Julie Adams remembers when she first saw the fiber artist Marques Hanalei Marzan in action. It was 2016, and they were both attending the Festival of the Pacific Arts in Guam. Marzan was sitting on the ground quietly absorbed in weaving, seemingly unfazed as hundreds milled around him, chatting loudly and blaring music. He was in his zone.
Adams, a curator at the British Museum, just watched. “I was too shy to interrupt him and say hello,” she says. “But in the back of my mind, I was already thinking about how we could commission him to make a piece.” Of course, she had heard of Marzan. Adams considers him “one of the most renowned Hawaiian weavers working today.”
Marzan using a customary method of Hawaiian knotting. He often begins working on a piece before deciding what it will become.
Michelle Mishina
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A year later, Adams welcomed Marzan to the British Museum for a private viewing of one of the world’s most important collections of ancient Hawaiian fans. He pored over each item—admiring the skills of the weavers who created them—estimating that only 20 or 30 fans exist today. At that time, the museum was planning an exhibition to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Captain James Cook’s first voyage to the Pacific. Adams asked Marzan to create a crescent-shaped fan, known as a peahi, as part of the tribute, an example of artifacts from that time.
“It was just super overwhelming to get that opportunity to visit, but also then to get that inquiry for a commission to bring a modern voice and perspective back into the collection that they steward, that was so special,” he says. Some 500 years ago, Hawaiian chiefs would trade these fiber fans for European goods. For his modern-day take, Marzan used pandanus, a type of palm-like pine leaf.
“I was always interested in creative things, drawing, making things with my hands,” says Marzan.
Michelle Mishina
Before he can use the pandanus roots in his artwork, Marzan washes the fibers and removes the outer bark from the beaten material.
Michelle Mishina
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The tradition of weaving the lau (leaves) from the hala (pandanus) tree was brought to the Aloha State when the first Polynesian settlers arrived in canoes with sails fashioned from the material, according to some historians. Those early Hawaiians realized this resource could be used to craft other essential items like clothing, mattresses and shoes.
There aren’t many who have mastered the technique or the ancient style of weaving used to create the fans. Marzan, 44, who first learned the art as a teenager, is one of the few who possesses that rare expertise. “To create contemporary pieces with these ancient skills is really unique,” says Kilohana Silve, an art critic.
Over the past 25 years, Marzan has perfected multiple fiber-weaving techniques, including plaiting, twining, netting and cord-making.
“He’s using those finely honed skills and creating something that steps forward in time,” says Silve. “That’s very exciting, and it’s wonderful that his work is being recognized beyond Hawaii shores.”
Marzan’s weaving and art have taken him to the Marshall Islands, Canada, New Zealand and American Samoa. In 2018, his craft led him to Paris for the Festival des Arts d’Hawaii. There, five fans he created appeared in an exhibition at Orenda Art International, a gallery known for embracing emerging artists and helping them gain international acclaim.
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Marzan carries on the Polynesian and Japanese traditions of his ancestors by creating functional art.
Michelle Mishina
“This show was so important,” says Silve, founder of the Hawaii festival, who lived in Paris for 30 years. “I wanted people out there, especially in important art worlds like Paris or New York or Tokyo, to be aware of the excellent artists that we have in Hawaii. The reactions were just everything that we anticipated. People were fascinated. They were just in awe, because [the weaving technique] is clearly so difficult to do.”
The work was very well received by critics, but Marzan’s artistry isn’t just for aficionados. “It’s one thing for people to go into a gallery and ooh and ahh and say, ‘Oh, c’est magnifique.’ It’s another thing [for them] to, you know, bring out their checkbook and purchase a piece. I was so thrilled to see that his works were all bought,” says Silve.
In addition to their intricate beauty, Marzan’s creations may draw customers because many of his pieces are also functional, like the dresses he made out of pig intestines for the Maoli Arts Movement Wearable Art Show, an annual one-night event in Honolulu that gives native Hawaiian designers a platform to showcase their wearable-art creations.
Just as he draws on the traditional Hawaiian practice of using lau hala to make baskets and shoes, Marzan is inspired by ancient Japanese artisans. Long ago, they created fabric from paper. It was placed under garments to wick away moisture.
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Having a “living, active purpose” for his work is important to Marzan, he says. Rather than just gallery exhibition work to hang on a wall, he wants his pieces to come to life.
To some, the items stockpiled in the carport at Marzan’s home, which is in Manoa, on Oahu, might look like clutter: paper cordage, an array of tree branches, homemade fish traps and swordfish bills. However, they are all likely to take on a second life as art.
