Time for T-shirts: Woman-owned art business celebrates six years

WAIMEA — Growing businesses bloom and flourish alongside the fresh fruits, flowers and vegetables at Waimea Town Market at Parker School.

One success story is Ninikea, the colorful and original T-shirt collection by Clarissa Dunlap, preparing to celebrate its sixth year in business.

From simple beginnings in her Waikoloa studio, Dunlap’s art is now found in numerous galleries and her whimsical shirts are sold in six different shops across the state, including two each on Kauai and Oahu, and specifically at Puako General Store and Elements Jewelry &Crafts in Hawi on Hawaii Island.

She is also proud to say that her T-shirt company is sending her son, Simon, 18, to college, who theater-goers may remember him as “Bert” in Parker School’s recent production of “Mary Poppins.” He’s now is preparing to enter the Willamette University in Salem, Oregon to study musical theater.

Dunlap creates all her designs and prints them herself, using a massive Epson printer that “cost more than a car,” she said. She draws the original images on her iPad Pro, sends them to the printer, feeds in one shirt at a time and then takes it to a heat press for 30 seconds.

And, although that may sound like a painstaking process, it’s much more efficient than when she started out, using high-quality transfers which had to be individually printed and cut by hand before being applied to the shirt.

Ninikea means “white kapa,” which Dunlap selected because she only prints on white cotton tees.

“I chose it because I have so many designs, that if I messed around with colored shirts I would go nuts,” she said.

The white shirts provide a clean canvas for a lively assortment of T-shirt “characters” — birds, fish, mermaids, geckos and more, all with their own personalities.

“The gecko is one of the most popular,” she said. “The gecko was a request from a customer at the market. One day I got my camera and got ready to go to Kona because I couldn’t find a gecko in Waimea — it’s too cold. I was leaving the studio and there was a gecko on the white wall. I took his picture and he stayed in the studio for two days. That gecko T-shirt has been all over the world; I even mailed one to a boy in Czechoslovakia.”

Originally from Brazil, Dunlap came to Hawaii as a professional artist with a degree from the Federal University of Bahia. She credits her older son, Lucas — now a software engineer and musician — with the T-shirt idea.

“He said ‘Mom, you have beautiful art. Put it on T-shirts, as kind of an affordable canvas,’” Dunlap said.

As a result, she began selling her shirts, prints and note cards at the market in 2011, starting simply with five or six designs, all printed on white.

“My husband, Mark, said, ‘just stick to it and you’ll figure it out,’” said Dunlap.

And stick to it she did, producing over 100 designs, inspired by Hawaii Island.

“I am really thankful for this island. I really, really, respect it, and I thank this place we live in because it really is a piece of paradise,” Dunlap said.

In 2012, she opened a boutique shop — Little Paradise — in Waimea, and ran it by herself for the first year, greeting customers in front and working on her art in the back. Then, she shifted to a co-op business model as New Moon Gallery, with eight other artists to help cover the work schedule, but she never stopped coming to the market.

“I love the connections I make with every person at the market — from Japan, the mainland, Europe and South America,” she said. “Those connections are vital for me as an artist. Real human connection is what keeps me going with this business.”

Ninikea T-shirts can be found at Waimea Town Market at Parker School on Saturdays mornings from 7:30 a.m.-noon, along with 36 other vendors of island food and handcrafted products.

Info: To see more of her work go to www.etsy.com/shop/Ninikea