Local artists chosen for Climate Action Residency program

Five kamaʻāina artists have been selected from a competitive pool of 65 applicants to join the second cohort of the Hawaiʻi Climate Action Artist Residency program.

The program, created by the Hawaiʻi State Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Commission (CCMAC), in partnership with the University of Hawaiʻi Sea Grant College Program, strives to engage Hawaiʻi residents through art on key climate topics and issues facing the state. Topics of focus during the residency cover areas from mauka to makai and include cultural knowledge, land stewardship, energy efficiency and community resilience.

CCMAC encourages participating artists to connect with local students and residents, collaborate with climate action practitioners and explore and highlight critical climate challenges through their unique creative lens.

“We are once again delighted by the response from Hawaiʻi’s incredible artistic community to this initiative bringing together climate action and artistic practice,” said Udi Mandel Butler, CCMAC’s climate action program manager. “Creatively engaging with the crises of climate change can offer us different ways of thinking, feeling and imagining alternatives in the present and for the future.”

The selected artists are:

• Avalon Paradea, a kapa artist from the Island of Hawaiʻi whose work engages with communities, their concerns and aspirations for their regions in relation to the changing climate.
• Chenta Laury, a Maui-based fiber artist whose work explores recurrent themes of migration, adaptation, diaspora and transformation.
• Matt Kawika Ortiz, a native Hawaiian from the windward side of O‘ahu, whose art is inspired by the iconography of place-based moʻolelo.
• Jana Ireijo, from O‘ahu, whose ephemeral, vanishing murals made from wildfire charcoal and local water depict images of endangered species in the changing landscape.
• Sophia Sol, based in O‘ahu, who works at the intersection of oil painting, architecture, filmmaking and new media arts.

“Climate change is not abstract to me. It is something we are all living through in Hawai’i, from wildfires, coral bleaching and flooding to the changes I have seen over time in the ocean and landscapes I grew up with,” said Ireijo. “My work tries to make these shifts visible in a way that people can feel.”

Finished artworks will be exhibited at the Capitol Modern, the Hawaiʻi State Art Museum in Honolulu, in the Spring of 2027. This project, in partnership with the University of Hawaiʻi Sea Grant College Program, aligns with the CCMAC’s mission to promote ambitious, climate-neutral and culturally responsive strategies for climate change adaptation and mitigation in Hawaiʻi.

For more information on the artists, the residency program and the work of CCMAC, go to CCMAC’s website at: https://climate.hawaii.gov/art or contact Udi Mandel Butler at udi.butler.contractor@hawaii.gov.