Aloha + Pewa
“The world will turn to Hawai‘i as they search for world peace because Hawai‘i has the key… and that key is aloha.” —Auntie Pilahi Paki
During five weeks this summer, the Donkey Mill campus hosted youth ages 6 through 17 for our annual Summer Art Experience. Each year, programs are designed by Gerald Lucena, Youth Program Coordinator and grounded in our mission: the belief that arts and culture inform, inspire and strengthen individual and collective well-being.
Summer 2025’s program entitled PEWA: Mend, Connect, and Transform was inspired by ALOHA NŌ, an exhibition presented by Hawai’i Contemporary as part of the Hawaiʻi Triennial 2025. The exhibition asks each of us to consider aloha as more than a word, but as an active, resilient force that can guide us toward peace, healing, and meaningful connection. “ALOHA NŌ is a call to know Hawaiʻi as a place of rebirth, resilience, and resistance; a place that embraces humanity in all of its complexities — with a compassion and care that can only be described as aloha.” (Hawai‘i Contemporary)
Designing for Summer
With this spirit in mind, Lucena and the Donkey Mill education team designed the summer program as a five-week art exploration of how aloha connects to pewa, the small wooden joint used to mend, restore, and strengthen broken objects. Aloha became the guiding force and pewa, the tool. Together they shaped a curriculum rooted in the belief that healing begins with the individual and ripples outward, just as a pewa mends and strengthens from the inside out.
Each week, the program expanded, starting with the self, and spreading to ʻohana, to community, and finally to the world. Through mixed-media projects, sculpture, textile arts, and storytelling, young artists explored how art can repair and restore ourselves and our communities, just like a pewa patch can to an object.
“The use of a pewa patch carries a deeper meaning beyond mending an object. It serves not only to repair, but also to enhance—transforming an item into something stronger, reimagined, and imbued with renewed purpose. We worked to help keiki understand that they have a direct impact on their community. In becoming active participants, they then are the pewa: enhancing and redefining the world around them for the better.” —Gerald Lucena, Youth Program Coordinator
Impacting the Future
Throughout the program, young artists were guided by the essential question: How can creativity empower us to imagine and shape a better future? The answer unfolded as they learned that through art, we can explore ways to strengthen our connections, heal what is broken, and build a world grounded in the spirit of aloha.
“Pewa is something that is bigger than you, that will last beyond your time, something that is meaningful and significant that can pass on to the next generation, something that isn’t forgotten when you are. This is what I really tried to be able to do through art.” –Anela Monell, Student Age 17
From the call of ALOHA NŌ, Pewa emerges. This program shows that even the youngest artists can become stewards of peace, connection, and transformation. Just like the pewa, their work becomes part of something greater—a future held together by care, culture, and creativity.
Exhibition on View
The 2025 Summer Art Experience culminates in an inspiring showcase of youth voices responding to the call of aloha with empathy, vision, and artistic purpose in our current exhibition: Pewa: Young Artist Exhibition, on view July 11 – August 9, 2025.
Learn More
Youth Education is our hidden gem. In addition to training and sending teaching artists into area schools, we provide year-round subsidized programs on campus. Programming includes parent & child experiences, family and teen workshops, after-school classes, day camps and the Summer Art Experience.
Upcoming Youth Programs
- Find a full list of Fall 2025 Youth Programs here.
Related Articles
- Art, ʻĀina & Identity: A Look Inside Artists in the Schools At the Donkey Mill Art Center
Published June 20, 2025 - Welcoming New Voices in Art Education: Heather Ostrom and Lynn Roberts
Published June 19, 2025 - HŌʻĀ: Collaboration, Connection, and Creation
Written by Laurel Nakanishi, Gerald Lucena and Miho Morinoue
Published April 21, 2025
Mahalo Nui Loa
The Summer Art Experience and Pewa: Young Artist Exhibition are made possible by the Hawaiʻi Island Community Health Center, Suzanne and Carl Merner of the Mary Silverwood Fund, Hawaiʻi Artist Collaboration, Aloha Map, the Hawai‘i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, the County of Hawaiʻi, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Hiroaki Elaine & Lawrence Kono Foundation, Hōlualoa Inn, and our community of individual donors.