Marzan explores a stream in Honolulu in search of foliage for use in his artistic practice. If he also finds something for dinner, so much the better.
Michelle Mishina
The carport is where Marzan sits cross-legged for hours looping coconut coir, making nets and twining. Meanwhile, birds chirp, gentle trade winds whistle and raindrops offer a soothing sound.
The lush valley, known for its consistent drizzles, is ideal; it’s utterly relaxing, and the moist environment also “allows for the fibers to be more supple and malleable,” Marzan says. “Sometimes when it’s too dry, fibers can get too brittle and break. I think it’s just very conducive to my artwork.”
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Marzan also works on his porch, weaving at a small table and on the living room floor. He streams “The Big Bang Theory” for background noise. “I get into that meditative state,” Marzan says. “I just let things go, and my hands just move without any kind of conscious direction or focus.”
On one nearby table sits an elaborate cape made of coconut rope, which would have been suitable for a chief in ancient times. Nearby, a jumbled net form is starting to take the shape of a coral head.
He describes the different materials he incorporates in his art—like berries that grow wild in the mountains and used for dyes, and the paper mulberry used to make kapa (bark cloth)—and how passionate he is about the gathering process. Meanwhile, his fingers are busy looping together paper cordage that will eventually be part of a larger installation piece in an upcoming show.
He doesn’t know what the final product will look like, how large it will be or how long it will take. It all comes together as he goes; there is no plan ahead of time, no sketch, no brainstorm. He allows inspiration to strike along the way.
Marzan was just 5 years old when he made more than 100 one-inch origami cranes for his Japanese grandmother’s 60th birthday party. The feat was an early sign of not only persistence but also exceptional dexterity, qualities that he is renowned for.
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“I was always interested in creative things, drawing, making things with my hands, going outside, playing with the mud and making them into forms or different things,” says Marzan, who descends from a long line of artisans. His Filipino ancestors were basketmakers. Silk weaving was done on his Japanese side, and his Hawaiian family is known for canoe-building. However, it was his great-grandmother’s papales, or hats, hanging in his childhood home in Kaneohe, Oahu, that inspired him.
“The hats were a functional necessity for workers, so that was a form of income for her,” Marzan says about the matriarch who passed away before he was born. A skilled weaver, she crafted them to protect those toiling under a hot sun on the coffee plantations on the island of Hawaii. She produced functional art, not unlike her great-grandson.
“Unfortunately, none of her children or grandchildren during her lifetime showed any interest in learning from her. So those skills and insights passed away with her,” Marzan says.
What he didn’t learn at the foot of his elder, he hopes to acquire through experience, practice and determination. He wants to recreate his great-grandmother’s designs.
“I believe in the concept of ancestral memory,” he says, referring to a theory that some experiences leave a genetic imprint and are passed down to descendants. “Sometimes we don’t know why we are doing something, and then it makes sense. What we do today has significant ties to what has happened in the past.”
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Marzan teaches his craft to students of all ages. For 15 years before the Covid-19 pandemic, he offered weekly instruction to elders during his lunch breaks.
Michelle Mishina
When he first worked with the lau hala, manipulating it felt almost innate. “I just attribute it to my great-grandmother. She just was guiding my hands,” he says.
Today, Marzan can craft hats almost identical to his matriarch’s. However, the starting pattern, called the Honaunau piko (center), unique to her community, is still a mystery.
That lost knowledge motivates Marzan to instruct others. He often teaches workshops to students of all ages. “This skill that I’ve shared with them, it’s not for them to keep to themselves,” says Marzan. In fact, he challenges each of his students to teach at least one other person how to weave “so this skill gets passed on to someone and is available to future generations.”
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The Queen’s Health Systems plans to build an 80-bed hospital next to the Kailua-Kona Costco on Hawaii Island that would include a helipad to cut travel time to its trauma center on Oahu and, critically, construct adjacent, below-market-rate housing to recruit and retain some of the estimated 300 hospital staff, nurses and doctors.
The campus, including a medical office building, would start to go up in two to three years on 30 acres of land Queen’s owns, with it opening perhaps five years from now, according to Queen’s President and CEO Jason Chang.
The project would cost $400 million to $500 million, with possible funding from private investments and philanthropic contributions, Queen’s said.
“What we’re trying to do is create a regional health system for the Big Island, so this is in partnership with our existing hospital, Queen’s North Hawaii Community Hospital,” Chang said. “We’ll be bringing more access, better care and more specialists to the north and west sides of the island.”
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Queen’s plans surprised officials at the 94-bed Kona Community Hospital, located south of the Queen’s site closer to Captain Cook.
