1 Crater Rim Drive
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park
The Volcano Art Center invites you to meet one of artists featured in the current exhibition: Humble Beginnings: A Kapa Journey. Dalani Tanahy will be at the Volcano Art Center Gallery in Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park from 2-5pm on Friday, April 16th.
Dalani Tanahy is a native of San Diego California with roots in Maui and Oʻahu. Her maternal grandparents are Edward Bailey and Emily Kane of Wailuku, Maui. Her paternal grandparents are Emily and Arthur Enos of Laʻie, Oʻahu. She grew up spending her summers in Laʻie and knew she would return to live in Hawaiʻi one day. As a child, she enjoyed the slow tedious work involved in crocheting, knitting, embroidering and quilting. Dalani made her first i`e kuku and hohoa beaters over sixteen years ago through the help of Kawai Aona-Ueoka. Her first experience teaching kapa started at the Cultural Learning Center at Kaʻala in Waiʻanae. She found the perfect marriage of art and education through creating and sharing the art of kapa and was inspired to start Kapa Hawaii. Kapa Hawaii teaches people about the types of Polynesian bark cloth collectively known as ‘tapa’ with a special emphasis on the tapa or ‘kapa’ made in the Hawaiian Islands.
“As a life-long artist, I am attracted to the many disciplines involved with kapa such as: tool making, horticulture, graphic design, natural dye production, education, research, and the meditative rhythms of the beating itself. Through crafting my own tools, I was able to work with precious and wonderful natural elements such as smooth warm woods, hand-picked basalt pohaku, and opihi shells.” Delani states “I became a scientist in the kitchen laboratory boiling up the bark, petals, leaves, and roots that would become the brilliant blues, greens, yellows, and an unbelievable rainbow of colors that our kupuna loved to place on their kapa.” For those intrested in meeting Delani and viewing her Kapa works she will be at the Volcano Art Center Gallery from 2-5pm on Friday, April 16th. Delani will also be instructing an Arts Of Hawaiian Kapa Workshop on April 17th at VAC’s Niaulani Campus in Volcano Village. The class will introduce participants to the activities involved in making a piece of kapa including stripping and beating a piece of wauke bark using traditional tools and learning about Hawaiian design and how it changed over time while printing your own canvas tote.