Art contest educates keiki about fair housing
Hawaii Realtors, a leading statewide professional trade organization for the real estate industry, has launched the 2021 Keiki Art Contest to help children learn about fair housing.
With the theme of “Fair Housing: Celebrate Diversity,” the contest celebrates the importance of the Fair Housing Act, which became law in April 1968. The law helps prevent discrimination in housing by ensuring equal access when renting or buying a home, securing a mortgage, seeking housing assistance or engaging in other housing-related activities. National Fair Housing Month is recognized each April to help raise awareness of fair housing rights.
The Keiki Art Contest is free and is open to all Hawaii students from grades 1-8, with two categories: grades 1-4 and 5-8. Winners will receive $100, second place $75, and third place $50. Honorable mentions will also be selected. The deadline to submit artwork is April 30, and winners will be notified by May 31. Select artwork will be featured in a printed 2022 Hawaii Realtors calendar.
Submissions must be original and may not exceed 8.5-by-11 inches in size. Acceptable media includes paint, pencil, markers, ink, crayon and watercolor. Entries can be submitted digitally or mailed. For the official entry form and guidelines, visit HawaiiRealtors.com/art.
KVA announces April featured artist
The Kailua Village Artists featured artist for the month of April is watercolor artist J.D. Nelson.
Originally from Illinois, Nelson obtained his bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Illinois. He has successfully combined his career in architecture with the arts. He developed and ran his own architectural and design company located in Chicago. Concurrently, he continued his artistic pursuits and showed at the Button Gallery in Saugatuck, Michigan.
Nelson relocated to Hawaii in 2015 where he devotes his time to watercolors with an emphasis on Hawaiian landscapes and buildings of character. He has shown both at the Kohala Mountain Gallery in Hawi and the Gallery of Great Things in Waimea. Nelson joined the Kailua Village Artists as a working member in December 2019. Nelson continues to develop his use of color and to achieve a luminous quality to his paintings. Among his featured watercolors are “Little Blue Church” and “Kailua Kona”.
Nelson will be working at the gallery on April 15 and 29. The Kailua Village Artists Gallery is located in the Kona Marketplace, 75-5729 Alii Drive, Suite C-110, in Kailua-Kona. It is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily.
For more information, call (808) 329-6653, or visit www.kailuavillageartists.com.
Rochkovsky is BSA artist of the month
The Blue Sea Artisans Gallery will be featuring plein air oil painter Richard Rochkovsky in April.
Richard Rochkovsky grew up on the beaches of the Jersey Shore where he dreamed of becoming a painter, attended the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, and became an architect instead, practicing in New Jersey, Virginia, Washington state, and finally in Hawaii. After the completion of Alii Park Place condominium project in Kailua, he throttled back on architecture and redefined himself as a painter.
Recently, he was the juror for the annual Plein Air Exhibit sponsored by the HIAA in the Wailoa Center in Hilo and showed more than 40 works in the Fountain Gallery at that time. Presently, and for the last decade or so, he has been the coordinator of PaintingOutThere, the plein air painting group on the Kona Coast, showing his work at the Blue Seas Artisans Gallery where he is available to “talk story” Monday afternoons from 1 to 5 p.m.
The Blue Sea Artisans Gallery is located in the Keauhou Shopping Center, 78-6831 Alii Drive, Kailua-Kona. For more information, call the gallery at (808) 329-8000. The gallery is open 1 to 5 p.m. weekdays and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday.
