Aloha mai kakou! 2018 is starting off with massive Mele Murals in Kaneohe and Nanakuli on Oahu. These inspirational community arts projects and our weekly art classes rely on your generous support! Please consider supporting the Estria Foundation by joining as a member, or giving a gift of membership!
Donʻt miss our next Mele Murals project where our teams returns to Windward Oahu with a fresh group of students from Castle High Schoolʻs Ho‘oulu Opio Academy and Kaneohe Elementary School in this month of February!
If you would like to volunteer for the community painting days of February 14th, 15th and 16th, email us at [email protected] or fill out our Volunteer Form on Estria.Org.
This past month our Mele Murals team held two mini-mural collage panel workshops with visiting groups of students. Our first was Alpha Delta Kappa, an international honorary organization of women educators dedicated to educational excellence, altruism and world understanding.
During this workshop, we lead the group in a meditation piece to get inspiration before having each member individually create a painting about what they experienced in the meditation and mindfulness exercise. The panels were then brought back together to form one image. Similar to painting our larger murals, the activity familiarized each teacher to add their own ideas to a larger collaborative finished product. It was a reminder to us all that we are perpetual students and we each have the chance to learn something new and exciting every single day.
Ranum Efterskole College students from Denmark at Hālau Pāheona
The second workshop in January was with Ranum Efterskole College from Denmark. The visiting students painted beautiful images of snow, Vikings, and towering evergreen trees that at first seemed to highlight the stark differences in our customs and climates. The visual exercise started cultural exchanges about how we, in Hawaii, share a similar connection to the ones our Denmark visitors have with their natural environment, their land, and their voyaging ancestors.