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The New Contemporary Art Magazine
SCAF
Last week, from February 9th through 14th, artists from all over the world gathered once again in Honolulu for the 5th annual Pow! Wow! Hawaii mural festival. This year's festival was the biggest to date, with 42 visiting artists and 39 local artists all busting out walls in Kaka'ako (the festival hub) and around the city. The week was a convergence of varying cultures and artistic styles, resulting in many exciting collaborations —some planned and others spontaneous.
Tomorrow marks the beginning of a new year for POW! WOW! Hawaii, named for the impact of its art and viewer's reaction to it. To celebrate the first day of this leading mural festival (covered over the years here), Thinkspace Gallery has curated a group exhibition now in its second installment, "POW! WOW!: Exploring the New Contemporary Movement" at Honolulu Museum of Art School. POW! WOW! is not just an explosion of murals around the island of Oahu, but also showcases new talents in music, creative spaces, provides a lecture series, and many more events. The show's participating artists capture this excitement in works that reflect the nature and culture that Hawaii represents.
Since Kamea Hadar and Defer collaborated last February on a mural in Honolulu for Pow Wow Hawaii, the two artists have joined forces in the studio for a new series of paintings currently on view at 1AM Gallery in San Francisco. Hadar's portraiture and Defer's otherworldly calligraphy complement each other almost seamlessly, as demonstrated by their most recent joint effort, "Paradise Lost."