St. Regis Princeville at Last

For some reason, as my friend Neil and I approached Kaua'i's north shore in our white rental Xterra, the promenade theme from Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" was playing on my inner iPod. You know, the one with all the trumpets and the stately melody. When we entered the St. Regis Princeville Resort overlooking Hanalei Bay and the mountains of NaPali, the serendipity of this musical selection became clear. The designers of this new version of the old hotel have stripped down and re-created the space into something very much worthy of trumpets playing.

Amazingly enough, my painting is the central focus of the entire grand lobby area, a fact that was never quite conveyed to me. Perhaps it's better this way as I would have been frozen in nervous terror at the responsibility. Fortunately I do think that my Hi'iaka and Lohi'au canvas has enough drama and iconic nature in spite of its quirky details to stand in this space and even add to the legendary qualities. Now I appreciate why the designer, Rhonda Rasmussen of the WATG design group was so hard to please during this project. Well, I hope she's OK with it now, because Neil and I worked our butts off getting the piece restretched and in place!