POLYNESIAN PATTERNS

Hawaiian Kapa

Denby Freeland (American)

Looking back over the years, I realize how my vacations often became art-buying events.

This beautiful kapa artwork was purchased from Maui Hands Gallery while I was on a Hawaiian Islands cruise. Known as tapa elsewhere in Polynesia, kapa is an ancient Hawaiian bark cloth traditionally used for clothing, blankets, and ceremonial rituals. 

Years later, the gallery’s owner kindly put me in email contact with its creator, Denby Freeland, who describes the complicated process of creating kapa…

Growing up in Hawaii, kapa was always of interest to me. I was a watercolor artist for a time. But then I took natural dye and kapa-making classes. ‘Wauke,’ a type of paper mulberry, is the organic material used to make traditional kapa. I grow my own, but I’ve also used other people’s plants. First I pound out its inner bark using a variety of handmade wooden tools. Then I paint and/or stamp the designs onto the bark using bamboo stamps I’ve carved myself. Some of the designs I use are documented in books. But sometimes I like to see how many different designs can be created from one simple geometric pattern. I make my own dyes, whose colors depend on the specific flowers, leaves, berries, roots or barks I select. Thanks to my job as an environmental educator, I was already familiar with many of these plants before starting my journey as a kapa maker.

I guess Denby’s kapa is another example of how studying anthropology in the 1970s continues to influence the art I’m attracted to.