Andrea Jonna Charuk completed her second weekend as Orvis Artist in Residence at Spalding House on Sunday. Her project Take the Bait is a sweet, sticky testament to the humble ant’s keen sense of smell, love of hiking, and voraciousness. Like Damien Hirst, Charuk plays phrases off dead things that were once alive. (Hirst’s Away From the Flock featuring a sheep floating in formaldehyde never fails to make me chuckle.) Her in-progress Tough Luck, featuring a decaying baby bird she found on the museum grounds (“So many babies all over the place,” says curator of education Aaron Padilla, “and if they fall out of the tree, they’re done.”) is at once gruesome and hilarious.

See how Charuk makes these works, ask her questions about her concept, maybe bait some ants yourself—she’ll be working on site through June 3:

Saturdays April 28, May 5, 12, 19, 26, June 2: 10am-4pm
Sundays April 29, May 6, 13, 20, 27, June 3: noon-4pm

Then tell us what you think about Charuk’s project, or how it makes you feel.

ps: Charuk’s statement reveals that her project is about outsourcing labor. I revisited Aaron Padilla’s insightful post about the “art gap” to understand what it means that my response to this artwork is different from the artist’s vision.

Professional artist wrangler Waileia Roster (thanks for all your help!) has roped a great roster of talent. Half of the artists are represented by the 9th Wave Gallery—Hilton Alves, Patrick Parker, Shannon O’Connell, and Kyox Rust. Joining them are “Draw the Line” regulars (and noted island artists) Jamie Allen, Solomon Enos, Ryan Higa, Carl Pao, Cade Roster, and Lauren Roth. Artists, the museum salutes you and are so grateful for your tireless support of us and our programs.

The fundraiser is part of Kahala Mall’s third annual Shop Local event. From 11am to 2pm you can meet local Whole Foods Market vendors such as Kaiulani Spices, Kona Red and Lei Fresh. They’ll be situated throughout the mall and offering samples. Mana ‘Ai will give a poi-pounding demonstration from 1 to 2pm. You can enter a free drawing to win dinner for two at Hoku’s (they’ll be at a booth in front of Kahala Kids). And if you present them with $125 worth of receipts time-stamped between 10am and 5pm that day, you’ll get a free Kahala Mall Shop Local tote.

The custom-painted organic-cotton Organik Tshirts are $25 for kids sizes and $38 for men’s and women’s styles.

The Garden Club of Honolulu’s Major Flower and Horticulture Show opens May 11. This huge, gorgeous three-day event happens only every three years. The first signs are already appearing at the museum, in the form of recylocium plastica.

What the heck is that? In January the club members began working three days a week to make these plastic wonders. They went dumpster diving and asked for donations for  thousands of recycled plastic water bottles. They painted the bottles, then cut off the bottoms and they sliced them from the bottom up to create “flowers” that they put into clusters to create durable chandeliers—that they dubbed recylocium plastica.

The resourceful creations reflect the theme of this year’s flower show—Echoes of Rainbows—and can be found throughout the museum.

We are so honored that Eloise Wickersham chose the Honolulu Museum of Art Café to celebrate her birthday—her 103rd birthday! Her friends—who are all longtime supporters of the museum— brought her to the museum for lunch today. When museum director Stephan Jost heard she was in the café, he quickly prepared a birthday card for her and brought it down to meet Eloise. A radiant, rosy-cheeked Eloise, her nails painted a fashionable black, reminisced about her days as a museum docent in the 1960s—and how she came to the museum every day, she loves it so much. Eloise arrived in Hawai‘i in 1930 when she was 21. Oh all the things she must have seen. The museum thanks Eloise for her many years of support and appreciation of the museum.

Pictured above, is Eloise Wickersham (seated) with (left to right) Marge Pescaia, Nancy Kinghorn, Hanalore Herbig, Grace Sabandal, and Jeanne Nowaki.

Curators have selected 10 contemporary artists to highlight in our upcoming exhibition Tattoo Honolulu. One of them is the highly sought after Mike Ledger, who has a two-year waiting list. He came to the museum this morning to be photographed by our staff photographer Shuzo Uemoto.

