Congratulations to Big Island artist Sally Lundburg for receiving the Ellen Choy Craig Artist Endowment Award. Lundburg is one of six artists contributing work to the Biennial of Hawai‘i Artists X, which opened last month.
Inspired by the idea of a supernatural world where humans and nature intertwine, Lundburg combined archival photographs, craft and hardware store materials, and a koa tree from the Big Island for her site-specific installation at the museum. Titled the disappearing place, she transformed the gallery with 170 koa logs collaged with black-and-white portraits, and suspending more than 500 branches from the ceiling, spiraling up the 22 ft high walls. The branches are coated in white primer paint and joined together in arching clusters by white zip ties, kite-string, plumbing tape, mason line, and tangled nets of thread.
Strategically lit, the suspended work casts dramatic, slightly moving shadows, which become as important as the physical material of the piece. The work is an allusion to a hidden world, and is inspired by a passage from cultural practitioner Hannah Kihalani Springer’s introduction to the book Growing Koa: A Hawaii Legacy Tree by Craig R. Elavitch and Lisa Wilkenson: “Wao lipo, where the koa is the tallest of them all, casting the darkest shadows of them all. As populations grew, the forest retreated. The wao kanaka expanded (realm of man). It is the forests that fetch the rains, keep the moisture close. It is the forests that make right again the air for us to breath.”
Sally is one of six artists chosen to create work for the exhibition held at Honolulu Museum of Art Spalding House in Makiki Heights, O‘ahu. The other artists included in the show are Mary Babcock (O‘ahu), Solomon Enos (O‘ahu), Jianjie Ji (O‘ahu), Jaisy Hanlon (Maui), and Bruna Stude (Kaua‘i). The exhibition is on view until July 22, 2012.
For more information on Lundburg, visit sallylundburg.com.