’s stunning landscapes and undersea life spark the passion for the islands that is readily apparent in his work. He features fine detail pen and ink work in his art, a style he calls "The Art of Detail"
Miranda enjoys working in a wide variety of media from paint to steel, but a foundation in drawing and a love of colour are central to her work. She enjoys sharing her knowledge and skills through teaching as she believes creativity at all levels helps to empower us as individuals.
Mary Jo Lake is a mixed media and glass artist. She is a co-founder of Collab and the heart of the Lake Ohana. Mary Jo resides in Holualoa Hawaii.
Kristing works as a lighting designer at the Kahilu Theatre. She is a multimedia artist focusing on jewelry design and incorporating lighting into sculptural works.
Theresa Lovering-Brown is professor emeritus with decades of experience in Metal Arts and Jewelry. Her art is wide-ranging, integrating and transforming materials and techniques from ancient cultures, creating modern narratives from nature, art, history and current events. She exhibits nationally and internationally.
David is a master craftsman of fine furniture, turner, and sculptor. His patina finish combines painting, gilding (metal leafing), chemical patinas, and lacquering techniques, resulting in complex layers that look ancient, metallic, or even stone like.
John has been creating sculpture, site-specific architectural ironwork, and furniture for over thirty years as an independent studio artist. His work is represented in private, corporate, and public collections throughout the US.
Anita is captivated by glass. In the high heat of the kiln, colors shift and flow, hard surfaces soften and become molten; bubbles burst or are trapped beneath the surface. She is guided by the elements of fire, water, earth, air, and culture as she explores the ancient, the tribal, the abstract.
John is a visionary wood lathe artist. He is continually inspired by the beauty of our natural world here on Big Island and incorporates that imagery into his work. His love of working with wood, combined with 40 years as a professional artist has brought him to his current passion of placing the “Mydock Touch” on the wooden vessels he turns.
Megan is a metalworker focusing on forged and fabricated pieces. She is the Studio Supervisor at Medwedeff Forge and Design.
Ian is a local metalworker and fabricator and he heads up the Collab metals department. He is also a resource artist / problem solver for every STEAM group in West Hawaii. He is usually wearing a welding mask and shining brightly.
The ideas, forms, and images Paul creates are through a lens of being classically trained in the trades, thinking outside the box, and observing nature. He uses material in new ways through a technique-driven process, and attempts to convey a sense of story, balance, beauty, and surprise, in the things he makes.
Art is a vessel that allows us to transport our past into the now to carry us forward into the morrow. It is the artist’s duty to preserve this history for future generations and this is why Te Rautini chose to pursue art as a fulltime pursuit.
Jo is a full time Māori artist whose work has been featured in Aotearoa and overseas. She began her creative journey at Waiariki Polytechnic, where she learned the art of harakeke paper making. She uses native plants, selected to ensure a sustainable creative practice.
Kristin is a hapa metalsmith, educator and arts administrator. Her work centers around one-of-a-kind wearable art and holloware with an aesthetic that has been described as a “marriage between her Japanese heritage and influences from her early explorations in architecture and the Modernist design movement.
Lorie Taylor is a fine artist living on the Big Island of Hawaii. She creates botanical sculptures, acrylic collage, and paintings. She is inspired by the culture, flowers and environment of Hawaii.
Peter Underwood is an antique dealer and multimedia artist from the Big Island of Hawaii. He is a founding member of Hawaii Artist Collaboration and serves as the Vice President of the organization.
Jimmy is a woodworker from Key West, Florida. He and his wife Karen have a shop on the docks,
where they have been for 35 years, building carved wooden signs, repairing old
sailboats, milling discarded trees, designing and building art and furniture, and teaching.
2023 Participating Artists
Peter Underwood is an antique dealer and multimedia artist from the Big Island of Hawaii. He is a founding member of Hawaii Artist Collaboration and serves as the Vice President of the organization.
David is a fifth generation woodworker, with a career spanning almost 50 years. He seeks to balance the aesthetic with engineering, to create an object of beauty never before seen.
Courtney earned a BFA at the Kansas City Art Institute(2008). She has lived in Hawaii for over a decade and the aloha of the island has taught her the importance of community. She works out of her ceramic studio making all kinds of creations. In addition, she teaches art at a local school.
Carlie Starr is a multi talented artist and musician from Auckland, New Zealand. She is a painter and also works in textiles and multimedia.
Ethan is a Blacksmith and Sculptor in Hawaii. He enjoys working with the hammer and chisel to leave his mark on the metal. He gains inspiration from nature and enjoys the challenge of trying to bring it back into the metal in some form.
An artist of many mediums, Hawaiian culture is a thread that runs through all of Kira's work. A combination of classical style and Polynesian subject matter is the distinctive synergy in her art.