Ledger is a gregarious New Yorker (Brooklyn born!)—with Italian and Blackfoot blood running through his veins—and has made Honolulu his home since 2000. As I escorted him to the photo studio, he divulged that two weeks ago he started his first tattoo in 10 years—a pe‘a by Aisea Toetuu. Once in the studio, he showed me and Shuzo the pe‘a—on his lower back, blending seamlessly with a giant skull he had done by Filip Lue in Lausanne. Ledger was a sort of tattoo wunderkind—he started tattooing at the age of 15, and by the time he was 18, he already had bookings a year in advance. In the 1990s, “a handful of us were taking the Japanese tattoo tradition, but putting a twist on it—less background, bigger subject matter,” said Ledger. Then in 1996, he was one of 20 foreign artists invited to the first tattoo convention in Japan.

What do tattoos signify to Ledger? “For an artist, it is first a way to learn. As a person, tattoos are memories of your life,” said Ledger. The act of getting a tattoo is “how you truly learn,” he explained. “You seek an artist that you love, and get tattooed by that person. Then each one you remember—where you were, who did it—it’s a life story. So when I’m old, I can look back at my life through my tattoos.”

Not only are our docents founts of art knowledge—leading tours every day at the museum—many of them are also accomplished artists. Since 2000, the docents have had a biennial show at The Gallery on the Pali at the First Unitarian Church on Pali Highway. The next one opens April 29 and runs through May 24. The show’s theme this year is “Metamorphosis,” reflecting the The Contemporary Museum’s recent gift to the Honolulu Academy of Arts, creating the unified Honolulu Museum of Art. The exhibition is organized by docents Mary Flynn, Jill Clapes, and Simone Cahill Berlin. Pictured above are works by Darlene Weingand and Mary Flynn.

In-the-know shoppers who have a thing for contemporary jewelry and the contemporary American craft movement make regular stops at our shop, where they know they’ll find things not available anywhere else in town. Buyer Courtland Cleland just got in a new line—by New Orleans designer and artist Thomas Mann (no relation to the Death in Venice guy).

“I believe in art,” Mann says about jewelry. “Not in the creation of beauty through jewels and fine metals, but in the idea, in the concept. I like to look beyond the object itself, to see the intangible value it may possess.”

He combines an industrial aesthetic and materials (nickel, brass) with romantic themes and imagery to create a singular look.

The shop carries a selection of earrings, bracelets and necklaces. Prices range from $95 to $255.

Last month we reported that a shama thrush had laid eggs in Orvis artist in residence Eva Enriquez’s project—which just happened to be a cluster of bird houses at Spalding House. Well, education curator Aaron Padilla reports that the eggs have hatched, and the fledglings are already learning to fly. Here is one of them atop Lynne Yamamoto’s House for Listening to Rain—born in one artwork, and playing on another. Art really is for the birds.

Whenever I go to Spalding House, I am always awestruck by the natural beauty of the landscape as well as artwork. My proposal for my second Orvis Artist in Residency began as a reference to the pop art invasions of the Château de Versailles—Jeff Koons in 2008, and Takashi Murakami in 2010—that drew record numbers in attendance. Although I was not able to see these exhibitions, I have been to the lavish palace, and the events made me curious about what coaxes people to places that are already spectacular. I live in Waikiki and I am also an international flight attendant so I see how exoticism plays a heavy role in drawing the public to a tourist destination. My challenge then became how to connect Waikīkī and Versailles indirectly.

I began by thinking about the precisely planned European gardens and their almost static beauty. This brought on the construction of my maze out of pool rafts. I knew these colors would pop against the green of the lawn. I cut the inside of the rafts at their inflation seams and rolled up and attached neon cable ties to the rolls so they would not inflate. The blue became the most difficult because the pink creates an almost orange color at the seam while the green creates an almost yellow color and the blue just doesn’t have quite the neon effect for my eyes to distinguish the seam. I started cutting the pillow originally and was going to fill it with sand, and then changed that to water and have the pillow on the ground for stability. This might have been a more stable choice, but then the average adult could see over the top of it, and although they are transparent, there was something a little more claustrophobic and confusing by them being taller.

