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Artist's Resume
Awards and recognitions
Fine Art
Illustration & Design |
 My art training was largely self-taught. I grew up in
a small sugar plantation town on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawai'i, and there
was really hardly any access to "fine art" per se. But it was
a rich environment for an isolated kid with too fertile an imagination.
I drew and drew, first copying about the only "art"
that I knew; comic books. Marvel Comics, DC, all the greats: Joe Kubert,
Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby, Neil Adams, Barry Windsor-Smith, Jim Steranko.
Later, at Waialua Intermediate and High School,
I became self-taught in photography when I became the yearbook photographer.
No one before me really knew how to take and develop pictures, and I worked
without much guidance from my supposed upper class photographer, who didn't
help me much at all. That prety much set the stage, I guess, for a pattern
of learning art methods that continued, more or less, to this day.
I borrowed as many books on photography as I could,
studied them and through my own trial and error, learned the basic mechanics.
Our art instructor at my public high school wasn't much use. He was an alcoholic
who used to hide a thermos of booze under his desk. One day, I found him
trying to learn film development. He opened the film developing can after
dumping out the developer and held the film up to the light. He couldn't
figure out why nothing was developed. I didn't have the heart to tell him
he needed to fix the film before opening it up. Besides, judging from his
breath, he was already pretty sloshed.
I received a scholarship to go to Cornell University.
I didn't know much about the school, except that one summer when I was working
in the pineapple fields, I met a very pretty woman who was a student there,
so I figured Cornell had some babes. Boy, was I wrong. But before I went
to attend my freshman year in Ithaca, I stopped off in New York City and
did a very brief stint as a freelance artist for Marvel Comics.
It was pretty heady for a kid from Waialua. As a comic
book fan, all of sudden I was meeting my idols: all the artists I mentioned,
and guys like Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, John Romita. These people, along
with Jack Kirby, gave me a lot of pointers about action illustration.
However, I had to make a choice; either go to college
and get a degree, or stay in New York City and try to make a go at it as
a freelancer. Not willing to pass up my scholarship, I went to college.
I first tried to major in English, but although several
creative writing teachers liked my work, I found the idea of reading so
much English literature daunting. So then I thought to major in filmmaking.
The film history advisor turned out to someone who could have cared less
about my concerns, so although I spent a year watching a lot of great classic
films in his class, I opted out of that major. I finally ended up in Japanese
literature and language, which was actually a pretty good major, after all
my problems with it. When I finally buckled down after fooling around for
the first two years, I managed to graduate with a degree in four years.
Back it was to Hawai'i, which I missed, but what to
do with a language and lit degree? I did freelance photo work for the budding
Ethnic Studies Oral History Program, then worked as a graphic artist
for the Multicultural Awareness Pilot Project of the UH Lab Schools.
When funding for that dried up, I finally decided I needed to go back to
school and really learn visual art as a professional medium.
I enrolled at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa,
eventually majoring in printmaking. I figured, I could learn a lot on my
own about painting. Printmaking, on the other hand, required equipment and
training, which I couldn't do on my own.
A lot of the printmaking instruction was pretty bad,
however. One teacher didn't know much about printmaking, so he left things
up to the lab leaders, who knew barely more than he did. He was also turning
into an alcoholic. The other printmaking teacher used to come to class blown
out on drugs. You could smell the dope on his breath. We students complained
to the art administration, but nothing came of it. So I was back to learning
most of the stuff the old way; from reading, researching, and finally from
comparing notes with fellow students.
I was, however, lucky to have some great visiting instructors.
Rod Ewins from the U. of Tasmania gave me the basics of lithography
in a scientific manner. John Sommers from Tamarind led a workshop
that solidified my techniques. And, turth to tell, not all the art instructors
were bad. Prithwish Neogy from the art history dept. really taught
me a lot about thinking about art. I learned a lot about drawing from Ron
Kowalke, papermaking from Marcia Morse. As a student, I received
a Ford Foundation Travel Grant to study art in Europe and the mainland United
States.
I got my M.F.A. in 1983, taught one semester of art
at Honolulu Community College, taught a bit at Temari, Center
for Asian and Pacific Arts and Crafts, and then went to Japan to study
"tea ceremony" (chanoyu) at the Urasenke Foundation
in Kyoto for one year. At the end of the year, I became the first recipient
of the Temari/Fuji Paper Mills scholarship to study traditional papermaking
in Shikoku, Japan.
Returning to Hawai'i, I spent five years as a journalist
for The Hawaii Herald. In 1990, I became an instructor at Mid-Pacific
Institute. In circa 1992, I was asked to become the head of the visual
arts program for MPI's Mid-Pacific School of the Arts.
Due to illnesses in my family, I was planning to move
to Hilo, Hawai'i, so I let go of my duties at MPI. Then plans fell through,
and I ended up on Oahu yet, so I picked up several jobs. I taught classes
at MPI/MPSA, was the editor for the UH Community Colleges Newsletter,
and lectured for several semesters in the UH's Ethnic Studies Department.
I quickly got burned out, so after a year of that schedule,
I dropped the newsletter position, then the lectureship, and was then asked
to head the MPSA visual arts program again. After a year of that, I was
put in charge of the new MPSA media program, where I currently teach
Design and journalism, run the Mac lab, and handle administrative chores.
In addition, I currently publish Furyu the Budo Journal,
a nationally distributed magazine about classical Japanese martial arts
and culture, co-produce its online version, furyu.com,
and freelance various projects. |
