Rocking The Box

Marlene Spence hard at work on a ‘Metro’ rack.
ANTHONY CONSILLIO PHOTO

You may have picked up this issue of Metro in one of our decorated racks that can be found throughout downtown Honolulu. To create these, we partnered with 26 local artists for our Rock the Box contest. We provided the blank canvas of the newspaper rack and gave them free rein over how they wanted to decorate it.

We were absolutely amazed by the results we got back. It’s only the luckiest copies of Metro that get to call these boxes home.

We caught up with some of the participants to learn more about these talented individuals, starting with contest winner Marlene Spence.

Marlene Spence

By day, the Mililani resident works as an assistant manager at an automotive paint and supply distributor. After-hours, she does custom painting on cars. Right now, for example, she has plans to pinstripe two cars and paint a Tasmanian devil on another.

To create her winning Rock the Box entry, Spence applied the skills that she uses in custom -painting cars and motorcycles, including putting pinstriping the backside. The front, meanwhile, is designed as a tiki.

“I just figured it would be kind of cool if it was like a big mouth and when you open it to grab a newspaper, you are grabbing it from its mouth,” she explains.

Spence has been interested in art ever since she can remember and loves being able to incorporate art into her day job.

As the winner of the Rock the Box contest, Spence was awarded a second box that she currently is decorating.

Keep your eyes out for more from Spence, as she also occasionally showcases her art at various places around town.

Tina Markel

When Hoala School art teacher Tina Markel asked her students to submit ideas for what they wanted the school’s Rock the Box entry to be, there were so many good submissions that it was a three-way tie. So they decided to combine the visions of the three winning students, tenth grader Cody Lawrence, eighth grader Peyton Pemberton and seventh grader Kate Welch, to create a dragon constructed out of recycled material that is painted in a sand-to-sea-to-sky theme.

“It’s very creative — and very large,” she says, laughing.

All students at the small (or “connected” as Markel likes to say) K-12 school contributed to the box.

“The kindergarten painted the tail, the high schoolers did the chicken-wire structure and the middle school did a lot of the plastering and painting,” Markel explains.

“I think it is really important for them to learn collaboration and see that art does not come out of a vacuum — we work off of the ideas of each other,” she adds.

Justin Takaha White, aka Culture Shocka

After discovering his knack for drawing as a kid, White has been dabbling in just about any medium you can think of, including painting, print making, photography and filmmaking.

In creating the first of his boxes — he did two — he was channelling Kero Kero Keroppi from Sanrio. The second is its robot companion piece.

“The contest said to ‘think outside of the box,’ so I thought the point was to build things on and around it,” he says.

“They are a pair, so on the street you can look for the brother and sister,” he adds.

By day, White works as a graphic designer at ER Marketing. But by night, he is an aspiring musician. (In his art and music life, he goes by Culture Shocka.)

Currently, White is developing a music/visual art project.

Michelle and John Sakurai

Before becoming an art teacher at Our Savior Lutheran School, Michelle Sakurai had been a school librarian. But when she needed a summer job, a friend hooked her up with an opening as an arts and crafts director in a summer camp, and she knew she had found her passion.

Her husband John works in engineering at Hawaii Building Maintenance and has a love for creating cultural art pieces, including fish hooks and poi pounders, and working with materials like wood, stone and bone.

Since they got married two years ago, they also have been exploring the art world as a couple, and recently completed classes in feather lei making and kapa.

In their Rock the Box piece, they wanted to display their mutual love for the water (John is an avid surfer, and they paddle board together), so they have marine life painted in white against a black backdrop. On the back of the box, it reads, “Malama i ke Kai,” or Care for the Ocean.

“There is nothing better than being out on the ocean,” Michelle says.

Tomy Takemura

A love for art runs in Tomy Takemura’s family. Her mom draws and her uncle is a sculptor — and it’s an interest that Takemura herself has been cultivating for years.

As a teen, she often competed in art contests, and in college she studied studio art. Now, she works on custom picture frames and has interned with 808 Urban. She also is the curator’s assistant at Hawaii State Art Museum, where she has been helping to gather content for the Image & Imagination exhibit.

When asked what she likes best about creating art, she says: “the ability to inspire, communicate and provoke conversations without words.”

Mandy Quitog

Quitog has been drawing since she was just 8 years old. After graduating from Leeward Community College, she has been focusing on her art.

“A lot of my inspiration just comes from everyday life,” she says. “I just draw whatever I see.”

She especially loves drawing portraits — and recently has expanded her repertoire to include watercolors and animal illustrations.

For her Rock the Box piece, she knew she wanted to depict adventures in Hawaii.

“I thought about me and my friends going to a pineapple patch and just picking out the perfect pineapple to eat,” she explains.

Quitog also recently launched an online shop on Etsy for her work called MandinisArt, where she sells prints and bags.

Elise Nicole Kirkpatrick

Kirkpatrick has been showcasing her art around the Islands for the last several years — and you’d probably recognize some of her iconic surfer and hula illustrations.

But her Rock the Box piece is a departure from her typical work. She decided to do something a little different and filled the boldly colored box with what she feels are inspirational quotes.

“I took the opportunity to spread positive vibrations,” she says of her box. “My favorite, ‘We Exist to Love,’ reminds us that we are here to spread the love. Let go of negativity and things that don’t make you feel love. ‘As Above, So Below’ reminds us that all we are is energy, and therefore we are all one: One with the aina, one with the sea, one with each other.

“I have titled this box ‘The Happy Box,’ she explains. “I hope happiness is exactly (what) it makes everyone feel.”

You’ll also notice that she has included the hashtag #elisenicoleart “in hopes that people will take pictures of themselves with the positive messages, so that I can see the smiles it’s creating.”