The most interesting and stressful event for most of us who have farms up here in Kahalu’u lately is the massive visitations of wild pigs. I wish a were a gardener because they roto-till the land to perfection. Except that the places they choose are not great spots for a garden!
It’s crazy!
I see big families – Mom, Dad, teenagers and tiny babies roaming at all hours through my yard and macadamia orchard, rooting for grubs and eating the nuts on the ground. I’d rather sell those nuts – since that is the entire point of having a macadamia farm, but these pigs don’t seem to understand the economics of why those nuts are laying on the ground.
A giant boar with a curly tail often comes alone right under my bedroom lanai sliding door and enjoys his breakfast at dawn. Part of me feels frustrated at the invasion, and the other part feels fascinated, and slightly repelled, as I spy on him from my secret hiding place – my hog blind.
A family of 13 pigs visited for a Sunday afternoon snacking session. The older males were testy with the teenagers, and snorted and chased them away from the best rooting spots. One big boar… well, how can I say this ……. tried to have non-consensual relations with a lady pig and was immediately rejected. He took it quite well, strolling away with his dignity intact. Or so thought! I’m actually a terrible biologist! I make up stories that are probably all wrong.
Why is landscaping our homes with Hawaii native plants so important?
Did you know that Hawaii is known as the endangered species capital of the world?
It’s a complicated story, one for history books, but here are a few reasons why:
For 200-plus years Hawaii residents have been buying or bringing in non-native plants, animals and insects that have taken over the natural landscape.
Most plants that were here prior to Captain Cook’s arrival were hosts to native bird or insect species. So many native birds and important insects are endangered or extinct is because their food source or host plant is rare or gone.
Biologists call this “loss of habitat” and we residents are largely responsible for this problem.
Want to do one simple thing that will help Hawaii’s plants, insects and birds survive?
Do I hear yes?
Ok then- Plant a few native species in your yard or land.
See the perfect example of native plants in my woodcut print above, “Rainforest Dance.” The Kamehameha butterfly lays it’s eggs on the mamaki plant and the caterpillars then voraciously consume leaves until it’s time to make a cocoon. The only plants that will feed the Kamehameha caterpillar are a few natives in the Urticaceae family. Mamaki is the most common, and is super-easy to grow if you live in a wettish region. Plus, you’ll be able to harvest some for yourself. Mamaki is an important medicinal tea that combats vog symptoms.
Here’s How to Add Natives to Your Land or Yard:
Instead of going to Walmart to buy pretty plants, visit your local native plant nursery.
People who own these nurseries are passionate about their work and will help you get plants that are right for your environment.
Listen Rick Barboza talk about 5 easy to grown native plants in this University of Hawaii video.
Full disclosure- I’m better at creating native species art than I am in growing actual plants. Even so, here is my native species catalog for my farm:
Lots of Kukui trees
3 ‘Ohi’a trees ( I love them!)
Laua’e fern
Moi – grasslike plant
Awapuhi ginger
Ilima – sometimes when it pops up.
Loulu palm- highly endangered
So, off you go!
Amble around your yard or land and notice where you’d like to see color and beautiful shapes. Take some photos and then pay a visit to your nearby native plant nursery and ask for landscaping advice.
Two more ways you can help:
If you love Hawaii, but have a black thumb like me, you can still help by contributing to conservation organizations that directly save many endangered species through reforestation efforts.Check out Amy Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden in Kona and the Waikoloa Dry Forest Initiative. These are great places to visit and learn more about Hawaii’s natural environment.
You can support Hawaii artists who focus their work around native species. When you purchase our art you are funding the time and energy it requires for us to tell the story of the life of the land. Hawaii artists invest a huge amount of time and resources researching our subjects so we can inspire and educate people. Many of these artists (like yours truly) donate art to conservation organization fundraisers. The health of the ‘aina (land) is our passion! Check out the Hawaii Nei Native Species Art Competition which hosts an art exhibition annually at Wailoa Center. “Rainforest Dance” the original woodcut print above is available through my website: https://andreapro.com/
Our Kuleana
Kuleana is a Hawaiian value and practice which means responsibility. It speaks to reciprocity and our responsibility to what sustains us. I hope my thoughts have given you all some ideas on how we can all give back to the land we love.
If you have any questions, please reach out to me by email: andrea@andreapro.com or give me a call at 808-345-0907 and I’m happy to talk with you.
I notice that people often talk about the creative process as though it’s a lightning strike of visionary inspiration. For me it’s more like a daily process of curiously noticing everything that comes my way. When I’m paying attention to the details eventually a few of life’s seemingly random dots start to connect up into an insight or idea. A significant aspect of my creative process involves learning something new. I love learning almost anything new, with the exception of math.
While the first part of creativity is simply my way of living life, the next part is more focused on an outcome. I research my topic. I sit down with a cup of coffee and all of my Hawaiiana and botany books. Usually I’ll spend some time hanging out with our friend google, and often I reach out to botanists for information. Jen Lawson, a botanist and Executive Director of the Waikoloa Dry Forest Initiative (waikoloadryforest.org) is one of my favorite go-to experts for info on plants.
