Local stories painted on library wall

By Aruna Lolani 24 March 2017, 12:00AM

There is a beautiful new look to the Nelson Memorial Library.

But it’s not just a beautiful look, the art tells a story, local stories.

This is thanks to the United States Embassy who brought renowned Hawaiian Mural Artist and Executive Director of the Estria Foundation, Estria Miyashiro.

For the past few days, Estria has worked on the outer wall of the Nelson Memorial Library with the children from American Corner’s reading programme ‘Turn a Life Around’ led by Quenjule Slaven and her group of volunteers.

Yesterday, their mural work was unveiled.

Estria said he felt that he’s seen and experienced a lot of the Samoan culture especially with the young children during the past few days. 

 “It was an honor and a humbling experience for us to be able to try and paint some of your stories on these walls and hopefully we were able to inspire and excite the children to more creative possibilities in their future,” he said.

 “We meditated together and we asked for inspiration and these are the stories that came up for us, so we decided to put them up all on the wall because a lot of the children didn’t really know these stories

 “Now this can be a place of learning for them in addition to, it was something inspiring and fun for them to do.” 

Charge D’ Affairs of the American Embassy Samoa, Angelina Wilkinson, is proud of what has been achieved.

 “As the American Representative, it brings me great pleasure to see such a creative blending of an urban U.S. art form, made it Hawaiian culture and Fa’aSamoa,” she said.

 “I trust we have piqued the interest of the ‘Turn A Life Around’ children and hopefully the general public as well and we look forward to future opportunities to bring creative Art Forms here to Samoa.”

By Aruna Lolani 24 March 2017, 12:00AM
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