Abstract Only! exhibit opens Friday at Wailoa Center and will run through Aug. 30.
Sponsored by the Hawaii Island Art Alliance and hosted by Wailoa Center, Abstract Only! features 104 works of art by 67 artists from Hawaii Island, Oahu, Maui, Japan, South Carolina and Illinois.
The artists’ reception and awards for the public is slated for 5-7 p.m. Friday. Light refreshments will be served.
Wailoa Center will be open at 11 a.m. Saturday when the Abstract Only! juror, Patrick O’Kiersey, will present a talk about his artwork, which is on display in the Fountain Gallery. He also will be walking around the Main Gallery talking about his selections for this year’s Abstract Only! exhibit.
Both of these events are free and open to the public.
O’Kiersey had the difficult task of selecting art for Abstract Only! from a field of 214 entries to the final number of 104 selected works. O’Kiersey, who lives in the Ahualoa area of the Big Island, is originally from the Chicago area and later worked in San Francisco before retiring in Hawaii.
“I’ve always been drawn to the landscape, to the natural world in my environment,” O’Kiersey said about his art career. “Initially, I wanted to draw pictures of what I saw. Over time, the process of working formed links that were far more than pictorial. I use visual media, charcoal or paints to access this connection, these links. Now the pictorial and the abstract form a continuum for me. There have been mentors at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and later at the California College of Arts and Crafts and The San Francisco Art Institute. Finally, I studied with Jay DeFeo for my M.F.A. (1985, Mills College, Oakland).
“I’ve been living on the Hamakua Coast of the Big Island since 2006 and am enmeshed in the natural world that I’ve been, in essence, seeking.”
Wailoa Center is free and open 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. The center is closed most Saturdays, Sundays and state holidays.
For additional information, call 933-0416 or email wailoa@yahoo.com. You also can visit wailoacenter.com.