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Native Hawaiian artist Lehuauakea bringing the art of kapa to the International Folk Art Market
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Lehuauakea’s name means rain falling on the lehua flowers, a blossom born of legend.
Ancient Hawaiians used its wood to make kapa (bark) cloth beaters, as boards for pounding poi and for building structures and statues. They also used the flowers for medicinal purposes.
The Native Hawaiian artist with the poetic name will be exhibiting her kapa cloth creations at Santa Fe’s International Folk Art Market on Friday, July 7, through Sunday, July 9.
One hundred and sixty-two artists from 52 countries will flock to the Santa Fe Railyard for the market. Thirty-nine are first-time participants like Lehuauakea.
Born in Portland, Oregon, Lehuauakea grew up on Hawaii’s Big Island, immersed in her own Native culture through her Native school. The family moved back to Oregon when she was in high school and she continued her schooling at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland.
No one in Lehuauakea’s family created bark cloth. It wasn’t until she attended the traditional studio art college that she realized something was missing from her work.
“There was definitely a lot of cultural assimilation,” Lehuauakea said in a telephone interview from Santa Fe. “I didn’t feel welcomed to incorporate some of my own cultural background into my work. I think they never thought to ask me.”
She began studying traditional bark cloth patterns.
“It’s a tradition where textiles are made from the bark of trees,” she said. “There’s a similar tradition in parts of South America and Africa.”
She made her own tools from native hard woods and reached out to other practitioners.
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“It’s a very laborious process,” Lehuauakea said. “It begins with the trees — paper mulberry trees.”
They’re ready to be stripped of their bark at 18 months
“The practice is very sustainable,” Lehuauakea continued. “They grow like a weed.”
She splits off the bark in a single woody cut. Then she soaks, beats and ferments the results for weeks.
From there, she breathes life into patterns and traditions practiced for generations, using earth pigments as her palette.
“There hasn’t been a kapa maker in my family line for at least seven generations,” Lehuauakea said. “So there’s really a revival of this going on. There’s a certain level of responsibility I have to keep this going.”
Lehuauakea’s patterns emerge from the natural elements — ocean waves, rain, ferns, flowers and rocks. She uses earth and mineral pigments and colored soil, most recently adding soil from New Mexico. She moved to Santa Fe one year ago after discovering it two years ago during a fellowship with the School for Advanced Research.
A large kapa exhibited by the Portland Art Museum references stories about procreation. The details reveal the cosmology and genealogy of Hawaiian Natives, beginning with the coral polyp and plants streaming into land life.
Lehuauakea created a yellow kapa using tumeric and red ochre for her paint.
“These are sea urchins, one of the most commonly used motifs in Native Hawaiian kapa,” she said.
Almost quilt-like, “Ka Wehe ‘Ana O Ke Alaula” means the path of the morning sun.
“I just wanted to use colors that would most represent the pinks and red tones of the sunrise and suggest the imagined movement of the sun,” Lehuauakea added.
Post-market, Lehuauakea will return to Portland, where she’s organizing a traditional Native American kite flying day across the river in Vancouver. The kites will be kapa.