At this point, I’m very focused inside myself finding the story. As I gather more information and it melds with my insight and idea, the storyline of the image begins to form.
The next part is sketching. For me, and many artists, there is great joy, and also tension in this part of the process. A blank sheet of paper is scary! I have to stay in the moment and not expect to come up with a final sketch. I use a daily productivity planner to keep me on task with my work, but never, never will you see an entry like “finish coral reef sketch” in my “do list”.
When I’m sketching an image I’m mostly focused on creating a beautiful composition and thinking about what to include or exclude. I’ve learned to keep returning to the sketch no matter what roadblocks seems to arise.
For me creativity is quite simply about paying attention, receiving the idea and then nose to the grindstone working out the details. Your process will be uniquely your own. If you are learning to cultivate your creative process, I’d suggest noticing your own natural way of learning and taking in inspiration. Notice your emotions, your thought processes and how you feel in your body. And then build on those habits and strengths until you began to experience a natural and more structured pathway to joyful creative expression.
I often visit with trees on my land and when I’m hiking. I like to pat them and give them words of appreciation. I’ve known intuitively that trees get lonely when they are separated from others of their own species. Even though it sometimes feels a little weird to interact like this with trees it also feels right.
The Hidden Life of Trees makes a case that trees are a communal species and their very survival depends on how they communicate, form communities and share resources with their own species and a host of others, like fungi and bacteria.
We owe it to the health of our planet to learn about trees. Trees are a major force in climate control and in stabilizing the surface of our planet. So many acres of rich and productive land in many areas of the world has eroded away into barren dessert because trees were clear cut. Trees are a major source of joy for us, if we slow down and notice their quiet steady presence and beauty. I guarantee that reading “The Hidden Life of Trees” will elevate your understanding and appreciation of our tree friends.
The cycle of renewal and growth in the rainforest depends on the death of its inhabitants.
How else would the earth build healthy soil that supports new life? I expect to see declining and dying trees and plants when I’m hiking. However, dying trees and plants usually are not part of the beauty that touches me so deeply on forest walks. And yet, the hapu’u fern takes the process of dying to a new level by giving us the gift of beautiful sculptures embedded in the earth as it decomposes into rich forest floor humus. First, the hapu’u falls over, and then as it decomposes its underlying textures and the stubs of frond branches create a visual delight that rivals the intentional art of the world’s best sculptors and weavers.
These textures don’t show up until the fern has been dead for quite a while. This giant fern that dominates the rainforest with it’s stately beauty is still making a big statement long after its death. What other ways can you think of in which spectacular beauty shows up in such an unexpected way?
Last night I was standing on my lanai hearing massive amounts of water falling from the sky and landing on the roof, the kukui and rubber trees, and the hard lava earth. A sound we call R A I N. That word RAIN doesn’t really cover the experience. It’s too easy to tell a quick story about RAIN, like “the rain was so loud I had to get off the phone. Our stories about rain reduce it to an inconvenience– “too loud,” “making me wet” “too much for my wimpy windshield wipers”. Or sometimes it’s framed as a resource we need– desperate for rain for our gardens.
What would it be like to just be with rain? Water hitting floppy kukui leaves makes a different sound than water hitting the round stiff leaves of the rubber tree. I noticed that there was something else I was hearing under the landing of water– a steady high-pitched tone. Probably one of those crickety-type of insects that makes amazing noises just by rubbing their rough legs together, which when I think about it, is no more or less amazing than humans making noises by generating sound from thoughts in our brains and movement in our hearts that moves to a specific place in our necks and is amplified out through our mouths.
Sound is a new awareness in my life. I’m so visual. Humans are so visual, generally. I recently came across this quote: “Vision eviscerates all of our other senses”. I often move on a well-traveled highway between my eyes and my brain, and from this short fast trip I construct simple stories about what life is bringing to me. I loved that moment last night when the RAIN became more than a flat story; suddenly I was perceiving multi-layered sound and imagining insects and leaves receiving and shedding wetness. I want more moments like this!
Bees can visit 2000 flowers a day in their quest to collect nectar for the hive. bees fly, they pick up a positive electrical charge from the air. An experiment revealed that flowers emit a specific electrical signal that attracts bees when their nectar supply has been regenerated. This explains why I see bees passing by many flowers and landing on the one flower that has recharged its nectar supply.
This girl is gathering nectar from a Beach Heliotrope at Manini Beach. She has little balls of beige pollen attached to her legs. In case you didn’t know, sigh…… it’s the girl bees that do all the work in the hive and flying thousands of miles to gather nectar. It’s not that the guys, the drones, don’t do any work at all. Their main job is to mate with the Queen. That’s a lot of work. And then they immediately die.
