Scott Skinner & Susan Robb

From Discourse-2

You won’t find a better place to work than Maui’s Hui No’eau Visual Arts Center: about two thousand feet up the slope of Haleakala volcano, it looks down over the West Maui mountains and the Pacific. The Hui and Drachen Foundation brought together noted artist Susan Robb and kite maker Scott Skinner to create kites in celebration of a summer of kites at the Hui.

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SCOTT: Hui Press director Paul Mullowney made his staff and studio space available to us, as well as to Nobuhiko Yoshizumi, for the duration of the two-week program. Yoshizumi- san led children’s workshops for the first full week in Maui, while Susan planned her approach for her kites and I started framing artists’ kites for exhibition.

As a precursor to our visit to Maui, the Drachen Foundation furnished the Hui with kite kits to be decorated by local Maui artists. The kits, developed by Yoshizumi-san, were both kaku- dako/buka-dako and rokkaku/sode, so artists had several formats from which to choose. Several artists had worked with Yoshizumi-san two years prior, and many attended a full-day workshop to learn how to frame and bridle their kites. Others were unable to attend or were off-island artists, so their kites were finished during the first week by Yoshizumi-san and myself.

Participation by island artists was fantastic, as there were fine examples of woodblock prints, watercolor, paper appliqué, and other artistic treatments. Kites in original formats or with exceptional artwork were taken by Yoshizumi-san to be structured in unique and beautiful ways, while I handled the very beautiful straightforward examples. Over forty kites were prepared for exhibition.

SUSAN: Before traveling to Maui, Scott and I discussed possible directions for the kites. Since my work is directed by the connection between culture and nature, I became particularly interested in Polynesian leaf kites – kites made from leaves and used for fishing. I used this as a starting point in deciding what kinds of imagery the kites might contain.

In order to gain an understanding of the island my first step was to investigate the flora and fauna of Maui; hiking in the pine forests high on Haleakala, to the more varied and lush vegetation at a location called Swinging Bridges, to the underwater coral landscapes found while snorkeling.

During these hikes I became interested in Ahu, traditional stone devotional structures placed at particularly meaningful locations. However, after a false start using Ahu imagery and photogravure technique, I turned my interest towards the island’s abundant flora and decided to create cyanotype photograms using the plants themselves.

I started by selecting specimens of particular beauty or interesting shape on my daily walk to the Hui center. After this selection process and a few days spent coating with the cyanotype emulsion a variety of papers (including washi coated in persimmon juice and a Thai paper embedded with leaves), Hui Press assistant Casey and I began work in earnest on exposing and developing the cyanotypes by the end of that first week, and were into heavy production early in the second.

SCOTT: By that time, I had cleared my workspace of the local kites and was ready to make Susan’s images into kites. Most of the cyanotypes were created on white washi, so the resulting images were high-contrast dark blue and white, with beautiful subtleties in the white plant images. Since the Hawaiian Islands share a long history of kites with the island cultures throughout Polynesia, I felt it important that our kites hearken back to that history. The resulting kite shapes were basic ones, resembling leaf kites, the geometric forms of Maori kites, and fish or bird forms. Time was the critical limiting factor, forcing me and Yoshizumi to use prepared kite-kit spars. This limited the size of the finished product, but very little else. Yoshizumi-san, demonstrating his extraordinary skill, finished two large rectangular cyanotypes on persimmon paper, with fine bamboo from a 100+ year- old bamboo screen. These were both laminated with a second layer of paper by Paul, Casey and Nicole, who have the exceptional skills to accomplish the operation. I worked exclusively on Susan’s “canvasses” for three solid days, while Yoshizumi-san finished several artists’ kites. As the Hui staff installed the artists’ kites, we spent Friday night installing Susan’s.

SUSAN: I wanted the installation to be more then just “kites on the wall.” I wanted the works to give a sense of denseness of vegetation, of vines wrapping, filtered sunlight, and complex textures. The room we installed in, with its two walls of windows, helped invoke some of this sense. A finishing design element, a 30+ foot long tail created from many small images of a single section of vine was strung high on the ceiling and added to the feeling of a tropical forest.

SCOTT: The two installations provided the Hui and Maui with an exceptional mix of the expected and unexpected: recognizable images on kites from their favorite artists, wonderful examples from off-island invited artists, and the wide variety of Susan and my cyanotype kites.

On hand to capture the week’s magic was Katie Davis from the Drachen Foundation.

Katie shot hours of video footage as well as hundreds of still images, both of which will be used by Drachen to promote future adult workshops and exhibits. Katie also edited a wonderful three-minute video piece that was the hit of the exhibit opening. The cyanotype-to-paper-to-kite process was shown in an interesting way for gallery- goers enjoying both Hui exhibits.

The week’s finale was a public kite fly on the Hui grounds with many families coming down the hill from Makawao’s Fourth of July Parade. I heard nothing but positive feedback, as many who flew kites had never before come to the Hui. Wind was strong and turbulent and forced Susan’s “Black Toobs” to be bouncing, squirming, horizontal black snakes. I preferred to think of them as my own personal wind indicators: extravagant, to say the least! I was pleased to see the number of local artists who threw caution – and their kites – to the wind and flew their creations in the challenging environment. Kite-magic was on display as adults and children shared the skies over the Hui.

KITES OF THE HUI

SCOTT: Knowing that we’d be making kites at the Hui, I felt they should be reminiscent of the many forms of leaf kites found throughout Polynesia. Hawaii has hieroglyphs of kites and it is not unreasonable to assume that kites have been a part of island life for hundreds of years. Recalling leaf kites from Indonesia and the Maori kites of New Zealand, I felt that our kites should be simple forms, with universal themes: humans in flight, celebrations of nature, and geometric shapes. It is impossible for me to make paper kites that are not influenced by Japanese kite forms, but I tried hard to make shapes and structures that were more primitive: an evolutionary voyage along the shores of island kite making.

Every cyanotype was a beautiful canvas that I tried to give unique care. Some were small and delicate, others big and bold, but all possessed a beauty that could be emphasized by the kite around it. Most of the early kites were smaller-format, and they lent themselves to human-like forms or fish and bird forms. They featured fine bamboo work, made easier by the hand- split bamboo shade, purchased in Kyoto for exactly this kind of work. The 100-year-old patina on this bamboo complemented the simple shapes of these beautiful kites.

S_USAN: Since I typically create large scale, often interactive, sculptures and installations, working in 2D presented a surprising challenge for me. Letting go of the final results and allowing Scott to ply his skill and knowledge was difficult for me, but I was thrilled with the outcome. Scott and I talked about the general shape for each cyanotype and I could clearly see that Scott spent time understanding the formal needs of each image.

S_COTT: As Susan’s output increased, the size of her results increased. This gave me the pleasing challenge of finding unique ways to frame these larger images. Many turned into horizontal, hexagonal kites, while others I chose to split in two and frame into a single kite. The resulting kites, in simple geometric forms, remind us of the many leaves with open space within their forms. In the sky they will add another, softer shade of blue to the cyanotype images. Together, we made over twenty kites. Several will be sold, others will become a Drachen Foundation traveling exhibit, and several will stay in the archives of the Hui.