| Ancient Punalu‘u, Hawai‘i Island Ka‘u History Center From 1971 to 1973 I served as a design consultant to C. Brewer, Ltd., a major landowner in the Ka‘u District of the Island of Hawai‘i. I worked with my client's architects and with designer-photographer Boone Morrison in the creation of a restaurant and small museum of local history built at Punalu‘u Bay, facing a freshwater pond that lay behind a beach of black sand. This was the site of a village that had been destroyed by a tsunami in 1868. A planned feature of the history center was a 24' x 10' mural on an interior wall depicting how Punalu‘u may have appeared before European discovery. The village, pond, and beach were alive with figures--women working under a thatched shelter, fishermen coming ashore, working on a canoe; chiefs with bodyguards and a priest on the beach awaiting the arrival of a visiting chief's double-hulled canoe, men preparing food for baking in an earthen oven--activities that may have filled the scene in another time. On the far side of the bay, upon its still-existing rock platform, I depicted the temple buildings and oracle tower of Kane‘ele‘ele Heiau. The experience of painting the mural is described in my book PELE, Goddess of Hawai‘i's Volcanoes in the chapter "Painting in Public". In 1975 a tsunami wiped out the exhibits and furnishings in the history center and restaurant, but the mural was spared. The restaurant was refurbished but not the history center. In following years, local residents loved bringing visitors into the deserted building to see the mural. In June, 2005 I received a call from the police. In what I'm told was the largest art theft of that year, thieves with power saws had entered the deserted building, sawn the wall into five pieces, and taken it away. But vengeance was mine. Working from photos of the work, I did the painting over as an easel painting in my studio, 78" wide, completed in May, 2007, recapturing the imagery and making refinements which leave the thieves with what is now little more than a primary sketch. | |
