Feb 22, 2013 POW WOW 2013
Last week I was lucky enough to find myself in downtown Honolulu, right in time for POW WOW 2013. The annual artist summit has taken place in Hawaii for two years in a row now, and evidence of the ambitious plan of action undertaken by POW WOW founder Jasper Wong and his team is in plain sight. The mission of the event is to improve Honolulu’s Kaka’ako neighborhood, one wall at a time. As such, it has become a veritable street art mecca, featuring work from a stunning array of artists, from Hawaii, around the country, and around the world. This year’s line-up boasted the likes of Jeff Hamada, Shark Toof, Jeff Soto, Andrea Wan, Wu Yue, Dabs Myla, Nychos, OG Slick, Ian Kuali’i, Yoskay Yamamoto, Meggs, Rone, Wonderlust, Mark Bode, Kamea Hadar, Prime, Aaron Martin, Hannah Stouffer, and Sam Rodriguez, amongst many others. The artists converged on the neighborhood and teamed up to tackle several legal walls (which were organized in advance). Meanwhile, the School of Music portion of the event involved mentoring local kids in songwriting and playing, culminating in a performance. As far as spectator sports go, watching the art go up was absolutely incredible, but there were also some fascinating speaker panels to attend – one on art, at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, featuring several of the artists and media representatives; and another on music, at Loft in Space, starring DJ Neil Armstrong, studio musician & entrepreneur Hisham Dahud, and Roslyn Cobarrubius of Myspace. All in all, it was a fascinating and inspiring event, in a stunning setting, with an abundance of creativity on tap. You can check out all the walls on the Mural Map.
