Ong-king Arts Center - Art Gallery Opening

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First Friday Hawaii
Event Calendar Item
Ong-king Arts Center - Art Gallery Opening
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Type: Entertainment/Art/Exhibit
Date: Friday - 1/5/2007
Time: 5-9pm
Location:
Ong King Arts Center
184 N. King St. (near River Street)
Honolulu, HI 96816

Cost: FREE

Visit Ong King
Performance
Event 9-2am

After 2 years of being away from Hawaii Rachel Kaiser returns. Her nationally collected art, consisting of paintings, and shrines will be featured in Ong King Arts Centers unique First Friday opening, plus evening entertainment including: groove/funk band Quadraphonix, Nationally Recognized SLam Poet kahlil almustafa, Hip Hop Artist Anthem Kentura, Japanese Belly Dance group Yamato Nadeshiko, underground theatre company HUTC, The Jerome James Collective, and DJ Joulz.

ART GALLERY OPENING: “We each have the innate ability to see the grand scheme, to feel a connection to more than just the immediate,” says Rachel Kaiser, a young single mother and nationally collected artist. Her dynamic, multimedia artistic approach has long incorporated her moving, personal experience of relevant modern themes.

Rachael Kaiser’s diverse work includes painting, woodcarving, drawing, and shrine creation. She has received several national and local commissions including St. Francis Hospital in Eva Beach. She has been trained a around the world, at Yale University, the Chicago Institute of Fine Arts, and The School for International Training in Indonesia.

In 2001 Rachael teamed with Ong King founder and local musician Jonathan Heroux to found Chinatown’s On the River. Their combinations of music and art brought a new aspect to the local art scene. This collaboration of performance, art, and music was the foundation upon Ong King Art Center was built.

Motherhood is a deeply personal subject for Kaiser, who found out she was pregnant at 24 while on an art residency program in Vermont. “I didn’t know what to do,” says Kaiser. “I wasn’t married. Things weren’t mapped out for me in my life enough to make that decision. And so I went for a walk and came across some painted rocks outside of a painting studio. There was one directly in my line of vision that said ‘Be Pregnant.’ And that is a recurring theme for me - if you are searching and have the intent to know the answer, the answer appears in some form or another. Somehow, in just a moment, I could fly above the situation and know exactly what I was supposed to do. Now, many years later, it is clear that I made the right decision.”

Her new exhibition draws parallels and differences between human mothers and those in the bird kingdom. “Birds have the innate ability to physically soar above and see the grand scheme, but birds can’t be pregnant,” Kaiser continues. “A pregnant bird woman does not exist; it’s an unnaturally weighted down notion. Humans are weighted down, so we must constantly strive to use our instincts well to connect ourselves to the overall scheme. Only then, ironically, do we find ourselves on solid ground.”

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First Friday Hawaii Event Calendar Item

Ong-king Arts Center - Art Gallery Opening

First Friday Hawaii
Event Calendar Item