Toshiko Takaezu was an American ceramic artist, painter, sculptor, and educator whose oeuvre spanned a wide range of mediums, including ceramics, weavings, bronzes, and paintings. She is noted for her pioneering work in ceramics and has played an important role in the international revival of interest in the ceramic arts. Takaezu was known for her rounded, closed ceramic forms which broke from traditions of clay as a medium for functional objects. Instead she explored clay's potential for aesthetic expression, taking on Abstract Expressionist concepts in a manner that places her work in the realm of postwar abstractionism. She is of Japanese descent and from Pepeeko, Hawaii.
Hiroki Morinoue is an American artist of Japanese descent who has helped to pioneer in the United States the fusion of western Impressionism with modern Japanese design.
Shirley Ximena Hopper Russell, also known as Shirley Marie Russell, was an American artist best known for her paintings of Hawaii and her still lifes of Hawaiian flowers. She was born Shirley Ximena Hopper in Del Rey, California, in 1886. She graduated in 1907 from Stanford University, where she discovered art. Shirley married Lawrence Russell, an engineer, in 1909. When he died in 1912, she began teaching in Palo Alto, and dabbling in painting. In 1921, she and her son came to Hawaii for a visit and decided to stay. She studied under Hawaiian artist Lionel Walden during the 1920s and traveling to Europe several times to further her art education. She studied in Paris during the 1930s and the cubist influence can be seen in a number of her works. She taught art at President William McKinley High School in Honolulu for more than 20 years. Around 1935-1936, the Japanese publisher Watanabe Shozaburo (1885–1962) published more than several woodblock prints she designed. The majority of these prints depict colorful and detailed tropical flowers, while at least one print, Carmel Mission, is a California landscape.
Juliette May Fraser was an American painter, muralist and printmaker. She was born in Honolulu, which was then the capital city of the Kingdom of Hawaii. After graduating from Wellesley College with a degree in art, she returned to Hawaii for several years. She continued her studies with Eugene Speicher and Frank DuMond at the Art Students League of New York and at the John F. Carlson School of Landscape Painting in Woodstock, New York. She returned to Hawaii to teach, like her parents who had both come to Hawaii as educators. Fraser designed the Hawaii Sesquicentennial half dollar, which was sculpted by Chester Beach and issued in 1928.
Satoru Abe is a Japanese American sculptor and painter.
Lloyd Sexton Jr. (1912–1990), who is also known as Leo Lloyd Sexton Jr. was an American painter born in Hilo, Hawaii on March 24, 1912. In 1931 he entered the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In 1933 he had a show of flower paintings at the Vose Galleries in Boston, followed by exhibitions at the Honolulu Museum of Art and at Gump's in San Francisco. He spent several years in Europe, painting and traveling during the summers and studying at the Slade School of Art in London during the winters. In his third and final year of instruction there, one of his figure paintings won first prize, and in 1936 a flower painting was exhibited the Royal Academy in London. Sexton returned to Hilo in 1937 and concentrated on figure painting and portraiture. That same year his painting "Nanea" was accepted and exhibited at the Royal Academy. Sexton executed a large number of portraits and, beginning in 1934, before he left for Europe, did two commissions for the Hawaiian Pineapple Company. He was a frequent and popular exhibitor in group shows in Honolulu. He also had one-person shows at Honolulu's Grossman-Moody Gallery in 1957 and at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Hotel Gallery in 1961. A retrospective of his work was held at the Contemporary Arts Center, Honolulu Advertiser Gallery, in 1966. He died in Honolulu on March 23, 1990,
Alan Leitner is an American abstract artist. He was born in 1947 in an ethnically diverse section of Los Angeles. Alan was the middle of three children in a Jewish family. He received his B.S. in art in 1971 from Woodbury University in Los Angeles, where he met his first wife who wanted to move to Hawaii. Also in 1971, he acquired an art foundry that produced blown glass, sculpture, ceramics and paintings, which contributed greatly to his understanding of art. In 1987, he received a M.F.A. in painting from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The graduate program required students to do some teaching, and through this teaching he met Alyn Brownley who at the time headed the art program at Leeward Community College. Brownley requested Alan to teach her art class for one semester while she pursued a move to University of Hawaii at Manoa. After graduation, Dr. John Conner, the department associate dean, offered Alan a full-time teaching position at Leeward Community College, where he is currently a professor. Alan has also taught at Honolulu Community College and University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Sally Fletcher-Murchison is an American ceramic artist who was born in Sacramento, California in 1933. She grew up there and received a Bachelor of Fine Art (BFA) in advertising art from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1955. She worked as a designer before moving to Hawaii. She studied ceramics at the University of Hawaii, where she received a Master of Fine Art (MFA) in 1966. She has taught at the Hawaii Potters' Guild, the University of Hawaii Lab School, the Hickam Airforce Base Craft Center and the Honolulu Museum of Art. She is known for her massive hand-built stoneware sculptures that resemble pots, but are nonfunctional, such as End Without End in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art.
