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ISLAND LOVE
All of her life Garé had great reverence for the
Hawaiian islands (from 1959 known as the USA's 50th state under
the name of Hawaii). She was born on Hawaii (the largest of the
islands), and later the family moved to the smaller island of
Oahu. Due to the very real Japanese threat during the Second
World War Hawaiian families were encouraged to move to the
American mainland, so Garé and her family settled in California
in 1942. After the war Garé's parents returned to the islands
for good, while she stayed for several reasons (work and
marriages), but she never forgot the places were she grew up.
During her island years Garé made many graphic expressions of
her love for the locations. Sketches, paintings, poems, and small
books are examples. In this page you are presented to a few
selected examples that combine most of these ingredients, namely
extracts from a large sketchbook (A3 oversize format). In it
Garé wrote about all the largest islands in the archipelago and
she used watercolour images to accompany the texts. The book was
made when Garé attended the third grade in school.
NB.: It is important to notice that the book dates back to 1926, and that the ensuing time has not been good to it. Among others, all the contents were made on very brittle tissue paper. This means that all the, now, yellowed paper and faded renderings below have been gently restored up to a point were you can 'get the idea'. Due to the very large format of the pages it has also been necessary to cut the images below. This means that numerous small vignettes on the text pages have been omitted. Still, it seems impressive what a 9-year old, talented girl could accomplish...
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