Shows and Exhibits

Cedar Street Galleries presents
Summer Works Show
Jennifer Callejo, Laura Smith & Maile Yawata

The Second Floor at Cedar Street Galleries will be hosting the Summer Works Show by local artists Jennifer Callejo, Laura Smith, and Maile Yawata. The show will consist of “summer-themed” ceramic sculptures, drawings, and relief printmaking.

Featured Artists:

Biography:
In 2000 I received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Printmaking from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. My project that year focused on statistics and the media, and involved a lot of screenprinting (an edition of one thousand). Figurative etchings — mostly of friends, often nastalgic — make up the larger body of recent work. Today, I really like foxes.

The titles for these, "Nice Fox," is in reference to a song of the same name by The Rosebuds, appealing to a fox not to do what they are wont to: "Nice fox don't tempt the old owl in the tree, stay out of the busy street (and it don't mean nothing at all)."

— Jen Callejo

Biography:
Laura Smith was born in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1947. Smith first became interested in printmaking while attending Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Smith received her MFA from the University of Hawaii'i–Manoa and has been a Hawai'i resident for over twenty years.

Smith is known for her reduction woodcut prints in which she begins carving a piece of wood, prints, goes back and cuts more, and prints again, cutting and printing until there is virtually no wood left and the image has been gradually built up through successive printings.

Smith tends to work in series, which allows her to create narratives and tell stories. She gives the viewer a chance to become a part of the work by creating a certain ambiguity that allows one to project one's own interpretation into the work.

— Laura Smith

Biography:
Maile Yawata has been a resident of Hawaii for most of her life. She attended Hawaii public schools and graduated from the University of Hawaii with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting, drawing and printmaking and a Professional Diploma in Art Education. Currently, she divides her time between teaching with the Artists in the Schools program, Honolulu Community College, and working in her studio.

Maile has completed several large commissioned murals for the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, the Department of Education, and the City an County of Honolulu-CETA Program. A pair of granite and marble murals were created for the Honolulu International Airport, a mixed media mural was executed for the new gymnasium at Castle High School, and a mural was painted on site for the Palolo Community Center.

Maile ahs also received several awards from the Honolulu Printmakers and Hawaii Craftsmen for her prints and clay sculpture, and several purchase awards from the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts. Her work is in the collections of the SFCA, Honolulu Academy of Arts and in private homes.

Artist's Statement:
Drawing, printmaking and hand-building with clay are mediums of interest. The work is always figurative (portraits) and frequently cartoonish. The two-dimensional artwork is sometimes used as a basis for the sculpture. A personal, loose narrative forms and informs each work. Some of the portraits represent personal archetypes and look Asian or "local." Humor is a desired quality.

— Maile Yawata