Tetsuo Ochikubo (1923–1975), also known as Bob Ochikubo, was a Japanese-American painter, sculpture, and printmaker who was born in Waipahu, Hawaii, Honolulu county, Hawaii. During the Second World War, he served with the 100th Battalion of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. After being discharged from the Army, he studied painting and design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and at the Art Students League of New York. In 1953, he spent a year in Japan, studying traditional brush painting and connecting with his ancestry. He worked at Tamarind Institute in the 1960s and is best known for his entirely abstract paintings and lithographs. Along with Satoru Abe, Bumpei Akaji, Edmund Chung, Jerry T. Okimoto, James Park, and Tadashi Sato, Ochikubo was a member of the Metcalf Chateau, a group of seven Asian-American artists with ties to Honolulu. Ochikubo died in Kawaihae, Hawaii in 1975.
Bob Flint, also known as Robert Flint, is an American ceramic artist. He arrived in Hawaii in 1960 for a summer of surfing and quickly realized that he wanted to stay. In 1961 he entered the University of Hawaii, earning his bachelor's and master's degrees in fine art, with a specialization in ceramics.
David Kuraoka is an American ceramic artist. He was born in Lihue, Hawaii, grew up on the island of Kauai, Hawaii in Hanamaulu and Lihue, and graduated from Kauai High School in 1964. Kuraoka spent his formative years in Hanamaulu where he lived with his parents in his paternal grandmother's home in a plantation labor camp. His father, one of seven children and the only son, became a journalist, writing a weekly column published on Wednesdays, and the Kauai campaign manager for local politician Hiram Fong and Richard Nixon. His mother, Emiko Kuraoka, was a school teacher. He is married to Carol Kuraoka. Kuraoka moved to California in 1964 to study architecture at San Jose City College, eventually transferring to San José State University where he received his BA in 1970 and MA 1971. After completing graduate work that focused on ceramics, Kuraoka joined the faculty at San Francisco State University, eventually rising to head its ceramics department.
Rick Mills is an American glass artist who was born and raised in Marion, Ohio.
Claude Horan was an American ceramic and glass artist who was born in Long Beach, California. He received a BA from San Jose State University in 1942 and an MA degree in art from Ohio State University in 1946. His wife Suzi Pleyte Horan collaborated on many of the larger projects. He was a lifeguard and longboard surfer in Santa Cruz in the late 1930s, and is credited with naming Steamer Lane.
Michael Tom (1946–1999) was an American sculptor.
The Biennial of Hawaii Artists is an invitational exhibition of six or seven Hawaii artists that has been held at Spalding House since 1993. It was originally organized by The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu and known as “The Contemporary Museum Biennial of Hawaii Artists”. In 2011, The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu became part of the Honolulu Museum of Art, with the latter institution continuing the biennial.
John Paul Thomas was an American artist specializing in oil painting, watercolor and drawing in several media. He was also an educator and arts scholar.
Sanit Khewhok is a painter, sculptor, curator, and conservator.
Dorothy A. Faison also Dorothy Ries Faison is an American artist who was born in Schenectady, New York. She lived in Central and South America from age six to age twelve, because her stepfather worked for the United States Agency for International Development. Her family returned to the United States in 1968, and settled in Hawaii. She received a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1977 and earned a master of fine arts degree from the Otis Art Institute in 1979. In 1990, Dorothy Faison was the recipient of the first Catharine E. B. Cox Award for Excellence in the Visual Arts and has a solo exhibition at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. As of 2017 she lives and works in Dordogne, France, with her filmmaker husband, Simon Holland.
Carol Bennett is a Hawaii based painter and glass artist.
The Capitol Modern Museum, formerly named the Hawaii State Art Museum, is a small art gallery located on the second floor of the No. 1 Capitol District Building in downtown Honolulu, Hawaii, United States. Long known as HiSAM, the museum is operated by the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts.
