Toshiko Takaezu was an American ceramic artist, painter, sculptor, and educator with an oeuvre spanning a wide range of mediums, including ceramics, weavings, bronzes, and paintings. She is noted for her pioneer 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 to explore its potential for aesthetic expression, taking on Abstract Expressionist concepts and placing her work in the realm of postwar abstractionism. She is of Japanese descent and from Pepeeko, Hawaii.
Richard Kekuni Akana Blaisdell, was professor emeritus of medicine at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in Honolulu, and a longtime organizer in the Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement.
Satoru Abe is a Japanese American sculptor and painter.
Esther Shimazu is an American sculptor who was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1957. Her grandparents were immigrant laborers from Japan. She attended the University of Hawaii at Manoa before transferring to the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, where she received a Bachelor of Fine Art in 1980 and a Master of Fine Art in 1982.
Mahealani Perez-Wendt is a Kanaka Maoli poet, writer and community activist residing in Hawaiʻi, on the island of Maui. She is the 1993 recipient of the Eliot Cades literary award, and is the author of Uluhaimalama and other publications. She recently retired as the executive director of Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation, a public-interest law firm specializing in Kanaka Maoli rights. She has worked for Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation since 1978.
Noenoe K. Silva is a Hawaiian author and scholar. A professor of political science at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, her work has appeared in Biography, American Studies, and The Contemporary Pacific.
Hinaleimoana Kwai Kong Wong-Kalu, also known as Kumu Hina, is a Native Hawaiian māhū – a traditional third gender person who occupies "a place in the middle" between male and female, as well as a modern transgender woman. She is known for her work as a kumu hula, as a filmmaker, artist, activist and as a community leader in the field of Kanaka Maoli language and cultural preservation. She teaches Kanaka Maoli philosophy and traditions that promotes cross-cultural alliances throughout the Pacific Islands. Kumu Hina is known as a "powerful performer with a clear, strong voice"; she has been hailed as "a cultural icon".
Kaili Chun is a Native Hawaiian sculptor and installation artist. She also is a lecturer at Kapi'olani Community College. Her works frequently address Hawaiian culture and history as well as the effects of Westernization. Natural and industrial materials are also common in her artworks.
Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua is a Kanaka Maoli scholar and educator whose work centers on Native Hawaiian social movements, culture-based education, and energy and food politics.
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.
Denise Noelani Manuela Arista is an associate professor of Hawaiian and US History in the Department of History at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. Her scholarship focuses on 19th century American History, Hawaiian History and Literature, Indigenous epistemology and translation, and Colonial and Indigenous history and historiography.
Carol Bennett is a Hawaii based painter and glass artist.
Esther Takakura Mookini is an American linguist responsible for several widely used Hawaiian-language dictionaries.
Bernice A. Akamine is an American artist and Hawaiian rights activist. Her visual art has taken multiple forms, including glass and feathers, and she teaches traditional Hawaiian art techniques such as the creation of kapa cloth and natural dyeing using Hawaiian plants. Akamine is an advocate for Indigenous land rights, using her artwork to bring attention to the colonial invasion of Hawaii and its continued effects on the native Hawaiian population.
Hawaiʻi Contemporary is a non-profit organization dedicated to presenting contemporary art and ideas in Hawaiʻi.
Brandy Nālani McDougall is a Kānaka Maoli author, poet, educator, literary activist, and associate professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She is the Hawai'i State Poet Laureate for 2023-2025.
Maile Tomlinson Meyer-Broderick is a Kānaka Maoli community advocate, entrepreneur, small-business owner, nonprofit executive director, publisher, and consultant.
Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio is a Kanaka Maoli poet, educator, and activist who lives and works in Hawai'i. She is known for her poetry and activism centered on Hawaiian culture and identity.
Momi Cazimero is an American graphic designer and firm owner, who established the first woman-owned graphic design firm in Hawaii.
Solomon Enos is an accomplished Native Hawaiian artist, illustrator, and activist. Enos has had their work displayed at the National Museum of the American Indian and Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum.
