Spirit of Aloha | Articles | Here's Hawai'i | July/August 2004

Under the Hula Moon

Romancing the Shells

Laka Morton turns seashells and beach glass into evocative Hawaiian art. His paintings celebrate mythical figures, including Pele . PHOTO BY BRETT UPRICHARD

Eight years ago, when artist Laka Morton moved from Kaua‘i to the island of Hawai‘i, he moved a part of the landscape, too. He took with him 80 gallons of seashells and beach glass and six containers the size of large garbage cans filled with oversize, unbroken shells such as cowries and tritons. He had found these treasures beachcombing for decades on his native island, and when he moved to Volcano Village, 4,000 feet above sea level, he took them along as reminders of the island and the shoreline.

With two friends, he built his Volcano home with high ceilings and many windows on half an acre covered with giant tree ferns, ‘öhi‘a trees, anthuriums and gingers. He painted every square inch of wall space in a lauhala-weave pattern and installed the ancient, wavy-glass windows that he had rescued from Kaua‘i’s Hanalei School, built in 1835. With creative passion and endless patience, he embedded two walls of his bathroom with large shells from his collection, created stained glass windows with beach glass and settled into a quiet life of gardening and art.

But Morton’s work is bigger than his penchant for seclusion. From Aug. 21 until Oct. 3, he and fiber artist Alma Parker are featured artists at Volcano Art Center, which, on Aug. 28, hosts crafts demonstrations in conjunction with the Aloha Festivals’ Royal Court investiture ceremony in Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park. Parker’s large, haunting sculptures of fiber, wood and stone take a year or two to complete and have been acquired by the likes of Yale University’s Peabody Museum. Morton’s found-object interiors won’t be in the exhibition, but his strong, evocative paintings will be. These paintings, of Hawaiian subjects and Island faces, celebrate the myth and mystery of Hawai‘i, as well as the straightforward beauty of an anonymous Hawaiian face.

The prodigiousness of his work is stunning. Immediately beyond the front door of his Volcano house, past the antique Hanalei School windows, two large, round tables caught my eye. “One of these I made 25 years ago,” he says of the shell mosaics. “I made it in three weeks, but it took me three years to collect the shells.” A table in the shape of a pahu, a Hawaiian drum, stood like a sentinel to his bathroom, where two walls, 8-by-12 feet and 6-by-10 feet, were encrusted with large, whole sea shells. One wall was accented with two large wreaths he made from shells, from 6-inch white “chrysanthemums” to mandalalike patterns of cowry lips and miniscule red Ni‘ihau shells, called kahelelani. In the living room, he rolled a nondescript cover off his coffee table and revealed, nesting under glass, 36 gleaming eggs, 6 inches in diameter, made of beach glass, shells and beads equal in brilliance, it seemed, to Fabergé. (He has made as many and given them away.) One egg was covered in olivine crystals, another with sand from Hä‘ena, another with the orange fan-shaped shells called sunset shells, so rare that you’re lucky to find one in a lifetime. He has never cut a piece of beach glass; he finds pieces that fit. A gallon of shells yields just enough material for one perfect egg, but think of the time it takes to collect them.

“I used to pick shells in the dark, waiting for the sun,” he says. “And I’m always there at sunrise.” One morning, he says, instinct drove him to Polihale, a remote northwestern Kaua‘i beach. “I was there at sunrise,” he says, “and I found 36 sunrise clams in less than an hour.”

Nature may be generous with him, but he has more than earned his treasures. With a heart of gold, he is sometimes brooding and always truthful. I call him a tortured genius; he jokes that he’s a genius torturer. He is a master of paradox: a fine artist who has created his own folk art and a recluse who is destined for recognition.

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