The Original statue -
|
Corroded from it’s time in the sea, early in the century, community residents began painting the bronze statue to protect it from further deterioration and to make it’s colors lifelike — brown skin, yellow feather cloak and red and yellow sash. In 1996 conservator Glenn Wharton was sent by Public Arts Administrators to assess the statue’s condition. What he found startled him: A larger-than-life brass figure painted over in brown, black, and yellow with “white toenails and fingernails and penetrating black eyes with small white brush strokes for highlights. . . .Wharton, “It looked more like a piece of folk art than a nineteenth-century heroic monument.” In the book, The Painted King, Wharton comes to understand the statue’s meaning for the residents of Kohala. He learns that the Kohala people prefer the “more human” (painted) Kamehameha, regaling him with a parade, chants, and leis every Kamehameha Day. Wharton meets a North Kohala volunteer who decides to paint the statue’s sash after respectfully consulting with a kahuna (Hawaiian spiritual leaders) and the statue itself. A veteran of Public Art Conservation, Wharton had never before encountered a community that had developed such a lengthy, personal relationship with a civic monument. He makes his decision, ignoring warnings about “going native,” from his colleagues and decides to help the people of Kohala in the conservation of their statue. In 2001, the rapidly deteriorating statue gets restored after years-long process that involved Public Arts Administrators, Kohala cultural practitioners and hundreds of local residents. The statue was rededicated in 2001 and is maintained by a trained group of local volunteers. A documentary about this unique community effort, A Legacy Restored, was shown on public television and is available from statue maintenance committee.
|