Carol Yotsuda led a busy life as an art instructor during the 37 years with Department of Education (DOE), having taught thousands of students, worked with art groups, put together shows and secured grants to promote art on Kauai. Yotsuda’s
Carol Yotsuda led a busy life as an art instructor during the 37 years with Department of Education (DOE), having taught thousands of students, worked with art groups, put together shows and secured grants to promote art on Kauai.
Yotsuda’s life has become even more busy since she retired from the DOE in the late 1990s.
Today, she has continued to write grants and has worked with others to find a new home for the Garden Island Arts Council, to develop art programs, some of which are brought to island schools, and to coordinate art events.
Yotsuda, the executive director of the council, is among the strongest advocates for art and Hawaiian music on Kauai. Her passion stems from a lifelong love of art, she said.
Since 1970, she has secured $1 million in grants from foundations and groups to promote and preserve art projects on Kauai.
Yotsuda obtained funds:
- from the Hawaiian Tourism Authority to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Kanikapila Kakou (Lets gets together and sing) program.
The program is held weekly from February to May each year and features Hawaiian composers from Kauai and from other islands. Some of the Kauai composers have included Nathan Kalama, Mauli Ole Cooke, Kenny Emerson and Michelle Edwards.
- from the Hawaiian Community Foundation for workshops to benefit artists and youths.
- from the Hawaii Community Foundation for the “Happy Crutches” project, which has brought together the young, old and people who are physically and mentally challenged to decorate crutches, walkers and wheelchairs for reuse.
“The project helped bring people together to work and to soften the stigma of having to use things like this ( crutches),” Yotsuda said.
The idea for the project came from Yotsuda’s personal experience with a temporary disability. She had gone thorough two knee surgeries and could only get around with crutches before her recovery.
To move along the recovery, she and Rocky Riedel, an artist from Anahola, decided to decorate Yotsuda’s crutches and wheelchair.
Yotsuda also helped secure funding to reskin Taiko drums for the Hongwanji churches on Kauai.
Among her chief goals now is to help others obtain funding for a new center for the Garden Islands Art Council. The organization, which represents a broad spectrum of island artists, is currently housed at the Kukui Grove Shopping Exhibition Hall.
Grove Farm allows the organization use of the center, but the organization could be asked to leave at any time, Yotsuda said.
Garden Island Arts and some island artists are working with Hoike Public Television to raise funds to build a new center of arts, education and technology, Yotsuda said.
Groundbreaking for a site by the Kukui Grove Shopping Center could take place as early as next summer, Yotsuda said.
Yotsuda said she has written grants to the state Foundation on the Culture and the Arts to promote continuation of art projects on Kauai.
Yotsuda also said she is putting her energy behind a proposed project dubbed “Van Go.” After school lets out and on weekends, a van would travel to communities between Kekaha and Hanalei to educate the community about art, Yotsuda said.
A companion project involves teachers weaving art into math and science lessons.
Yotsuda said she has made presentations to Department of Education principals on Kauai and, so far, officials with Kekaka Elementary and Waimea School have agreed to her proposal, along with one teacher from Kapaa, Yotsuda said.
At times, there are not enough volunteers to help her on the projects, but Yotsuda said she has remained undaunted in her efforts to promote the value of art.
“I should be doing what I enjoy doing now that I am retired. I have a studio and my space and time. But it doesn’t work that way,” Yotsuda said. “There is a need to stoke the fire, to galvanize people.”
Art was not part of her life as a young girl.
Yotsuda, her five brothers ,one sister and her mother and father, a Buddhist minister in Hawaii, were put in an internment camp for Americans of Japanese ancestry in Arkansas during World War II.
“My world was devoid of art. I was living behind barbed wires,” she said.
When Yotsuda got out of the camp in 1945 when she was five years old, she said she discovered a new world away from the camp.
“I saw trees. I got paper and pencil, which I had never had in the camp, and I drew,” she said. “Art became a way of life for me.”
She probably could have excelled in other art forms, but Yotsuda said she chose sculpting because it constantly challenged her.
For the first seven years of her teaching career, she taught art at Kapaa High School and at Wilcox School and served as an art resource teacher. She spent the next 30 years teaching art at Kauai High School.
Among her top students were Gerard Bucao, who works Dream Works movie company, Warren Daubert, a graphic artist working in Honolulu and the son of Mary Daubert, a marketing director at the Kukui Grove Shopping Center, Elizabeth Train, an art instructor who has worked in the University of Hawaii system, and Giampiero Genovese.
Yotsuda said teaching art in the DOE system was difficult at times because of state funding limitations.
But Yotsuda said she worked around that obstacle by holding Garden Island Arts Council projects at the school and taking home extra supplies and tools that were given to her students after the projects ended.
Because the artists were generous, many of her students “always had the best supplies,” Yotsuda said. “I attracted students who were sincerely interested in art,” she said.
Yotsuda, who kept up with art trends, always sought to tailor the curriculum to the needs of her students. As far as she knows, graduating students who wanted a career in art went on to reputable art colleges throughout the country.
Yotsuda usually worked between 7:30 a.m. to 10 ;p.m. at night when she taught and created art sets for plays directed by Arnold Meister, a former director of the Kauai Performing Arts Center.
Today, Yotsuda puts more time and energy into similar projects, including collaborating with different art groups.
“Yes, I am busier now, but I really enjoy what I am doing,” she said. “It gives meaning to my life.”
