b. 1965, Hilo, Hawaiʻi; lives and works in Paʻauilo, Hawaiʻi
Participated as Les Filter Feeders in Honolulu Biennial 2017

Study for the Mauna
from the series Flying Hawaiian
2023
Mixed media with epoxy resin on wood
24 x 24 in


Flying Hawaiian is an ongoing series of mixed-media paintings that incorporate vinyl tire-tread patterns and utilize enamel paint and surfboard materials to produce pristinely finished, highly polished surfaces. By exhibiting the tire-tread patterns in a two-dimensional format, they recall Polynesian tattoo patterns, a traditional art full of distinctive signs to express identity and personality. Tattoos would indicate status in a hierarchal society: sexual maturity, genealogy, and one’s rank within society. Nearly everyone in ancient Polynesian society was tattooed. Likewise, there is a high value placed on car culture in contemporary Hawaiʻi, where it becomes cultural capitol that enables one to fit in, belong, or elevate one’s social status.

The Mauna works in the Flying Hawaiian series are a visual interpretation of tire tracks on a snowy landscape, as well as a cultural reference to patterns made during the beating of kapa (Hawaiian bark cloth). Kapa is generally thought of as geometric patterns printed with dye on mulberry bark. However before the designs were printed, they were sometimes watermarked with the i’e to create an embossed design only visible when held to the light. “These hidden designs perhaps imprinted veiled meanings into the kapa itself.“ (Wendy S. Arbeit, Links to the Past: The Work of Early Hawaiian Artisans, p.270)

“Growing up in Hawaiʻi, I have experienced Mauna Kea snow days all of my life. The first few weeks of each snowfall was a time to go up to the mountain to play in the snow. It’s always been a celebratory atmosphere, something special that happens only a few times a year. The road up to the top of the mountain was built in 1964, so I am guessing this experience is one that has only occurred in local popular culture during my lifetime. This year, access was blocked for several periods of time due to construction and cultural protests. For me, the tires that travel up to Mauna Kea today are printing a contemporary record of use by locals, visitors, construction workers, astronomers, and cultural practitioners.” 

Keith Tallett is a mixed-media artist who was born and raised in Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi. He is a second-generation surfboard shaper and tattoo practitioner of traditional Polynesian patterns. The process of making art for him becomes a way of creating dialogue between his cultural knowledge and practices, and his investigations as a contemporary artist. Tallett has an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute and a BA from University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo. He has exhibited at such venues as Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Track 16 Gallery in Los Angeles, and Franklin Parrasch Gallery in New York. His professional experience includes lecturing at University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo art department (2004–11), as well as being a founding member of AGGROculture, a Hawaiʻi-based art collective. Tallett was included in the 2011 Artists of Hawaii exhibition at the Honolulu Museum of Art, where he received the Jean Charlot Foundation Award for Excellence. He was also awarded a 2011 Cultural Apprenticeship Grant through the Folk Art Program at Hawaiʻi State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, and was nationally recognized when he received a 2013 Joan Mitchell Foundation Sculptor and Painter Grant.


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