Local artist Carol Yotsuda recently designed a display at the Lihu‘e airport that spreads environmental awareness to Kaua‘i visitors and residents in transit. She and her team created an exhibit underscoring a “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” theme. Yotsuda, who also serves
Local artist Carol Yotsuda recently designed a display at the Lihu‘e airport that spreads environmental awareness to Kaua‘i visitors and residents in transit.
She and her team created an exhibit underscoring a “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” theme. Yotsuda, who also serves as Garden Island Arts Council executive director and president, said the objects in the display reflect the artists.
“My underlying concept about recycling is that when you add imagination to the mix you can transform things that are worthless into things that have use,” she said.
For instance, local firemen were attracted to the artwork made from recycled glass melted at the Kaua‘i Resource Center in Lihu‘e, Yotsuda said.
Artist Kathy Cowan, Kaua‘i Recycling for the Arts director, created blue-tinged glass turtles, oversized fishing hooks and an “Aloha” sign to decorate the showcase.
“People are taking things that would be thrown away and making new things out of them,” Yotsuda said.
Kaua‘i artist Laurence Matheus utilizes a different medium: aluminum.
His hanging model airplanes made from cola cans have been the most popular part of the display, according to Yotsuda.
“After Hurricane ‘Iniki, Matheus couldn’t do his woodwork so he started collecting soda and juice cans strewn about the island and devised ways to put them together as biplanes and helicopters bearing spinning propellers,” she said.
The greeting display changes three times a year, according to tourism specialist Robbie Kaholokula, who works for the county Office of Economic Development.
“Everybody benefits. It’s important as a first impression piece for visitors. It really takes about 10 seconds to pass it, but people learn what is offered on the island,” he said.
The letters within the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” message pasted across the display are filled with pictures of green waste, warehouse skips and empty bottles — all good art supplies, Yotsuda said.
A Kaua‘i visitor on crutches stopped by the display Monday after deboarding an airplane. His eyes went straight to a piece Yotsuda created by attaching more than a dozen brightly painted crutches in a wave that slopes from the floor of the display to an upper corner.
“I know where to send my crutches next time I get hurt,” he said before hobbling down the hallway.
Yotsuda said she started the “happy crutches” program when she could not walk.
“People stopped feeling sorry for me when they noticed my crutches were happy,” she said, laughing.
The left side of the showcase features Errol Shimizu, a longtime environmentalist and local artist. He lives by a self-proclaimed “waste not, want not” life philosophy.
Using hurricane-damaged lawn chairs among other reusable items, Shimizu creates sculptures and recyclable ring toss games.
“It’s trash to treasure,” Byron Watanabe, Hawai‘i Department of Transportation security officer, said. “It’s better than putting (it) in a landfill and taking up space.”
The recycled art breathes new life into discarded stuff, California vacationer Genesis Castro said.
The greetings display is brought to airport passengers in transit by the Garden Island Arts Council, funded by a grant through the Hawai‘i Tourism Authority in cooperation with the County of Kaua‘i Office of Economic Development.
“We could use more artists like these. The more people doing it, the better,” Watanabe said.
