Rubbing from stone - Oil pigment on raw canvas
58”x84”

Basalt, cypress wood
16”x12”x60”

A smooth rock gazes upon a portrait of Mauna Loa, encouraging expansion of our human understanding of time: what might this fleeting world look like through the eyes of a stone?

Made from a boulder encountered in the foothills of Mauna Loa, the painting translates its surface, textures, crevices, and form. Created during an hour spent with the stone, a visual record of my conversation with it and its parent mountain.

With colors and gestures informed by the stone’s surrounding landscape with its sporadic vegetation, it also speaks of the day’s cloudy sky, strong wind, and an imagined future in which the rocky landscape is completely transformed.

The smooth stone, collected from my home in Laupāhoehoe, stands upon a block of cypress grown on Mauna Loa’s north face. Older than the lava flows which cover the mountain’s surface, this stone has bore witness as the Mauna changed over millenia– both from human and natural forces.

Time spent with stone conjures my complicated feelings of identity and insignificance: growing up in rural Hāmākua between cultures, contexts, and geographies. Through conversing with the land, i’m reassured that my human experiences are ultimately dwarfed by geologic time, as each of us lives at the whim of this changing earth.

Created for “36 Views of Mauna Loa” exhibited at East Hawai’i Cultural Center