Sunday, May 22, 2011

The Maui art scene

My husband & I have had the pleasure of spending the last 17 days on the island of Maui. It’s one of our favorite places to vacation because it basically has everything one could desire. Beautiful beaches, exquisite florals, lush green, waterfalls, a bamboo forest, the road to Hana, Tedeschi Winery, awesome quaint towns in the Upcountry and art galleries.

Maui has been both home and inspiration to some of the world's top artists for a very long time. This is evidenced by the abundance of studios and galleries showing exciting and imaginative works by artists of local, national and international fame. Realistic, stylized, abstract, oils, watercolors, prints, photographs or sculptures - whatever you like – you can find it here.

Most tourists start in Lahaina. There are numerous galleries on Front Street and many side streets. We have been in all of them numerous times over the years. The galleries sponsor an Art Walk on Fridays from 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM. Most offer libations and some have live music. I recommend that you go early, park in the parking lot at Lahaina Market Place (121 Lahainaluna Road 2 hours free with validation and $1 hour after that), have dinner and then stroll.

Then it’s time to explore the rest of the island. Although we’ve done this many times during past trips, we always seem to find a new gem. This trip has blessed us with what we feel is our best find ever!

Makawao is a small town in Upcountry Maui. It has shops containing jewelry, souvenirs, exquisite wood items, a world renowned western store, excellent Mexican restaurant and a number of galleries, all containing the work of local artists. One of these sits at the corner of Makawao Ave. & Baldwin Ave. The converted gas station is funky but warm and inviting. It's the gallery of Julie Galeeva.

We discovered her work last year near the end of our trip. We had already exceeded our allotted art budget and settled for her print of a jacaranda tree. We had seen the jacarandas for the first time that trip as well. They bloom approximately mid April through May. We had always traveled middle of winter to escape Reno’s weather. We absolutely fell in love with these trees and scheduled this year’s trip to coincide with their blooming season. But I digress.

We returned to the gallery this year because this artist paints the best jacarandas we have seen. Julie was in the gallery this trip. She had just finished a jacaranda painting that morning which we totally fell in love with. It didn’t take long to become immersed in a discussion about the jacarandas, her other art, life, and more. We talked for several hours. It’s as if we were old friends. That’s how easy it is to talk to Julie. No pressure. Just a mutual respect, and passion, for art.

She made us an incredible offer on the jacaranda painting. Unfortunately we had decided we would not purchase any original art this trip so we bought a few more prints and left to eat at Polli’s.

My husband was surfing her website the next morning. I joined him. We discussed what an incredible artist she is, in every genre she paints. Told him we should seriously consider accepting her offer if we truly wanted one of her originals because we would never be offered such an extraordinary deal again (in my opinion). So off we went to Makawao.

We looked at all 4 jacaranda paintings and decided we still liked yesterday’s choice the best. But we also fell in love with one of her giclees with hand embellishments. The two looked incredible together. We had to buy both.

The paintings won’t arrive for a few weeks and then need to be framed. I will post pictures once they’re hung. For now, words cannot express how honored I am that Julie chose to offer her original art to us. We love her art but also feel this could be the beginning of a lifelong friendship.

Please check out her website, and, it’s worth a trip to Makawao if you’re on Maui.

Julie Galeeva Fine Art
3682 Baldwin Avenue
Makawao, HI 96768-7507
(808) 573-4772
www.juliegaleeva.com
julie@juliegaleeva.com

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