Hawaii Health Systems Corp., which operates the Kona Community and Kohala hospitals, had been looking to build another hospital closer to the main population center in Kailua-Kona, including potentially on the land where Queen’s plans to build its still-unnamed hospital, said Clayton McGhan, HHSC West Hawaii regional CEO.
Because of the health care needs of the west side of the Big Island, McGhan said he supports Queen’s plans, especially its goal of building workforce housing for hospital staff.
While some refer to the neighbor islands as providing “rural health care,” McGhan said that in Kona, “I actually think we’re remote or frontier health care.”
Based on a needs assessment funded by the state Legislature, West Hawaii’s population is expected to grow 11% over the next decade.
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Last year, 22,000 patients were treated in the Kona Community Hospital’s emergency room and the number is on track to jump to 24,000 this year McGhan said.
But the 50-year-old Kona Community lacks the volume of specialized cases to justify full-time specialists. So it relies on specialists at Queen’s to consult via telemedicine technology on stroke and neurological cases, along with helping with a new electronic medical records system, McGhan said.
A new Queen’s hospital in Kailua-Kona would be welcomed, he said.
“We don’t look at it as competition,” McGhan said. “I know what our community needs. We have to celebrate that because it’s going to meet the community’s demands. The main thing is we’re supportive of any additional resources that would come here.”
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Kona Community Hospital needs 25 more doctors trained in psychiatric care, cardiology, adult primary care and pediatric specialties, according to McGhan, who applauded Queen’s plan to build 150 condo and apartment units that would be rented to hospital staff at below-market rates, with the option to also buy at below-market prices.
When it’s time to sell, owners would have to sell to another hospital employee at similar rates, Chang said.
McGhan called the concept “fantastic. It’s hard to attract staff here. So we’re going to be supportive of any new workforce housing.”
Gov. Josh Green started his Hawaii medical career at a rural hospital in Ka‘u. As lieutenant governor, he worked weekend ER shifts at the Kona hospital while running for governor.
“It’s very exciting to see health care weigh in on the need for affordable housing. I’ve always said that housing is health care,” Green said.
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For Queen’s, Chang hopes to finish building the housing before the hospital itself opens to ensure it has long-term staffing.
“We believe housing’s such a huge need and you can’t recruit nurses, doctors, technologists, social workers if you don’t,” Chang said.
Because of the difficulty recruiting health care workers — let alone specialists — to the neighbor islands, Queen’s 35-bed North Hawaii Community Hospital relies on traveling nurses and doctors.
It’s hired four full-time oncologists over the last 10 years who all left after a couple of years, Chang said.
“It takes a year to bring someone new in,” he said. “Traveling physicians don’t plan to stay. It’s a real challenge in rural communities. We can’t hire permanent people because they can’t find housing — affordable or just inventory, period. If we don’t address housing ourselves, we’re going to have the same problem.”
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By providing below-market-rate condos and apartments, Chang hopes to retain some traveling health care workers for the new hospital.
Queen’s physicians also work closely with medical students at the University of Hawaii’s John A. Burns School of Medicine, including students who already work with patients at Queen’s. They also could rotate through the new hospital, along with one or two post-graduate medical residents every couple of years.
With Queen’s residents, he said, “I just need one or two to stay every few years. That would be fantastic and it makes them appreciate the need for rural health care.”
• • •
Many details of the new hospital campus still need to be worked out, such as how many stories the facility would have. But the hospital probably will be around 250,000 square feet in size, Chang said.
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The community wants a trauma center and specialists to treat heart attacks and strokes, but West Hawaii doesn’t have the volume of cases to attract or retain “a top-notch cardiologist,” Chang said. “Just treating 30 heart attacks a year, they’re going to leave.”
Instead, the hospital will focus on “diagnostic cardiology, diagnostic neurology — state-of-the-art diagnostics — and general surgery,” he said.
There also will be an emergency room “to stabilize you and fly you to Queen’s.”
For some neighbor-island patients flying to The Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu on an airplane, it can sometimes take three to four hours between when they call 911, get taken by ambulance to their local hospital, diagnosed, driven by ambulance to an airport, put on a plane to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport and then taken by ambulance to the hospital, Chang said.
“You end up with a massive amount of transfer time,” he said.
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Instead, a twin-engine H145 helicopter is scheduled to be delivered to Queen’s in 2026.
It’s being paid for by philanthropists Lynne and Marc Benioff, who have a home on the Big Island. Marc Benioff is co-founder, chairman and CEO of Salesforce and owns Time magazine.
