Project Lead

Aliza’s craft is activating community engagement for healing and growth. As a teaching artist, community mental health advocate, and horticulturist, Aliza facilitates programs that invite participants to dive into sensory and creative experience, honor process over product, and reflect on the intersectionality between caring for self, ʻāina (land), and each other. Aliza is the co-founder Root & Rise Hawaiʻi, a non-profit that creates access to therapeutic opportunities for mental health wellness.

Arts Business Mentor

Becky Brett, a seasoned creative placemaker and holistic executive coach, boasts a remarkable 25-year career curating international arts events and festivals. Presently situated on Hawaii Island, she dedicates her expertise to Vibrant Hawaii, serving as arts business mentor for their ONOP artist fellows. Through Becky's guidance, artists have gained clarity and mastery over their artistic business and practices. Her passion lies in empowering individuals to thrive in the intersection of self-expression and entrepreneurship.

Multi-media Artist

Angaea Cuna is a multi-media artist and Filipino immigrant focusing on fiber arts, bookbinding, and immersive installation. By practicing a bio-centric process and the use of natural materials, Angaea resurfaces her ancestry’s connection to nature, producing work layered with personal narrative and historical research. Angaea’s works aim to unearth the extensive culture of her Filipino ancestry, ignite conversations about the Pacific Island Diaspora, and undocumented individuals in the United States.

Artist

As a devoted father, loving husband, and compassionate friend to the world, I seek to explore the pressing questions of our contemporary society through art. We find ourselves in a remarkable era where innovation and ideas blossom alongside the enduring strength of longstanding traditions held dear by people across the globe. Fortuitously, home in Waimea, Hawaii, allows me to immerse myself in the present and embrace the dynamic interplay of the old and the new.

Writer

Mārata Tamaira is a Hawai‘i-based writer from Aotearoa New Zealand and has lived in Ola’a on Hawai‘i Island since 2017. Mārata’s creative work focuses on her Māori heritage and traces the links between ancestral connections, the power of place and memory, and the transformative quest for identity and belonging. For Mārata, telling stories that are rooted in an indigenous worldview is a crucial pathway to individual and collective empowerment and wellbeing.

Artist

Abbie's artistic journey originates in her creative upbringing in rural Connecticut. She spent three decades immersed in the art scene of the SF Bay Area before relocated to the Big Island of Hawaii in 2017. The island's lush tropics, raw nature, and unpredictable energy fuels her pleinair paintings and abstract works. Armed with a BFA and MFA in painting, Abbie uses her skills as an artist and educator to share her creative passion with others.

Visual Artist

Avalon Paradea is a genderliminal person raised in Waikōloa, Kohala Hema, Hawaiʻi. They are an ʻāina-based visual artist working with natural elements including kapa, plant dyes, and earth pigments, as well as a writer, poet, and musician (amongst other things). Avalon’s work explores topics such as neurodivergence and mind-body wellness, queer expression, and the relationships we share with the lifeforms and landscapes of our island home.

Wood Artist

Nicole credits her passion for wood and woodworking to growing up in Hawaii as the daughter of a luthier. After pursuing a degree in furniture design at San Diego State University she has been working with wood ever since. Bringing new life to fallen trees, her work honors the balance between past and future while also uniting the essence of wood and the human experience.

Artist

Lōkela, a Kānaka maoli artist, fuses ancient Hawaiian traditions into contemporary no'eau, rooted in spirituality. Rejecting cultural separation, he aspires to transcend tourist commodification. Raised on Moku 'o Keawe, his parents instilled a passion for traditional hana no'eau. Integrating diverse art forms, he emphasizes knowledge's significance. Lōkela manifests the "uhane" of his creations, preserving essence and expanding knowledge. From a lineage of craftsmen, he showcases Kānaka strength, believing kuleana is their lasting legacy.

Actor & Storyteller

Erin Healani Chung, a native of Hawaiʻi Island, is an actor and multi-disciplinary storyteller living in Honomū. A proud member of SAG-AFTRA, she received her BA in Theatre from UH Mānoa and trained at Atlantic Acting school in NYC. She is drawn to powerful stories that honor a wide-range of human experience. As a Vibrant Hawai’i Art Fellow, Erin will devise a performance inspired by the theme “No Place Like Home.”

Singer-songwriter

As a singer-songwriter based in Kona, Hawai’i, Ninamarie Bell pens songs best described as dreamy, drifty folk made for gently stirring the heart or perhaps as a soundtrack to moments under a soft ray of golden sunlight. She shares music as healing medicine, transmuting deep emotions. Her main influences are the yellow birds outside her window, the longing created by the pace of modern life, and the turquoise blues stretching beyond the coastline of home.

Artist

Afro-futuristic, visionary artist Kerry Mark Green has honed his craft in acrylic painting for over 30 years. In 2013, he embraced pen and ink, expanding his meticulous skill set into mixed mediums. Kerry's passion lies in fusing ink with acrylic on wood, masterfully allowing the wood's organic grain to complement and enhance his visionary works. His works are a testament to patience, skill, and a deep connection to the medium, message, and his Bajan roots.

Writer and Storyteller

A writer and storyteller with roots in the farms and forests of Upstate New York, Sara draws inspiration from the diversity of Hawaiʻi’s nature and culture, as well as from her own creative adventures. As a Vibrant Hawaiʻi Art fellow, she is channeling the power of the written word into a book about Hawaiʻi’s kūpuna, shining a light on their wisdom, stories about our island home, and secrets to wellness and thriving at any age. goes here