Description:
What wonders await you in your garden? How do you mālama your garden? What magic can this beauty inspire?
Pages of Mayumi Oda’s children’s book, Happy Veggies, come to life in this exhibition which invites guests into a garden, full of wonder, to meet the many vegetables and Mother Nature. Works in the exhibition include a curated selection of prints, paintings, etchings and drawings by Oda, many of which have never been exhibited. Bring your ‘ohana and friends to experience the Mill Gallery transformed into a lush wonderland to explore, relax and create. Mural installations by Ira Stivers and local artists.
Important Dates:
- Exhibition on View: March 30 - June 29
- Opening Reception: Saturday, March 30 from 5:00 - 7:00pm
- Studio & Garden Tour with Mayumi Oda: Saturday, May 11 from 9:30am - 12:00pm
- Happy Veggies Drag Storytime + Artmaking: Saturday, June 8 from 10:00am - 12:00pm
Featured Artwork: Mayumi Oda, Cabbage Study for Happy Veggies, ca. 1980
This exhibition is made possible through support from The Hiroaki Elaine & Lawrence Kono Foundation, Holualoa Inn, Hawai‘i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts Biennium Grant, County of Hawai‘i Contingency Funds from the offices of Dr. Holeka Goro Inaba and Rebecca Villegas, and our community of individual donors.
The Hawaiʻi State Foundation on Culture and the Arts has approved a visit by the Acquisition Award Selection Committee.
About Mayumi
Born in Japan in 1941, Mayumi Oda is celebrated for her exuberant printmaking and painting. Her storied life as an artist began as a small child as Mayumi's mother sought to bring a joyful creativity early in her daughter's world. Through this motherly nurturing, an artist was born of mutual love and an innate knowing rather than a conscious decision. Drawing for hours each day in school and her disciplined practice honed her eyes, hands, and mind—enabling Mayumi to draw and express anything that she wanted. As a Zen Buddhist, Mayumi’s father also imbued the importance of concentration and being present—things she embraced even more as an adult practicing Zazen meditation. This was the preparation for a prolific and evolving artistic journey for the forthcoming decades.
In 1992, Mayumi co-founded Inochi.us (Life Force) under which she established the Plutonium Free Future chartered to educate Japan's nuclear policy makers. Through the years that followed, she embarked on a mission that went as far as speaking to the United Nations World Court of Justice in the Hague.
Naturally infusing her spirited lifeforce into her roles as a mother, artist and activist, Mayumi has achieved international recognition; her artwork continues to inspire and have a resounding global impact. From 1969 to the present, Mayumi has presented in many solo and group shows internationally and her work is in numerous private and permanent collections such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the U.S. Library of Congress and many more.
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