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4 | FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2017 BIG ISLAND ENTERTAINMENT SCENE | WEST HAWAII TODAY Kahilu Theatre presents Kahilu Theatre’s Solo Exhibits 2017 exhibition featuring work from artists Eli Baxter, Jean-René Leblanc, and Margaret Shields opens on Thursday. An artists reception will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. that day with a special preview for theater members starting at 4:30 p.m. A no-host and light refreshments will be offered. The exhibit runs through March 31 and will be on display in the Kohala and Hamakua galleries. Baxter will be exhibiting a series of sculptures titled, “Dancers” in the Kohala Gallery. Baxter is a sculptor and installation artist. Her inspirations often come from discarded materials, both organic and inorganic, found in the streets. Whether rusty metal straps or pieces from worn leather couches, she enjoys transforming them into something else, or suggestive of something else. Over the years, recycled bicycle inner tubes became her dominant media. Her first encounter was from an Amsterdam road where nearly everyone bicycles. Drawn to its contrast of being gritty, dirty, black, and industrial, yet sensual and skin-like, Baxter began gathering inner tubes easily found from the streets. Out of this accumulation, Baxter crafts immersive environments, fetishized objects, and protective amulets. By contrasting the worthlessness of the material with her painstakingly detailed handwork she comments on the gluttony and waste of consumer culture and the ways in which desire is manufactured. Baxter lives in Honolulu where she works as an artist as well as a curator for the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts. She holds her master’s degree in fine arts in sculpture from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and has exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the state. LeBlanc will be exhibiting a series of infrared photographs titled “Chasing the Light of Pele” in the Kohala Gallery. Shot in Hawaii in the context of the artist in residency program at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park in December 2015, the series of images explore contemporary photographic representations of the myth and stories of Pele. “As an artist, I generally use the camera as a means to connect with my social and cultural environment, in order to express something personal. In Chasing the Light of Pele I am using a digital infrared camera to capture and reveal conceptually Pele’s spiritual beauty that is invisible to the naked eye.” Jean-René Leblanc is a visual artist engaged with digital media, cultural issues and critical theory, who uses a variety of media to express the concepts with which he works. His artistic research uses photographic imagery, video, interactivity, sound, and visualization to discover and explore new ways of making the invisible visible. He currently lives in Calgary, Alberta and in 2006 completed his Ph.D. in study and practice of art from the Université du Québec à Montréal. He is an associate professor of digital arts at the University of Calgary in Canada. “Echoes of a Habitat” reflects Shield’s current studio explorations that center on finding ways to process the experience of observing and inhabiting the precarious environments of the industrial and the natural world. The clash of human industry with the wild, and also the instances of hopeful co-existence are investigated through abstraction and the use of unconventional materials. Also of ongoing interest is a blurring of the boundaries between painting and printmaking as separate disciplines. Painting on prints and embedding prints into paintings, experiments like these are an integral part of her process. Solo Exhibits 2017 WEST HAWAII TODAY Eli Baxter will be exhibiting a series of sculptures titled, “Dancers” in the Kohala Gallery during Kahilu Theatre’s Solo Exhibits 2017 opening on Thursday. Shields studied fine Mill Art Center. She art and art history at assists him in the print Portland State University studio and in Moku and completed a study Hanga workshops. abroad in Italy in 2006. Margaret also teaches She has been painting printmaking and and printmaking since, painting classes at the participating in many Holualoa center. shows and collaborations The Kahilu Galleries in Oregon and Hawaii. are free and open to the Since 2014, Shields has public from 9 a.m. to 1 been mentored by, and p.m. weekdays, as well as assistant to, master during all performances. printmaker Hiroki Info: www. Morinoue, artistic kahilutheatre.org director of the Donkey 885-6868. ■ Jean-René Leblanc will be exhibiting a series of infrared photographs titled “Chasing the Light of Pele” in the Kohala Gallery. The exhibit runs through March 31. COURTESY PHOTOS/SPECIAL TO WEST HAWAII TODAY


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