Living Arts Gallery fetes 4th ‘birthday’
Living Arts Gallery fetes 4th ‘birthday’
The Living Arts Gallery, an arts collective featuring original work by Big Island artists, celebrates its fourth “birthday” Tuesday. Art lovers are invited to stop by, eat a piece of cake and take in the King Kamehameha Day parade, which begins at 10 a.m. and passes by the Hawi gallery.
The gallery is featuring two shows during June. “Beyond the Cliche” has been extended through the month. The exhibit features unusual and original mixed media art by more than 15 artists. “Paperworks 2013,” a show by fiber artist Susan O’Malley, opens June 11. She transforms Hawaiian plant materials into three-dimensional organic and mysterious forms.
In addition to cake, Living Arts Gallery is offering kamaaina discounts Tuesday. The gallery at 55-3435 Akoni Pule Highway is open from 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily. For more information, call 889-0739 or visit livingartsgallery.net.
Hawaii Photo Expo opens Saturday
The Wailoa Art and Cultural Center’s 14th annual Hawaii Photo Expo opens Saturday with activities scheduled throughout the day.
Invited juror Anne Lyden, associate curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, will present “From Daguerreotypes to Digital: Photographs at the Getty Museum” at 10 a.m. in the University of Hawaii at Hilo lecture hall UCB 100.
From 3:30 to 4:30 p.m., Lyden will host a “Walk and Talk” gallery tour of the exhibit in Wailoa’s Main Gallery into which she accepted 108 images out of 260 entries. The opening reception follows from 5 to 7 p.m.; awards will be presented at 5:30 p.m.
Lyden is one of seven curators in the museum’s department of photographs, which was established in 1984 and has a collection of approximately 100,000 objects. Since joining the Getty in 1996, she has curated numerous exhibitions drawn from the museum’s permanent collection, including the work of Hill and Adamson, Frederick H. Evans and Paul Strand.
The Hawaii Gourd Society will present art by members Mary Amos, John Mccullom and William Schweitzer in conjunction with the expo. For more information, contact Amos at outtayourgourd@gmail.com.
Wailoa Art and Cultural Center is free and open to the public from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday; noon to 4:30 p.m. Wednesday. For more information, call 933-0416 or email wailoa@yahoo.com.
Local comic opera
has its N.Y. premier
The locally created comic chamber opera “The Kona Coffee Cantata” was performed by the Musicians of Ma’alwyck in Schenectady, N.Y., Thursday.
“The Kona Coffee Cantata” was created in the early 1980s by longtime Kailua-Kona resident and composer Jerre Tanner, to an English verse text by the late poet Harvey Hess. It was conceived to be performed on the same program as the J.S. Bach “Coffee Cantata” as part of Hawaii’s observance of the tercentenary of Bach’s birth in 1685.
The cantata was first performed by the Uptown Opera of Spokane, Wash., in November 1985. It has subsequently had 12 other mainland productions; the Prague Chamber Orchestra recorded the work for Albany Records. The Thursday show was its New York debut.
The opera takes place on a modern-day estate coffee farm. The family special roast is missing, and the father suspects thievery. The son of a neighbor, suitor of the farmer’s daughter, volunteers to help guard the farm, but no thief is found. When the daughter returns from Honolulu, it is discovered that she has been selling the roast to gourmet coffee shops in the city and has made a sizable profit. The opera closes with a celebration of the impending marriage of the daughter and neighbor boy and speculative rise in profits from the continued sale of the family’s special roast.