INhonolulu Magazine Issue #14 - February 2014 | Page 16

ART + FASHION
Culture Brew
Will Caron
Photos by Chelsea Akamine

B

rue Bar, in association with
HONBLUE, has partnered
with the Honolulu Printmakers to a bring artwork to the Merchant
Street coffee shop’s walls. On January
22, the year-long partnership began
with an opening reception event for
“The Elements of the Pool” by Laura
Smith, the first artist in rotation.
As a great selection of downtempo music played in the background
and we were treated to free food and
wine, Smith explained her fascination
with grids, her love of the color blue
and the natural subject matter that
allows her to work with both—swimming pools. Her designs were intricate and delicate, yet the overall feel
of the pieces had depth and weight.
I especially found her three-dimensional pieces to be both beautiful and
expertly executed.
As I examined Smith’s work and
watched the crowd grow to include
writers, artists, business people, community members, art lovers and other
creatives, the wonderful potential for
cultural advancement that exists within partnerships between thoughtful,
community-oriented business and art
was made plain.
Coffee wasn’t the only thing brewing that night.
“Art gives the business a chance to
add to its customer service, while the
business provides exposure to the artist.
With art on the walls, Brue does more
than offer coffee,” commented Smith.
Located on the first floor of the
beautiful Italianate Stangenwald
Building on Merchant Street, Brue
Bar was designed to include a unique
display set-up that was built specifically with art in mind, and that allows
the artist to incorporate the space
Page 16

Brue Bar
1 Merchant Street
19
Mon.–Fri., 8am–5pm
441-4355
facebook.com/BrueBarHI
Honolulu Printmakers
Honolulu Museum of Art School
1 1 Victoria Street
11
536-5507
honoluluprintmakers.org/home.html

into the display of the art.
“If you’re creative, you need a space
for interaction and so when we had an
opportunity to move our HONBLUE
downtown outpost, we really thought
a lot about what kind of space we
wanted to create,” says Larry Heim.
Larry, together with his brother
Matt, is the President of HONBLUE
and one half of the brain behind the
HONBLUE family of companies,
which includes Electric Pencil and,
now, Brue Bar. “We’ve always been
fans of coffee and we wanted to create a nice, conducive environment for
our creative clients—whether they’re
designers, architects, developers or
artists themselves. And that was really the genesis of Brue Bar.”
“It’s important to us as people and
as employers to have art in our creative
spaces,” continues Heim. “So we had
our architect design spaces throughout the shop to display art. So we developed this canvas—this space for art,
but then the question becomes, ‘how
do you get art?’”
And that’s where the Honolulu
Printmakers come in.
“The Honolulu Printmakers exists
to promote printmaking and to generate opportunities for print-makers
in Honolulu, and really, while our
name suggests otherwise, throughout
the state of Hawai‘i,” explains Executive Director Duncan Dempster.
The Printmakers have been around
for more than 80 years. “We have a
long history with the Printmakers,”
says Heim. “My father and wife were
both on the board at various points—
and we thought, ‘wow, what a great
opportunity for a partnership.’”
“Collaboration is everything, especially for a non-profit like us, in a
town like Honolulu,” agrees Dempster.
“Print-makers are, by necessity, a convivial, collaborative bunch—we are
used to sharing spaces and especially
heavy equipment like printing presses.”
One of the Printmaker’s primary,
yearly activities is a juried printmaking exhibition. With entries from all

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