The Honolulu Museum of Art selected the Big Island’s Sally Lundburg to be one of six artists contributing work to the Biennial of Hawaii Artists X, which opened last month. At the exhibition’s opening, she also received the Ellen Choy Craig Artist Endowment Award from museum benefactor, and Choy’s son, Timothy Choy.
The Honolulu Museum of Art selected the Big Island’s Sally Lundburg to be one of six artists contributing work to the Biennial of Hawaii Artists X, which opened last month. At the exhibition’s opening, she also received the Ellen Choy Craig Artist Endowment Award from museum benefactor, and Choy’s son, Timothy Choy.
Inspired by the idea of a supernatural world where humans and nature intertwine, Lundburg combined archival photographs, craft and hardware store materials, and a koa tree from the Big Island for her site-specific installation at the museum. Titled “the disappearing place,” she transformed the gallery with 170 koa logs collaged with black-and-white portraits, and suspended more than 500 branches from the ceiling, spiraling up the 22-foot high walls. The branches are coated in white primer paint and joined together in arching clusters by white zip ties, kite string, plumbing tape, mason line and tangled nets of thread.
Strategically lit, the suspended work casts dramatic, slightly moving shadows, which become as important as the physical material of the piece. The work is an allusion to a hidden world, and is inspired by a passage from cultural practitioner Hannah Kihalani Springer’s introduction to the book “Growing Koa: A Hawaii Legacy Tree” by Craig R. Elavitch and Lisa Wilkenson: “Wao lipo, where the koa is the tallest of them all, casting the darkest shadows of them all. As populations grew, the forest retreated. The wao kanaka (realm of man) expanded. It is the forests that fetch the rains, keep the moisture close. It is the forests that make right again the air for us to breathe.”
The exhibition, held at Honolulu Museum of Art Spalding House in Makiki Heights, also includes work from Mary Babcock, Solomon Enos and Jianjie Ji all representing Oahu, Maui’s Jaisy Hanlon, and Bruna Stude of Kauai. The exhibition is on view until July 22.
This program is supported in part by the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts through appropriations from the Legislature of the State of Hawaii and by the National Endowment for the Arts.
For more information, visit sallylundburg.com.