Amy-Lauren’s: A Gallery

On March 27 and 28 Hanapepe held its Third Annual Orchid and Art Festival. It was an exciting weekend. There were workshops in town for painting, flower arranging, and even cooking with orchids. We had great food booths and lots of live music. There were painters set up all around town. The orchid show was supposedly breathtaking. I say “supposedly” because I was in the gallery all weekend. The plants that I saw were incredible. There were orchids for everyone no matter their budget. I fell in love with a plant only to find it was $80. Given my lack of good experience with orchids I passed. However, another gallery owner in town, Angela Headley, gave me this beautiful plant…

…which I sincerely hope will survive. In addition to this plant, I purchased some “learner orchids” to dress up the gallery for the festival. Maybe by next year I will feel comfortable investing in a rare plant. Apparently many orchid connoisseurs think nothing of spending hundreds to thousands of dollars on a single plant. It is art, after all.

The most exciting thing about this year’s Orchid Festival was that our gallery had the honor of hosting the “Orchid Fantasy Art Show”

There were some amazing entries in this year’s show. My personal favorite was a reverse painting on plexiglass rectangular box by Polish born artist Anna Skaradzinska. It was painted on all four sides!

I also loved my sister Camile Fontaine’s entry, an acrylic painting entitled “Orchid Fantasy #1″…

…and Emily Miller’s recycled copper pitcher plant sculpture took on a whole new life as an orchid planter…

All in all, the orchid festival was a great success for the community. We will all look forward to the next one.

[caption id="attachment_78" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Two Birds in Paradise, Original Oil"][/caption]
The gallery is thrilled to welcome artist Kevan Krasnoff. His suggestive oil paintings of Birds of Paradise and Kauai Landscapes are unriveled in Hawaii. When asked about his art Kevan states, “I want my work to breathe and be full of life and opportunity, what one sees is their own imagination.” When he is not painting on Kauai’s North Shore, he is in Boulder, CO where he is well known for his aspen tree paintings and western landscapes. His work is in numerous Corporate and Private Collections in the US and around the world.

After being banned from the first gallery for “protecting” the jewelry cases from customers, Tabasco, the gallery mascot, is back. She now lives in the office on her new stand and is out of reach from curious fingers. If that is not enough, the “warning label” ought to be an effective deterrent.

[caption id="attachment_28" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Another happy collector! Congratulations to Carol P. of Poipu, Kauai on your beautiful Martin Wessler and Camile Fontaine Paintings"][/caption] Art Night was a blast last night! We got to see many old friends in the gallery and made some new ones. Melinda Morey and Martin Wessler, both artists in the gallery, came down to greet art patrons. Jewelry designer Joan Roberts was here demonstrating her PMC (precious metal clay)technique of painting local leaves with fine silver. Many happy patrons left with beautiful original paintings. All in all, a fabulous Art Night.