The Department of Art at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo presents “Poetry Scores Hawaiʻi: LOOK LIKE WHAT IT MEANS,” featuring an international cast of 29 artists creating artwork in response to poet Albert Saijo. The exhibit is on display through April 15, in the 3rd floor Campus Center Gallery.
Albert Fairchild Saijo, a prescient California-born Japanese-American writer, moved to Volcano, Hawaiʻi in early 1990 to live and write, largely off the grid and out of the limelight. Saijo collaborated with Jack Kerouac and Lew Welch to co-author a book of haiku, Trip Trap (1972). He also wrote an early guide to eco-friendly hiking, The Backpacker (1977). The first substantial collection of his poetry, Outspeaks: A Rhapsody, was published by Bamboo Ridge Press in 1997.
“Poetry Scores Hawaiʻi” features visual responses to his poems posthumously published in Bamboo Ridge Press in 2012. The exhibit is created in partnership with Poetry Scores, an all-volunteer international arts organization based in St. Louis, Missouri, that translates poetry into other media.
Gallery info
The
Exhibit symposium
The art department will host a two-day symposium in March celebrating the exhibition and poet Saijo on March 11 and 12, 2–3:30 p.m. in the Campus Center Gallery. The symposium features UH Hilo and visiting faculty from the fields of philosophy, art, art criticism, publishing and English
“The Campus Center gallery exhibition provides exceptional opportunity for extended international collaboration between visual artists and humanities scholars,” says Michael Marshall, professor of art and chair of the department.
Symposium presenters will include:
- Timothy Freeman, UH Hilo instructor of philosophy
- Visiting scholar Jan Garden Castro, art teacher and author based in New York
- Visiting scholar Susan M. Schultz, professor of English at UH Mānoa
Michael Stein, UH Hilo instructor of art
For more information, contact Marshall via email or at (808) 974-7524.
—By Susan Enright
