Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 20, Number 2, 1 February 2003 — Artist captures beauty of Kalaupapa home [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Artist captures beauty of Kalaupapa home

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By Naomi Sodetani Lying in a hospital bed at Queen's Medical Center, Henry Nalaielua watches his friend peel away the brown paper wrapping from packages she has brought to show him. One by one, she unveils artwork that the artist is seeing framed and matted for the first time in his life. Suddenly, he lets out a gleeful booming laugh. The 77-year old Kalaupapa resident is a big bear of a man, yet his eyes hungrily gleam like a child's at realizing a lifelong dream: his first one-man art show. Nalaielua can't believe the show "has really eome to fruition — I'll believe it when I see it!" Savoring "the sweet moment," the kupuna smiles, "It's my eoup de grace." Nalaielua's exhibit runs Feb. 13 through March 28 at Aupuni Wall at Native Books Kapālama. Though undergoing dialysis treatment for kidney and heart problems related to his diabetes, Nalaielua is clearly delighted and awed as his friend Ka'ohu McGuire shows him the 28 pieces that will be displayed. Nalaielua's paintings and drawings depict with loving detail the beauty of his Kalaupapa home, eontemplated against a backdrop of isolation imposed by Hansen's Disease at age 10. The show provides an intimate window into Nalaielua's experience growing up and living most of his life in in isolation in the Moloka'i leprosy settlement. Conveyed onto canvas are the physical landmarks he knows well: the pali, rock walls, ancient legends, churches, and lighthouse. He also fondly chronicles everyday life in the sleepy town with a keen observer's eye: neighbors talking story by the one-pump gas station while a pig strolls by. "This is exciting," said fellow artist Ellen Rycraft, proprietor of the Kalaupapa Crafts Shop, who covered costs of professionally matting and framing Nalaielua's artwork in koa. "Henry's prolific, he's

turned out a lot of amazing work over the years," Rycraft says. "He paints mostly from memory and he's pretty mueh self-taught." Nalaielua, a full-blooded Hawaiian, was born in 1925 in Nīnole, Hawai'i, a plantation village on the Hāmākua coast. He started drawing when he was about five years old and his third grade

teacher praised the boy's raw artistic talent. Mainly, Nalaielua honed his technique just by "doing it over and over again till I got it just right. I graduated from the school of experience," he chuckles. He recalls the fateful day a school nurse inspected the children at his school — and kept the boy after class for a closer inspection. "I thought I was being selected for something special," Nalaielua says. "But when I got home, my parents were crying." In three days Nalaielua was in Kalihi Hospital. In 1941, he was shipped to Kalaupapa. Initially, the 16-year old saw the trip as an adventure. "The coastline, huge mountains rising, beaches were beautiful," Nalaielua says, "but I missed my parents." In 1865, to quell the leprosy epidemic sweeping through the kingdom, King Kamehameha V signed an act authorizing the settling of Kalaupapa as a leprosarium to isolate persons with leprosy.

Thousands of leprosy patients, a disproportionate number of them Hawaiians, were shipped to die in Kalawao. For them, the remote peninsula bounded by 2,000-foot cliffs and pounded by surging surf was a plaee of doom and death. The disease was called ma'i ho'oka'awale (the separating sickness) for its devastation on count- *

less 'ohana. Patients had bounties placed on them, were quarantined and had their lives harshly regulated by missionaries and health officials. "The conspiracy by institution drove us up the wall," Nalaielua recalls. "There was a Iot of rules and regulations, and I was kolohe. I get bored, and always jumped the fence. But you did anything wrong, you were punished, you couldn't go to movies or eat iee cream, whieh us kids loved. Life felt like prison," the artist says. "You get hurt and angry but you got to accept it." Following the advent of sulfone antibiotics to treat Hansen's Disease in 1946, Hawai'i's isolation laws were abolished and patients were allowed to leave. In 1959, Nalaielua at age 34 was officially "paroled." Living at Hale Mohalu in Pearl City, he worked for Hawaiian Electric and also worked as a carpenter. Later choosing to return to Kalaupapa, Nalaielua worked for the Kalaupapa poliee force and also

i conducted tours for Damien Tours. ī The exhibit offers vivid glimpses i at a life deeply felt, if narrowly cir- : cumscribed, with pieces that gently t revel in Kalaupapa's scenic beauty, f not its stigma of shame and sorrow. "This show is a big deal for him," i McGuire says. "It means a lot to Henry to be seen as artist, not to be judged on the basis of a disease but his artwork." McGuire met Nalaielua two years ago when she joined a National Historic Park project to conduct an ethnographic study of Kalaupapa. Since then, the researcher has spent two weeks of every month gathering oral histories of residents. Today, 41 residents remain in Kalaupapa. "This the last generation of patients, the youngest is 61 and oldest is 97," McGuire says. "So it's really important to document their history and preserve their knowledge, because they are the cultural resource for the park." Getting to know the residents "has changed my life," McGuire says. "They're everyday people like you and me who share the same joys, worries and heartaches — and they have special talents like everyone else. It's just that their talent is hidden from the outside worid." The show eame about when McGuire approached Native Books owner Maile Meyer, and Meyer jumped at the opportunity to showcase Nalaielua's work. "I wanted Henry to have access to people and people to have access to him because his art is so genuine," Meyer says. "It reflects his lifelong passion to express himself, and we want to honor that." Because of his failing health, Nalaielua must remain for awhile on O'ahu to continue dialysis treatments. But McGuire is not about to let him languish idly, he grumbles with a wink. She plans to bring Nalaielua's art supplies to his hospital room, so that even while he is far from his home that onee imprisoned and now inspires him, he ean continue to create. ■