Kona Commons Partners with Lydia8 and EMPRESS: All-Wahine Arts Festival during Inaugural Year

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Kona Commons Partners with Lydia8 and EMPRESS: All-Wāhine Arts Festival during Inaugural Year

Two Murals to be Painted at Shopping Center - A Collaboration of Artists and Community

Kailua-Kona, HI (November 1, 2022) – Kona Commons announced today a partnership with nonprofit organization, Lydia8 and EMPRESS:  All Wāhine Arts Festival.  The partnership helps to support Lydia8’s mission of cultivating transformative artistic and cultural opportunities for the wāhine of Hawaiʻi, to mobilize communities and create real change.

Kona Commons Shopping Center will soon be home to two murals:  one featuring Haumea, the goddess of creation, and the second featuring ‘ulu, a symbol of resilience, perseverance, and security.  “We are honored to partner with Lydia8 and EMPRESS:  All- Wāhine Arts Festival on these murals,” said Madison Wanner, General Manager of Kona Commons.  “This collaboration helps support wāhine and our local communities by building pathways to self-empowerment and innovation.”

The community is invited to help the murals come to life during a community paint day on Tuesday, November 8, from 10am – 3pm.  Community participants will be guided by artists from around the Pacific who have gathered in Kona for the inaugural art festival.  “We look forward to the community’s help in creating our ‘Haumea’ mural", says Mahea Akau, Event Organizer for EMPRESS:  All Wāhine Arts Festival.  “Haumea was known to cast her net into the sky to plot things such as stars and genealogies. Participants can help by filling in the colored base layers with handprints, representing each person’s presence in an ever-expanding genealogy caught in Haumea’s net.”

The inaugural EMPRESS: All-Wāhine Arts Festival will take place throughout Hawaiʻi Island and will feature wāhine Pasifika, their mele and murals; 2022 artists include Kukui Mahoney (Palani Road) and Hana Yoshihata (Kona Commons).  For more information visit: IG@empress.week or contact us at aloha@lydia8.org.

 

About Kona Commons 
Kona Commons, owned by local partners MacNaughton and Kobayashi Group, offers something for everyone and is home to 26 national and locally owned shops, and restaurants.  Voted West Hawaii’s Best Shopping Center for 11 years, the property regularly holds free, family-friendly community events including monthly artisan markets featuring locally made products.  For additional information about Kona Commons visit www.konacommons.com.     

About Lydia8
Lydia8 is a grassroots, community-based organization and multi-expressive platform assembled to empower and nurture wāhine (women) of Hawaiʻi. It is a movement and launchpad for creatives.  It is inspired by the motto of Queen Liliu'okalani - ‘Onipa‘a (steadfastness), which drives its core values and guides its policies, planning, programs and relationships. 

About EMPRESS:  All Wahine Arts Festival
EMPRESS: All-Wāhine Arts Festival uses art as a medium to invigorate identity and preserve indigenous languages and cultures while inspiring and mentoring island keiki. Their process of research, reflection, design, community outreach, painting, and curation reconnects communities to their history, to the land that they live on, to each other, and to themselves.  They take the land as it is—urban, overdeveloped, and stressed—and restore and invigorate the cultural connection to it. 

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