print September 1962

Retta S. Worcester

One of the most important showcases of Island art is the Library of Hawaii art circuit. Work is submitted twice a year to juries drawn from prominent art organizations (these, also, change every six months). Artists chosen get a three-week one-man exhibition at the Central Library; the showing then circulates to Oahu branch libraries for the next seven months.

Unfortunately many of Hawaii’s top artists have ignored this important means of display. Many mediocre painters have been selected for want of better work from which to choose. Mrs. Worcester, currently showing “wet-wash” watercolors, is

print September 1962

Pan Yu Lin

When Honolulu’s newest art gallery, Galerie Lamoi, opened its spanking white basement quarters downtown last December, its ambitious plans included showings of Paris and Chinese artists. The first exhibit to arrive from the French capital are oils and watercolors by Pan Yu Lin, veteran painter of Chinese ancestry and training now residing in Montmarte. (Mrs. Char, the gallery’s director, describes Pan Yu Lin “as a very well known personality there”).

In this showing of 16 oils and 14 watercolors (a combination of Chinese ink and watercolor done with the soft Chinese brush), the artist concentrates

print September 1962

Isami Doi

The showing of 13 oils by Kauai’s Isami Doi emanates the same mystic cosmic strength that has placed him among the first rank of Island artists. Choosing to work in relative isolation on the “neighbor island” of Kauai, Doi has until recently painted Surrealist abstract impressionist renderings of nature. There is a new note in this show, a complication and extension beyond his individual “Impressionism.” Doi’s direction is now more abstract, with an emphasis on the language of painting rather than that of natural phenomenon.

Two-dimensional flat areas are juxtaposed to vibrating three-dimensional

print September 1962

International Print Show

Part II of IGAS’s exhibition ran through August at the local museum, and the quality was on about the same par as Part I (reported in the last issue). Although the group included such divergent nationalities as Cuba, Switzerland and Hungary, the watered-down level of abstraction and stylized realism pervaded the whole.

––Joanna Shaw Eagle

print September 1962

Betty Decker

Mrs. Decker’s Surrealistic spoofing of human foibles through organic, shmoo-like figures has recently represented some of the most imaginative painting going on here. Unfortunately this showing of 10 mixed-media paintings is the last for Mrs. Decker in the Islands. Pretty much anything goes in expressive means as well as materials (boat resin, wire, kleenex, liquitex, etc.); yet her satire is one of tongue-in-cheek rather than the destructiveness of a Dubuffet. In Happy Hour two figures coil around a table and each other; Boo poses three very surprised-looking figures next to one another in

print August 1962

Dorothy Saxon Wenger

Mrs. Wenger lacks both the conviction and the gesture of Abstract-Expressionism, the style she attempts in her first Island one-man show. She works best from an object; a painting of a hoary, lifeless, black-and-white tree skeleton is the one moving work in the show. Her “abstracts” are colorful, decorative and uninteresting.

—Joanna Shaw Eagle

print August 1962

Gordon Rice

Rice recently received his M.F.A. from the University of Hawaii; half of the present show is comprised of his “thesis” display at the U. last month. Eight more have been added for this exhibit in Honolulu’s newest gallery.

Rice depicts the joyous, sun-drenched world of nature that so delighted Monet and Matisse. Most of the works are recognizable as landscapes, although it is the sensuousness of pigment and gesture that is the real subject here. Although light is not actually defined the paintings seem flooded with sunshine. They are happy, halcyon. This kind of painting is all very pleasant,

print August 1962

“IGAS Prints, I and II”

One of the dullest shows to hit this Isle community in a long time is a selection of prints by International Graphic Arts Society of New York members. Touted by the local museum as “highly successful in Japan” (from where the exhibition’s returning), the prints are a potpourri of conservative Cubism, Surrealism, Primitivism and Expressionism. Nowhere is the excitement of experimentation of print techniques evident (as recently discussed in an article on Los Angeles’ Talierand Workshop, Art News, Jan. ’62).

The problems of an Island art museum are many, and perhaps the most acute is obtaining

print August 1962

“‘Independent Work’ by University of Hawaii Art Students”

This is a show that attempts to be “way out” and which succeeds—in part. Seven students organized the exhibit with only a “rough defining of limits” by three faculty members. Most of the work was done out of class.

Despite the department’s labeling the showing as “representing only one very small aspect of the program of the art department,” the art faculty is to be congratulated for its courage in mounting the show at this particular time. It will be up through August and the many summer school students who flock to the University (mainly to take surfing and ukulele for credit) will see this as

print August 1962

Art Exhibition

Demonstrating the provincialism still evident in much of the Islands’ art thinking was the decision to divide this year’s Fair art display into a “realist” and “abstract” division. The ostensible reason for this was to avoid the “controversy” following Honolulu’s last large juried show, the Easter Art Festival at Ala Moana Shopping Center this spring. Stiff jurying had whittled down the Festival to approximately 250 works. Result: it was one of the best shows ever put on in the Wands.

Several disgruntled artists, however, tired of repeated rejects, attempted to mount their own “reject” show,

print August 1962

Hanalei Art Festival

Although art in Hawaii is mainly centered in Honolulu, groups on the neighbor islands are also active. The Hanalei Art Festival, first to be held on Kauai is an important step for that island. Many artists there feel Kauai has great potential as an artists colony, and are trying to develop it as such. The exhibit was especially successful and included amateurs as well as such well-known Island artists as Isami Doi (Doi has a one-man showing at The Gallery this month, August).

—Joanna Shaw Eagle