Artists of Hawai‘i 2023 opens at Downtown Art Center

It was a bustling full house at the awards ceremony this past Saturday for long-running juried exhibition Artists of Hawai‘i, making its debut at its new venue Downtown Art Center. Honolulu Museum of Art Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Tyler Cann served as juror. Don’t miss this survey of art from Hawai‘i on view through Nov. 25.

This year, DAC received more than 1,000 online submissions, and 114 works by 104 artists were selected.

The space is filled with works by familiar names from throughout the islands along with new ones appearing in Artists of Hawai‘i for the first time.

The show offered 15 awards—six of them created for this iteration of the exhibition, and eight of them are existing endowed awards established by the museum over the years. And during the presentation, exhibition sponsor Sharon Twigg-Smith announced an additional 15th award—Surprise Best in Show Award for Excellence ($10,000, from an anonymous donor), which went to Kamran Samimi for his sculpture Mended Stone II. First Prize Sponsored by the Ward Village Fund of Hawai‘i Community Foundation ($10,000) went to Jenna Macy for her work Quilt, which looks like a blanket of chain mail but is made of clay. HoMA’s John Young Award went to Mari Matsuda, the renowned law professor and activist, for her relief print E Aloha E. You can see the full list of selected artists and prize winners here.

While it wasn’t easy making selections, says Cann, “it’s really wonderful to be able to support the practices of artists and at the same time touch a number of different corners of the art world in Hawai‘i, and lift all boats.”

HoMA congratulates its five staff members who are included in the show—bravo to Amber Coppings, Eduardo Joaquin, Forest Leonard, Katherine Love (whose painting Reward of Meritearned a Recognition Award from the Hawai‘i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts) and Marc Thomas.

Sharon Twigg-Smith, who is also a HoMA Trustee, gave opening remarks for the awards, and thanked the show’s hard-working team—led by DAC executive director Sandy Pohl. HoMADirector and CEO Halona Norton-Westbrook handed out the museum’s awards and thanked Twigg-Smith for her longstanding support of the Hawai‘i arts community.

The exhibition debuted in 1950 as an annual open-call exhibition at what was then the Honolulu Academy of Arts. In 2013, the Honolulu Museum of Art reimagined Artists of Hawai‘i as a biennial. For the past decade, while remaining juried, it became a more focused, curatorial experience for artists based in the islands. Scores of artists were reduced to 11 or fewer, and they were given 10 months to develop work with studio visits by a museum curator. The final Artists of Hawai‘i at HoMA, updated as Artists of Hawai‘i Now, was held in 2021.

Twigg-Smith spearheaded the migration of the exhibition to its new home at DAC and the return to its former format. DAC has emerged as a dynamic community-centered space since it opened in 2021. It has quickly become an essential part of Honolulu’s arts ecosystem and is a great new home for Artists of Hawai‘i.

Posted by Lesa Griffith on November 6 2023