The Hui No’eau Visual Arts Center and the East Maui Watershed Partnership (EMWP) have launched a call for Maui artists of all ages to submit artwork for the 20th annual Mālama Wao Akua exhibition.
Mālama Wao Akua is a juried art exhibition that celebrates and promotes Maui Nui’s native plant and animal species. Entry is open to Maui artists working in any medium. Submissions are available for adults and elementary, middle and high school students. Artwork must depict species native to Maui Nui (Maui, Lānaʻi, Moloka’i, Kaho’olawe), a landscape that features only Maui Nui native species, or people committed to protecting Maui’s native species and habitats. Artists may submit up to three works each.
Artwork drop-off day for this year’s exhibition will be Tuesday, September 3, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Hui No’eau’s Makawao campus. Artists must complete an online registration form before arriving on the day they drop off artwork; online registration begins August 20. A full brochure and registration forms are available online.
A team of judges with expertise in art and conservation will make selections from this year’s submissions. Hui No’eau and EMWP welcome Mike Takemoto, visual artist and associate professor of art at the University of Hawai’i Maui College, and Kat M. Lui, former EMWP public outreach and education officer (2003-2009), as jurors for the 2024 exhibition.
Mike Takemoto received a BFA in Drawing, Painting, and Printmaking from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. He earned an MA and MFA in Studio Art from Northern Illinois University. Takemoto has exhibited his paintings, prints, murals, sculptures, and installations nationally and in various venues in Hawai’i, including the Honolulu Museum of Art, East Hawai’i Cultural Center, Maui Arts and Cultural Center, Wailoa Center, Downtown Art Center, and Hui Noʻeau Visual Arts Center. At UHMC, Takemoto is the Art Department’s Program Coordinator and teaches courses in art appreciation, drawing, painting, and printmaking.
Kat Lui is a wildlife biologist/botanist turned acupuncturist from a family of artists. She fell in love with the magic and mystery of “Wao Akua” in 2001 while working with the now-extinct Po’ouli and other endangered songbirds in East Maui. In 2004, while working as an outreach and education liaison for the East Maui Watershed Partnership, she was inspired to take Connie J. Adams’ watercolor class and paint a ‘Ākohekohe. Unsatisfied with the results, she wondered if there was a way to use the talents of local artists to capture the magnificence and fragility of Maui’s native flora and fauna, so she created and ran the juried art exhibition Mālama Wao Akua until 2009.
Mālama Wao Akua will be open to the public from September 13th. through November 8 at Hui No’eau, with the opening ceremony on Friday, September 13 from 5 to 8 p.m. For more information about Mālama Wao Akua, visit malamawaoakua.org or huinoeau.com/exhibitions.
This year’s exhibition is sponsored by the County of Maui and the Hawai’i Tourism Authority.