The couple already have donated $5 million, dedicated solely to Hawaii island health care workers, to augment $30 million in state funds to pay off student loans to keep health care workers from leaving Hawaii.
Once the helicopter goes into use at the new hospital, Chang said Hawaii County crews will staff it to fly patients to Queen’s trauma center.
“How do you get somebody to the trauma center, which is Queen’s Medical Center Punchbowl, as fast as you can?” Chang asked. “If you can go rooftop to rooftop, you cut out all that ambulance time.”
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Benioff, Chang said, “recognizes that air transport is a real issue.”
Queen’s plans help address the growing need for health care in the area, according to Green.
In a follow-up statement, Green said: “The West Hawaii community truly needs a new hospital as Kona Hospital has aged, and is now further away from the region’s population center. It’s exciting to see Queen’s begin the process of raising capital and building relationships to launch this new facility. There is certainly a pathway for the state to either support or even partner with Queen’s on this project, once all of the stakeholders have come to a consensus on how to move forward.”
HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – After five hours, a barricade at the Don Quijote store on Kaheka Street ended peacefully Wednesday night.
The incident started just after 5 p.m., prompting the evacuation of shoppers and employees at what is one of the busiest stores at any time of year, but especially during the holidays.
We’re told that the man started a disturbance and then attempted to start a fire, which activated the fire sprinkler system.
Sources said he barricaded himself in a storage room at the back of the store.
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He surrendered and was taken into custody without incident at 10:10 p.m.
Dozens of people waited in the parking lot — a mix of shoppers whose search for bargains and holiday gifts got interrupted, those arriving to shop, and employees.
Many only heard about what happened, or were caught by surprise by the huge police presence surrounding the building.
Michael Brewster said he was on his way in when “one worker down the road at the restaurant said, ‘You can’t go in. Somebody went cuckoo, throwing bottles in the aisles and stuff.‘”
The police department had a large presence at the scene, including someone who appeared to be a crisis negotiator and Specialized Services Division officers.
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There were also Emergency Medical Services personnel in full protective gear.
Kaheka and Poni streets were closed during the incident.
Copyright 2024 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.
It’s Official: Redeem AAdvantage Miles on Hawaiian Airlines Mainland-to-Hawaii Flights After a 9-Year Hiatus!
by Gary Leff
American Airlines has long partnered with Hawaiian Airlines. Hawaiian has now been acquired by American’s ‘West Coast Alliance’ and oneworld partner Alaska Airlines. And so a change has been made to using American AAdvantage miles on Hawaiian Airlines: you can now redeem AAdvantage miles to fly to Hawaii!.
In September 2015, American stopped allowing AAdvantage members to redeem miles between Hawaii and the mainland U.S..
Airlines frequently partnered with Hawaiian for their intra-Hawaii flights, and to some extent their route network beyond Hawaii. However awards to Hawaii are popular and partner redemptions there are expensive.
Hawaiian is on its way towards being integrated into Alaska Airlines. They will achieve a single operating certificate, at which point the carrier will be part of oneworld. Alaska will retain a separate brand identity for Hawaii flights, but it will be one airline. We’re going to get these redemptions eventually, anyway – likely 2026. It’s good to see it now!
Hawaiian award availability, especially from the West Coast (and Austin, while it lasts), is better than award availability to Hawaii on American or Alaska. I do expect Alaska’s revenue management to change this over time, as well as to better sell these flights.
You can use Honolulu as a one-stop gateway across the Pacific as well. Hawaiian currently flies to,
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Auckland and Sydney
Fukuoka, Tokyo Haneda and Narita, and Osaka in Japan
Seoul
Papeete, Pago Pago, and Raratonga
One thing American needs to do is fix mileage-earning on Hawaiian Airlines. I’ve heard from several readers who are affected by Alaska and Hawaii shifting their flying between the two airlines.
American AAdvantage members were encouraged to travel on Alaska Airlines, because that earned both miles and status credit in the AAdvantage program. However, schedules shifting such that Hawaiian will now operate a planned flight means this changes.
There are people purchasing tickets for a flight on Alaska, who will learn that the flight is going to be a Hawaiian flight. This is going to happen more and more prior to a single operating certificate on the two carriers. But they only bought the ticket because it was going to earn them credit with American.
Unfortunately, Hawaiian Airlines flights with a Hawaiian flight number do not earn Loyalty Points (credit towards AAdvantage elite status). That’s a gap which should be addressed.
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Nonetheless, it’s great news today that there’s more mileage-earning and much more flexibility with mileage redemption on Hawaiian Airlines now than there’s been in the last nine years.
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