Shows

HFIA 10th Annual Statewide Juried Woodworking Exhibition

Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center 2201 Kalkaua Avenue, Honolulu September 14-22, 2002

The Jurors

Kathy Merrill Kelley ASID, Principal Designer, Philpotts Associates, Inc. Kathy Merrill Kelley loves the warmth, comfort and welcoming quality of eclectic design. Never a purist, she always attempts to connect with the client who she considers the “real designer.” She describes her own style as “Pacific Rim”, although her mainland U.S. projects range from the highly traditional to very contemporary. "My interiors tend to be spare, crisp and clean. I love the use of varying layers of texture and the soft subtlety of color changes,” she says.
Among her most distinguished residential projects are the Kelsey Grammer (featured in Architectural Digest in 2002) and Carlos Santana residences at Kapalua, and the George Benson residence at Ka’anapali, Maui. Other milestone projects include the W Honolulu hotel (formerly the Colony Surf), the Orchid at Maunalani and Outrigger Waikoloa Beach Resort. She attended Punahou School and the University of Colorado. Her most valuable education, she says, has been in the field working with other designers, architects, contractors and trades people.

Michael Lee was born and raised on the island of Oahu. He is a self-employed studio artist, specializing in production pieces as well as one of a kind sculptural vessels.
Michael’s first lathe was bought on a whim for under $300. With a book and set of tools, he proceeded to teach himself the fine art of ‘bludgeoning” wood. After five years, a new lathe and a library of books, he decided to turn his hobby into a lifestyle. From 1990 to 1993 he attended the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Tennessee. It was at Arrowmont where he studied the art of woodturning under some of the best woodturners in the world. Michael enjoys the freedom of being self-employed. He feels it is more of a lifestyle than just a job and that self-expression through his art and play is the perfect balance to being creative.

Michael’s current work focuses on carved pieces with an emphasis on breathing life into the work through gesture and movement, Much of Michael’s inspiration is derived through nature as a source for texture, form and motion. He constantly explores new forms and sources for design and texture.
Michael’s work is in the permanent collections of the State Foundation of Culture and the Arts, The Contemporary Museum, The Detroit Institute of Arts and The Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts as well as numerous private collections around the world. He has been a feature demonstrator at several national woodturnlng symposiums and has taught at The Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts. He has exhibited work at national and international juried shows.

Peter Naramore has spent the last thirty years as an on the job’ student of woodworking and furniture design. His enthusiasm and passion for his work is kept alive by his belief that each project offers me the opportunity to grow exponentially, to continue learning from everything that came before me and all that surrounds me.

Growing up in the rapidly diminishing rural landscape surrounding Rochester, New York provided Naramore with the space and raw materials to develop an early love of construction and crude “seat of the pants design.” He created tree forts and wooden huts from material “borrowed” from crum bling barns or liberated from new house construction in the ever creeping suburbs and erected them amongst the stands of trees between farmer’s abandoned fields. This somehow natural apprenticeship sent him on an unswerving path away from home at the age of seventeen to Baltimore, Maryland where he began his working life ingloriously as a concrete form building apprentice, “Whenever a job would end, for whatever reason, I would invariably strike off toward the next level of skill.” This continual movement found Peter living in Berkshire County, Massachusetts for two yearé, then across the country and up and down the West coast in a flamboyantly designed “gypsy wagon,” from which he advertised and practiced his skills as an itinerant carpenter. In 1976, after a brief stint In Sweden at a woodworking cooperative, he permanently moved to Maui.

Over the years his work has received national attention in magazines and books such as Fine Woodworking and the Taunton Press’ Design Books, number Four, Five, Six and Seven. His work has recently been included in The Custom Furniture Source Book, a national guide to 125 craftsmen. His custom designed furniture has been displayedshows and galleries including Art Maui and is in private collections both locally and nationally. From his spacious, well-equipped home-based business, The Kingswood Shop, he continues to offer a wide variety of woodworking services to both commercial and residential customers and residential customers.

Poster2002