LIHU‘E — Lihu‘e resident Eduardo Valenciana finds graffiti unsightly, and is promoting a strategy intended to rid the island of graffiti and to show the expressive side of Hispanics: painting murals. The owner of Kauai Realty became frustrated last year
LIHU‘E — Lihu‘e resident Eduardo Valenciana finds graffiti unsightly, and is promoting a strategy intended to rid the island of graffiti and to show the expressive side of Hispanics: painting murals.
The owner of Kauai Realty became frustrated last year when an exterior wall of the company building on Halenani Street in Lihu‘e was defaced with graffiti, Valenciana said.
For a fee, Valenciana and his 8-year-old son, Dominic, solved the company’s problem. In October, the father-and-son team painted the image of a whale across a wall that is about 40 feet in length, beautifying the surrounding area.
Since then, the wall has been grafitti-free, because, as Valencia puts it, people are less inclined to vandalize walls if walls are artistically painted.
Two years ago, Valenciana said he painted a mural on the business building of Flowers Forever on Kalena Street in Lihu‘e, and company leaders there reported the same success.
Now, Valenciana will be working with the Circle of Light group to work with youths to create murals, as a way to partly impress on them the beauty of the art form. The Lihu‘e-based group offering is the first of its kind on Kaua‘i, offering programs in arts, health and cultural education to island youths and adults to improve the quality of life on Kaua‘i.
Valenciana, as a member of the Lihue Lutheran Church on “German Hill,” also received permission from church leaders to use classrooms to teach youths how to paint murals.
Bev Pang, a coordinator with Mayor Bryan Baptiste’s Ka Leo O Kaua‘i group, a program that fosters collaboration between government officials and residents to address community concern, favors creating a program that will encourage youths to get into art and which will help beautify the island, Valenciana said.
At one of the Ka Le O Kaua‘i group meetings held in Lihu‘e last year, Valenciana said, because of his concern about community matters, his love for art and his skill in painting murals, was voted the “grafitti-buster” of the Lihu‘e area.
Valenciana is in his 40s and has painted 60 murals in Hawai‘i and California.
“It (painting murals) is a fact that worked very well in East Los Angeles (where Valenciana was raised before coming to Kaua‘i as an adult), where graffiti art and murals are a recognized art form,” Valenciana said.
“Hispanics have always expressed themselves through murals,” Valenciana, who is of Hispanic descent. “It is in the blood.”
Staff writer Lester Chang can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 225) and mailto:lchang@pulitzer.net