I don’t know that we can “lose” our fear. We are wired to feel fear as a way to protect ourselves. Unfortunately our primal brain doesn’t distinguish between bears and a blank piece of paper. I often feel some level of trepidation when I’m facing uncarved wood blocks and blank piece of paper with little more than an interesting idea and a big feeling of inspiration. I don’t move away from my fear- I meet it and breathe into it. And then I choose to connect fully to my inspiration and trust that life wants to express something totally cool and it needs ME to do it. It needs YOU too……
All of us are artists of some kind or another. Life wants to express through us and we are the conduit. Our job is to sustain connection to that impulse, or voice or niggling inspiration and let it bloom.
I loved this book “Just Kids”. Patti Smith’s writing is poetic and expresses so beautifully the collaborative relationship between her and the amazing photographer Robert Mapplethorpe when they were young adults finding their way as artists in New York in the sixties. They paved the way for a new era of self expression through their own journey of dedication to discovering life by moving beyond the cultural limits of the previous era.
I often hike the Keauhou coastline, traversing my way through Kiawe thickets and making my way down to the red and black high-fired expanse of undulating pahoehoe formations along the ocean. One day I meandered along lost in my daydreams. Out of thin air a herd of goats bolted, flying in a swirl of delicate hooves, horns pointing skyward, grace set in motion skimming across lava, against the deep blue sky and ocean spewing white spray. I was stunned. I’d have never guessed that goats could embody the essence of beauty with such presence and power.
I thought I knew what goats were about. Not much about goats interested me – until that day. How can an animal whose hooves are no larger than the circumference of a tea cup race at that speed across tumbled and twisted lava? I experienced goats for the first time in my life. I now imagine that goats have senses and ways of perceiving that I cannot fathom. Is it too fantastic to propose that maybe they even may have sensors, like eyes, in their hooves that guide them across any terrain they care to traverse? And at any speed they care to traverse it. And with glorious confidence!
In my little box, when I thought “goat” knee-jerk images arose: barnyards, whiny bleating, rank smell, their reputation for eating anything that doesn’t move. Now the thought “goat” brings me a surge of happiness, blue sky and ocean, delicate, purposeful, power, and grace.
Art is a sure way out of the box. My opening step in creating art is usually a wisp of an idea that comes to me and seems to invite me to explore. So I step forward and I hear, I touch, I feel curiosity – wondering what will come. And then more comes. I see color I never saw before. I discern. I notice. And then usually at some point the image comes full force or trickles in through dreams or insights. This process calls me to pay attention and receive life in its infinite forms. It is this openness to life that gives me my deepest joy. Thank you my dear goat friends, for showing me how to be alive!
Many people are familiar with printmaking based on having carved and inked a linoleum block in elementary school. The basic idea behind the printmaking process is that an image incised or carved on a block or plate will be transferred to paper when inked and run through a press. In the Western world, printmaking originally was used as a medium of communication, evolving in the 19th century into an art form in which printmakers produced limited and signed editions of their work. Because this process is done by hand, all the prints are originals.
Other printmaking processes I use include monotype, drypoint, and collograph. Monotype is a painterly approach in which ink or paint is applied in various ways to a plate, and each print is a one-of-a-kind original. Drypoint involves incising a copper or plexiglas plate, then inking and wiping; a process that imprints linear details. Collograph involves creating a plate by gluing paper, fabric, or other material to a surface creating unexpected texture and details.
The Process of Woodcut Printing
The Sketch
The process of a multiple-block print begins with a sketch that will be transferred to a block of wood. The carved image on the block will print as a mirror image on paper, so printmakers learn to think in reverse.
The Wood
I select wood specifically for the grain and how this will contribute to the image. I use mahogany with its dramatic and visible grain for my background blocks. Fine-grained birch is used for my detail block. Look for the background textures and weaves created by the wood.
Carving The Blocks
Next I transfer the image to the blocks making decisions about which part of the image goes on individual blocks. Usually each block is designated as having a single color, or two, and part of the image, and a print may require several blocks. All of the blocks will be printed on a single sheet of paper, completing the entire image with all of its colors.
Paper
The paper is prepared by tearing it down to size and marking the top and bottom with registration marks that match the marks on the face of the blocks.
Proofing
After the first rough carving of the blocks, this is the process of experimentation with color, press pressure, and amount of ink. I often pull five or more prints adjusting the carving and colors until I get the print that looks right. This image is the called the “proof” and this is the prototype for the entire edition. I sometimes produce “varied editions” in which I deliberately use a variety of color schemes. These are denoted by the “EV” after the number.
Editioning the Print
The “edition” refers to the group of prints that will be produced from these blocks. Editioning is the structured and rhythmic process of printing the blocks onto paper in sequence, finally arriving at the completed print.
What do the numbers mean?
Near the signature, each print is marked with numbers indicating the order in which it was pulled and the total number in the edition. 2/20 means this is the second in an edition of 20 prints.
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About Andrea Pro
Andrea Pro’s artwork is a visual talk story invoking the spiritual essence of the land, sea, flora and culture of Hawaii. Her work is widely celebrated for its distinctive nuanced color palette and intricate layers of texture and graphic detail. Carved blocks and a mastery of traditional printmaking techniques lay the powerful foundation for Andrea’s richly textured fine art prints and original handmade textile designs, allowing her to communicate the awe and wonder of the islands she adores.
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