Pow Wow Hawaiʻi
Pow Wow Hawaiʻi and 808 Urban team up to add some artistic expressions on Hōkūleʻa and Hikianalia.
The Polynesian Voyaging Society joined up with artist Kamea Hadar of Pow Wow Hawaiʻi, clothing designer Keola ZXXX Rapozo of Fitted Hawaiʻi, and the talented youth from 808 Urban in a spirited gathering of visual creations upon the canoes.
“It started in Palm Springs of all places. I was doing a talk there about Pow Wow and some of the contemporary culture of Hawaiʻi. And Bruce was there, and he was doing a talk about some of the traditional cultures of Hawaiʻi and about Hōkūleʻa. And I actually joked that anytime you want us to paint on your boat weʻd love to do some crazy stuff on the sails, you know, just as a joke. And he actually said,ʻ Thatʻs kind of a good idea. Letʻs try and work something out,ʻ” said artist Kamea Hadar.
s”With this connection, with Pow Wow and Urban 808, I was so inspired by what theyʻre doing. Art is so important to a community. So we get to talking about the voyage and all of the things weʻre doing. He had some ideas, and I said this is perfect,” said master navigator Bruce Blankenfeld.
“The designs they’re doing are representations of the genealogy of what Hōkūleʻa has done so far in its 140,00 miles of voyaging over three decades,” said Bruce.
“I sat with Bruce, and took notes for hours and hours as he was giving me all these stories of places they’d been. Basically these images are just me trying to translate his stories into some kind of visual language,” said Kamea.
“What they’re doing with the hatch covers, we’ve done that before with Hōkūleʻa in the past. It’s just a way of getting a large community or people outside of PVS and the voyaging community to come and be a part of putting the voyage together. And their mana sails with us,” said Bruce.
“We could have easily printed out a design with a computer and just put vinyls. But it’s important that it’s someone’s hand touched the work, and a person created this,” said Kamea.
