In summer of 2007, Citizen’s Chair Albert Wendt, the premier writer in English in the Pacific, astonished everyone by having his first solo visual art show at the Louis Pohl Gallery in downtown Honolulu. Marata Tamaira celebrates the exhibition, and has a word with Professor Wendt.

       A broad shaft of yellow, early dawn light spreads across the canvas illuminating the soft contours of the Ko‘olau ranges, while, from above, a star––the Black Star––leaves an incandescent trail of yellow and red hues against an aubergine sky as it makes its final descent to earth.  Words extending across the bottom of the frame seem to cradle the image: The Black Star arrives over the Ko‘olau at dawn, traveling all the way from Aotearoa/It wants to meet all its Maoli cousins and learn the ways of the Aina.
       The title of the painting is “Black Star 1: The Black Star Arrives,” and it constitutes one of twenty-seven works that featured in an exhibition by universally acclaimed Samoan writer Albert Wendt. The exhibition, titled “Le Amataga: The Beginning,” was held at the Louis Pohl Gallery in downtown Honolulu between 28 August and 21 September 2007, and marked Wendt’s first public showing of his artwork. The opening night, which began with a group of singers and an oli (chant) given by Lilikalä Kame‘eleihiwa, drew a large contingent of the artist’s friends and family, students, and art lovers. Throngs of people milled around the paintings, some engaged in enthusiastic discussion regarding the artist’s use of light and color, while others simply stood quietly absorbing Wendt’s masterful blend of images and words.

    The paintings are a testament to Wendt’s prolific creativity. All of the works were produced during his tenure as Citizen’s Chair in the English Department, which began in Fall 2004. When I met with Professor Wendt in Honolulu, he told me that the visual arts had always been close to his heart. He described how, during his time at teachers’ training college in New Zealand in the late 1950s, he immersed himself in art alongside Maori artists such as Selwyn Muru and Sandy Adsett. Indeed, it wasn’t until he began to concentrate more on his writing that his engagement with the visual arts began to wane, albeit temporarily. In 2000 Wendt returned to painting and sketching as if drawn to do so by unseen forces. He explains his journey back to the visual arts: “I couldn’t stop it . . . the urge to do it just came upon me; it was like a flood and I couldn’t deny it anymore.”

    Wendt’s work, while thematically eclectic, retains a powerful sense of cohesion in that it is borne out of the connections he has made to the land and the people during his time in Hawai‘i. Key themes in his work include the Pele series, inspired by Haunani-Kay Trask’s poem “Night is a Sharkskin Drum,” and the Black Star series, which began as a collection of poems and ink drawings in Wendt’s “The Book of the Black Star” (2002). Through the artist’s palette the Black Star resonates with a new kind of vibrancy. The Hawaiian landscape, which Wendt says is “absolutely marvelous and unusual,” is also a critical motif throughout his work, specifically the Ko‘olau ranges.
    The way in which Wendt utilizes both words and color in his paintings demonstrates a powerful fact: the visual arts and writing are not mutually exclusive, but rather they are overlapping and complimentary elements in the creative process. In explaining his dual engagement with both art forms, Wendt states simply, “I’m now a poet who uses color.” Over the last three decades, Wendt’s writing has provided critical insight into the Pacific Islander experience. Now, through writing in color, he offers us a new perspective.

"Pele 5"