HOLUALOA — Tara Cronin is both a photographer and a coffee farmer, and she understands the hard work that goes into both.
“I’ll tell you the truth, the harvest is both energizing and exciting, but we all kind of want to cry as well,” Cronin said with a laugh. “Because you have to keep up with the crop.”
Along with harvesting coffee on Kona’s mountainside, Cronin has been working on a portrait project featuring coffee farmers and WWOOFers — temporary, volunteer farmers — in the area, with each portrait hand-dyed with coffee from each individual’s farm. Cronin hand-dyed the portraits in a bathtub at her home, and alongside each photograph is a few paragraphs telling the farmers’ stories.
“I don’t do portraits a lot, but I have done some in the past,” Cronin said. “And when I think of portraits I like to hear their voice, too. So I asked each person a few questions about their experience in Kona coffee.”
For its annual art exhibition celebrating the Kona Coffee Cultural Festival, the Donkey Mill Art Center is displaying the portraits as part of #coffeelover, this year’s exhibition, which will be displayed at the art center through Dec. 15. Cronin’s photography is just one aspect of #coffeelover, which director Miho Morinoue said has a different focus from the festival’s exhibitions in past years.
“We’ve always focused more on the legacy and the history of Kona coffee, and our with exhibition this year, it’s more about current day,” Morinoue said.
From 6-8 p.m. today, the artists reception and awards presentation will help bring the 48th annual Kona Coffee Cultural Festival to an end. The reception will have a community potluck and no-host bar, and is open to the public.
During the festival, the Donkey Mill is also offering 100 percent Kona coffee for tasting during the center’s open hours.
Also on display at the Donkey Mill for #coffeelover is a clay installation by ceramics studio manager Erin Skelton. The monochromatic scene featuring a white desk, boots, wall and single coffee cup is Skelton’s own ode to Kona coffee as an outsider who moved to the island 11 months ago from Canada.
“It was kind of a spontaneous thing,” Skelton said. “The idea kind of just came to me, because I had found this old cup of mine in the studio, and all the coffee had evaporated out of it. And that was kind of the trigger to the idea of doing this installation.
“The idea is to create this distilled moment. Just mark a phase, of this moment of time you spend with yourself and your cup of coffee. So it’s a much more intimate piece.”
Info: The Donkey Mill Art Center is open from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday.