Pele

I painted this over Memorial Day weekend of 1992. I attended the Seattle Folk Life Festival that weekend for the first time ever. This was right about when I was overcoming eight years of agoraphobia and finally able to get out in crowds. I watched a performance of excerpts from The Coming of Pele (Holo Mai Pele) which is a long series of chants, songs, and traditional dances accompanied by drums that tell the story of the arrival of Pele, the volcano goddess, in Hawai'i, and of her rivalry with her sister Hi'iaka. One of the performances that stood out in my mind was a solo dance by a young woman. She was actually performing in the role of Hi'iaka, but when I painted her from memory a couple of hours later I felt the image would be best attached to Pele. The painting was used for the first cover of Real Change in August 1994. The original painting was later sold. This image was created from the black & white photo used to create the cover. I replaced the grays with a red close to the original clay red of the painting. Red, especially clay red, represents for me both Hawai'ian soil and soul.