The wind became a much larger challenge than I expected. After a trial at Kapi‘olani Park, I realized that lawn stakes are not strong enough to hold the air-mattress panels despite the vented airflow. I had to resort to iron rebar and covered it with foam pool floats. I also placed eyelets at several points on each raft to prevent ripping. This amounted to 2,000 eyelets, and double that in cable ties.

I started with 200 rafts (thank you ABC Stores, which was very helpful and generous with a great discount). I probably ended up with at least 60 rebar and 100 lawn stakes.

At first, there was one entrance and one exit, but the wind has chosen its path and now there are several entrances and exits. I hadn’t intended for people to jump through the openings—but it now that the maze is up, it is clearly too tempting, especially for kids. I also now realize that these colors are psychologically chosen to attract children. The look on their faces are amazing and you can just see “mine” in their eyes. Some toddlers barely able to walk start screaming and running and shake the noodles and mats like crazy. It’s hard to get upset at a child having so much fun even though you know it is going to be more work replacing it. Hopefully when they get older they will remember their moment in this installation, and the experience will help broaden their relationship with art.

The next step was my performance. I wanted to be a character like Marie Antoinette—but made out of touristic inflatable toys. I began purchasing parrots, monkeys, and flamingos as I find these are always sold to push the exotic jungle even though there usually aren’t any to be found except in the local zoo. My dress was to be a giant pool overflowing with these objects. I then began thinking of other inflatable items including blow up dolls. I have used them as a symbol of exoticism and the practice of using sex in the tourism industry originally thinking of the palm tree as the tree of knowledge and the blow up doll as Eve, thus the snake on the doll.

I wanted to be a type of giant blow up doll emerging from the Spalding House pool covered in the debris of symbolism. Therefore, I started taking items I hadn’t used or popped and filling them totally or partially with water and sinking them in the pool. This created a labyrinth of strange objects. I would like to keep this part growing and eventually create an underwater sculpture using the rafts that have holes in them.

Aaron Padilla and Bradley Capello, who work at Spalding House and with the Orvis artists, sank a table that I could use as a sort of ramp, emerging from the pool like Venus, singing the Grace Jones version of “La Vie en Rose,” with jungle sounds mixed in. Since I don’t know how to speak French, I decided that I would just continue my absurdity by saying French phrases and names that have invaded our culture set to the music.

The next challenge was getting in and out of the pool. I enlisted the help of my friends and fellow artists Sheri Lyles and Eva Enriquez (check out Eva’s birdhouses on the trees in the garden—she was the previous artist in residence). For this part I created inflatable beach costumes for all of us. I decided I needed another song and so I chose a French hip hop version of “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” that we absurdly dance to.

I also wanted Pup, the pet of my friends and fellow artists Mary Babcock and Kate Werner, to be dressed as a parrot—visitors can request to be photographed with her as a souvenir. I find it so ironic how many people do this in Waikīkī when macaws are not indigenous to Hawai‘i. These photos will be posted later on the blog. (Be sure you also check out Mary Babcock’s incredible installation inside the museum!)

Besides being photographed with Pup the amazing parrot, people can play kick croquet—they put on water-filled inflatable shoes and kick water-filled beachballs. There are also monkey/pelican/turtle horseshoes as well as a swimming pool ring toss. These I will also be working on the next two weeks to bring out the “dark” side of inflatable objects and how the colors and playfulness of these objects bring about “unnecessary seduction.”

A lot of visitors make a beeline to our impressive collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist works. Up until a couple of weeks ago, they were found in a small, low-ceilinged gallery. Theresa Papanikolas, curator of European and American art, has liberated these popular paintings by moving them into the high-ceilinged, expansive gallery that was formerly a dull pink period room of 18th-century European art and decorative objects. Now it is an airy white space where you can compare the Vlaminck and the Cézanne (they hang next to each other), and the Monet has lots of breathing room.