Toshiko Takaezu was an American ceramic artist and painter.
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.
The Hawaiian archipelago consists of 137 islands in the Pacific Ocean that are far from any other land. Polynesians arrived there one to two thousand years ago, and in 1778 Captain James Cook and his crew became the first Europeans to visit Hawaii. The art created in these islands may be divided into art existing prior to Cook’s arrival; art produced by recently arrived westerners; and art produced by Hawaiians incorporating western materials and ideas. Public collections of Hawaiian art may be found at the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Bishop Museum (Honolulu), the Hawaii State Art Museum and the University of Göttingen in Germany.
Hon Chew Hee was an American muralist, watercolorist and printmaker who was born in Kahului, on the Hawaiian island of Maui in 1906. He grew up in China, where he received his early training in Chinese brush painting. He returned to the United States in 1920 at age 14 in order to further his training at the San Francisco Art Institute, receiving that school's highest academic honor. He then taught in China until moving to Hawaii in 1935. In Hawaii, he worked as a freelance artist and held classes in both Western and Eastern styles of painting. Together with Isami Doi (1903–1965), Hee taught painting classes at the YMCA. At this time, Doi instructed the young artist in woodcarving techniques and Hee, like his master, created wood engravings drawn from the rural life in the Islands. Hee also founded the Hawaii Watercolor and Serigraph Society.
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 engraved by Chester Beach and issued in 1928.
Tadashi Sato was an American artist. He was born in Kaupakalua on the Hawaiian island of Maui. His father had been a pineapple laborer, merchant, and calligrapher, and Tadashi’s grandfather was a sumi-e artist.
Satoru Abe is a Japanese American sculptor and painter.
Bumpei Akaji was an American sculptor from Hawaii. He was known for welding large copper and brass sculptures which can be seen all over Hawaii as part of Hawaii's Art in Public Places program.
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.
Edward Malcolm Brownlee (1929-2013) was an American sculptor known for his modernist architectural creations with a style influenced by the art of Oceania, Asia, and the Pacific Northwest. He is best known for his work in Hawaii, where he was a frequent collaborator with architect Pete Wimberly.
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, Tetsuo 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.
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. He received his bachelor of fine art degree in sculpture from Ohio State University, where the art department reopened its glass program in 1980, during Mills last semester. He moved to Hawai'i in 1981 and earned a master of fine art degree, also in sculpture, from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, where he is currently professor and director of the glass art program.
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.
Ken Shutt was an American sculptor and watercolorist who was born in Long Beach, California. He graduated from Pasadena City College, the Art Center College of Design and the Chouinard Art Institute. He moved to Hawaii in 1963, and lived there until 1995. He returned to California in 1995, to be near his foundry, when he was commissioned to create a bronze sculpture for the entrance of Sea Life Park Hawaii. He died 2010, at age 81, in Atascadero, California.
Frank Sheriff is an abstract sculptor who was born in Yokohama, Japan to an American father and a Japanese-American mother. Because his father was employed by the United States Army, Frank lived in Japan, Nevada, California, New York, Texas, North Carolina, and Hawaii during his childhood. He started studying art at Oregon State University but returned to Hawaii to be with his mother when his father died in 1980. He entered the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where he earned a BFA in 1984, and an MFA in 1989.
Sean Kekamakupaʻa Lee Loy Browne is a contemporary sculptor who was born in Hilo, Hawaii. He attended the Kamehameha Schools and then earned a BA in studio art from the University of Redlands in 1975. In 1981, he studied marble carving under Paoli Silverio in Pietrasanta, Italy and was later appointed an artist-in-residence at the Henraux Marble Company in Lucca, Italy. He returned to Hawaii and earned an MFA in sculpture from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1983. In 1985 he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship, enabling him to study with Isamu Noguchi in Shikoku, Japan. For many years, Browne taught sculpture at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and at Kapiolani Community College.
Kenneth Wayne Bushnell is an American visual artist, who was born in Los Angeles. He earned a BA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1958, and then moved to Hawaii, where he received an MFA from the University of Hawaiʻi in 1961. He taught painting at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa from 1961 to 1981, and was appointed chairman of the Art Department in 1991. He married fellow artist Helen Gilbert in 1995. Bushnell is now a professor emeritus, living in Honolulu.
The Fourth Sign is a public artwork by the American artist Tony Smith situated on the lawn outside the Art Building at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, in Honolulu, Hawaii. The large sculpture is fabricated in steel, painted black, and signifies the fourth Zodiac sign, which is Cancer. The sculpture was commissioned by the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts in accordance with the Art in State Buildings Law. Since its installation, many have seen in its shape as a reference to the legs and claws of a crab.
Eli Raphael Marozzi (1913–1999) was a sculptor, ceramist, teacher, and illustrator.
