Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and The National Parks Arts Foundation are proud to announce that Allison Leialoha Milham, a songwriter and book artist, is September’s artist-in-residence at HVNP.
Milham is originally from California, but is of Hawaiian descent and has family ties to the islands.
Milham is a gifted professional musician, who also has an advanced degree in book arts from The University of Alabama. She combined these two areas in an unusual project bringing together research, printing, bookbinding and recordings of the compositions of Hawaii’s beloved last queen. Her record and letterpress printed project, “Uluhaimalama – Legacies of Lili‘uokalani” is a careful selection of some of the 200 compositions Lili‘uokalani and others composed while under house arrest and smuggled out.
Milham will perform at 10 a.m. Sept. 21 at the national park’s Kahuku Unit. For her public event, she plans to play some of her music as well as the queen’s, accompanied by the ukulele and her keyboard.
This event is free and open to the public.
For more information, call Hawaii Volcanoes National Park at 985-6000.
Milham’s own work is part of multiple public collections including at Yale University Arts Library and The Library of Congress and is represented by Vamp &Tramp Booksellers in New York City.
About her time at the park, Milham says she will focus mostly on songwriting.
“My goal will be to complete three to four new songs, which will eventually be released as a 7-inch record with accompanying hand-printed and bound artwork” she said. “Though my focus will be on the songwriting, I think I’ll also be inspired to do some sketching and mockups of the design while immersed in the beauty of the park and my experience being there.”
The artist-in-residence project is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Friends of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and other generous benefactors.
The NPAF is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of the national parks through creating dynamic opportunities for artwork based in the natural and historic heritage of America. All NPAF programs are made possible through the philanthropic support of donors.
Visit www.nationalparksartsfoundation.org for more details.