Jean Shin is creating a work for “One Way or Another” using sweaters she’s gotten from people on O‘ahu. Now she’s looking for a few good artists to help her with the installation next month. If you’re interested, leave a comment below and we’ll respond.

Who is this guy anyway? Based in San Francisco, CA, Michael Arcega is an interdisciplinary artist creating primarily sculpture and installation based art. You may remember Michael from his SPAM/MAPS project, which was part of The Contemporary Museum’s 2006 “Alimatuan: The Emerging Artists as American Filipino” exhibition.

SPAM/MAPS by Michael Arcega

Michael will be in Honolulu in June as part of the Academy’s summer exhibition “One Way or Another” and a week before our show opens, the Nuuanu Gallery will open an exhibition of his work. He seems to love Hawaii because he’ll be back here later in the year—Michael was invited to work on a project-based residency with The Contemporary Museum’s Catalyst Artist in Residence Program 2009.

If you’re a local artist with wider aspirations (considering getting an MFA on the mainland?), don’t miss hearing Arcega, along with other “One Way or Another” artists speak in a “Conversation with the curator and artists” program that the Academy will hold at Doris Duke Theatre on June 26. It’s a chance to have a dialogue with nationally known young artists and one of the country’s top curators. The event is free to the public and we recommend you get your tickets in advance. I’ll keep you updated once the event goes up on the museum website.

“Shu: Reinventing Books in Chinese Contemporary Art” will be such an exciting show. Included in the exhibition is work by Cai Guo-Qiang. Something that has been perking my interest is all the media flutter around him. The Feb. 25 issue of The New Yorker had a review of his installation “I Want to Believe at the Guggenheim Museum. On view through May 28, it is incredible (well, so I’ve heard from all my friends and colleagues who have seen it).

Cai Guo-Qiang’s other big upcoming project fits in with his reputation as “the gunpowder artist”— he will be organizing the fireworks show to mark the beginning of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Here’s a sneaky peek at the Guggenheim show for those of you who can’t travel to NYC. Photos taken by an undisclosed source.

Mika Tajima, one of the performance based artists in “One Way or Another,” will be at the Academy for the opening reception. Her work, “Extruded Plaid (Suicidal Desires),” combines installation and performance. At the other venues, the performance based component could only be seen as a looping DVD. We have the unique opportunity to have her perform for us during the opening reception!

Most recently, Tajima was part of the 2008 Whitney Biennial and Centre for Opinions in Music and Art in Berlin.

Unfortunately, this is a member’s only reception, so if you do want to see the performance, you’ll have to become a member of the museum.

Artist Jean Shin is doing a site-specific installation for “One Way or Another,” opening June 18. For her work she is using sweaters from Oahu’s Asian community. I put the call out, collected them—that’s the bagfuls of wooly wear above—and today I ship them off to Jean. Thanks to all of you who donated sweaters!

Check out the earlier incarnations of Jean’s project.

Miyano in his garden. Photo by Shuzo Uemoto, 2008.

Aloha I’m April Lee, the co-curator of one of the Academy’s “Asian Sensation” summer exhibitions, Leland Miyano: Historia Naturalia et Artificialia. Local sculptor, landscape designer, and botanist Leland Miyano is the recipient of the Academy’s 2008 Catharine E.B. Cox Award, which is granted biennially to former or current Hawai’i residents.

Miyano is best known locally for his incredible one-acre Kahalu’u garden, the gardens he designed at the Contemporary Museum, and for his statewide sculptural commissions. At the Academy this summer, he will create 3 site-specific installations in the Holt Gallery, the Mediterranean Courtyard, and the Impressionist Gallery. Miyano speaks about environmental issues and the history of the natural world using natural materials, rare and/or found, in his works. Look for the 3,000 pound alabaster sculpture in the Mediterranean Courtyard, which the artist expects to be affected by the natural elements. Entitled “Iliahi,” this impressive sculpture reflects the human imprint upon the island of Moloka’i. Miyano will give a free Artist’s Talk in the Doris Duke Theatre on July 5 at 10:00 a.m. as a supplement to the exhibition.

Of additional interest, Miyano has cited his friend W.S. Merwin’s poem “The Biology of Art” as a significant influence on his work for the HAA exhibition. The Pulitzer prize-winning poet has also written the introduction to the exhibition brochure.

Leland Miyano: Historia Naturalia et Artificialia
June 25 – August 24, 2008

Besides “One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now,” Asian Sensation! includes “Shu: Reinventing Books in Contemporary Chinese Art,” which was organized by the China Institute. The Academy just found out that the exhibition’s curator Wu Hung will come to Honolulu to give the lecture Contemporary Chinese Art, the Artist, and the Book on July 3. A leading scholar in the field, Wu Hung is the Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor of Art History at the University of Chicago, and has worked with all the biggest names in contemporary Chinese art. “Shu” alone includes the work of megastars Xu Bing and Cai Guo-Qiang.

In the run-up to Asian Sensation!—the Academy’s trifecta of summer exhibitions that open in June—the Honolulu Academy of Arts launches aloHAA, its first blog. The goal is to give you an inside look at the Academy—find out what curators are doing, keep abreast of upcoming exhibitions, and get insight directly from artists. We’ll also fill you in on art-related happenings around town.

My name is Rui Sasaki and I am the exhibition manager for “One Way or Another: Asian American Art Now,” part of Asian Sensation!, and have the honor of posting the first entry on aloHAA.

“One Way or Another” brings together 17 emerging artists from across the country who challenge the notion of Asian-American art. (That’s a video still from “I Want To Be the One to Walk in the Sun” by Laurel Nakadate above.) One of the best parts about working on this show is that we invited three of the artists from this exhibition to create site-specific pieces for the Academy. I will post photos and stories from and about these artists as their works unfold in the upcoming months. By the time the exhibition opens in June, you’ll know all the back story to the artwork from this blog—which will make for an even richer experience when you see the show.

Alongside One Way or Another will be two other contemporary exhibitions—a group show featuring China’s superstar artists and Hawai’i’s own Leland Miyano. But more on those later.

I’ll update the blog a few times a week—check in often. Stay tuned!