Near the end of 2020, after two statewide lockdowns, the shuttering of 25% of Hawai‘i businesses, and a nonexistent First Friday monthly event due to the pandemic, an art center suddenly opened in downtown Honolulu. Despite emerging at what must have seemed like the least opportune moment, this new center was a long time coming: More than one year prior, local gallery owner and community activist Sandy Pohl helped secure a 1,400-square-foot space in the city- owned Chinatown Gateway Plaza. The goal was to host a pop-up event featuring printmaking demonstrations, and with artwork on view and for sale.

The event was a success and resulted in a two-and-a-half-month trial run for an art gallery to occupy Gateway Plaza’s long vacant ground floor. That trial period was soon increased to six months and 6,000 total square feet of space. Thanks to a $75,000 grant from the state for rent and programming (and plenty of elbow grease from volunteers who cleaned out funky rooms on the first and second floors), the art center kept growing. Creative Arts Experience (a nonprofit Pohl founded) along with the Hawai‘i Arts Alliance and six other organizations — Hawai‘i Craftsmen, the Hawai‘i Watercolor Society, Hawai‘i Handweavers’ Hui, Hawai‘i Potters Guild, Pastel Artists of Hawai‘i, and the Glass Fusion Collective — came together as founding charter members of the new gallery. They also gave it a name: the Downtown Art Center.

“The goal is for this to be a happening place where people flock to see art, make art, then venture out into the neighborhood,” says Pohl. “I didn’t go to school for art and I’m not an artist so I might have a different approach, but I think art should be playful. You should have fun, discover yourself, and enjoy a sense of community.”

Pohl’s love for creative gathering places dates back more than two decades. While on a trip to Virginia’s Old Town Alexandria in the 1990s, Pohl visited the Torpedo Factory Art Center. This converted munitions plant, which once produced aerial and submarine torpedoes during World War II, was now home to the largest number of publicly accessible working artist studios in the United States. That afternoon, while roaming the 85,000-square-foot facility, Pohl discovered artists who were painting, sculpting, making jewelry, weaving fiber, and collaborating on large-scale installations. There was a gallery on the top floor — the Alexandria Archaeology Museum, dedicated to preserving the city’s archaeological heritage — and exhibition space and classrooms on the lower floors.

It was the sort of place that artist Louis Pohl, Sandy’s husband, always wanted to open in Honolulu’s Chinatown. Though he passed away in 1999, Pohl has since been committed to creating art spaces downtown. “Over the last 25 years, I have opened and closed 11 art galleries,” she says. “Every time you do that, and every time there’s a downturn in the economy, you always have to reinvent yourself.”

Even in its infancy, the Downtown Art Center (or DAC) has already begun to develop a strong reputation in Hawai‘i’s art scene, particularly for offering unconventional themes and creative approaches to exhibitions. In May 2021, around 30 Bachelor of Fine Arts students who couldn’t hold an in-person graduation exhibition at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa campus (which had moved all classes and events online due to COVID) raised funds to organize their BFA thesis show at the Downtown Art Center instead. Last summer, DAC presented A Century Plus Two, celebrating the watercolor paintings and quirky ceramic creations of 102-year-old Hawai‘i artist and former Honolulu Star-Bulletin illustrator Esther Nowell, who was born in 1920. Earlier this year saw the second annual Architects as Artists exhibition, a survey of personal work created by local architects to share their unique artistic talents outside of designing buildings and to deepen the understanding and appreciation for architecture in Hawai‘i, and its architects.

This November, marks a milestone for the Downtown Art Center as it presents Artists of Hawai‘i 2023, the largest and longest-running all-media juried exhibition in the state. Designed to celebrate the best of Hawai‘i’s contemporary art, works by more than 2,000 local artists have been showcased since the exhibition’s inception in 1950.

“To make art is to enter an ecosystem that has all kinds of branches, categories, and functions,” Artists of Hawai‘i 2023 Juror Tyler Cann said, in a statement for the exhibition. “I suppose that people make art because they have a drive to put something into the world that wasn’t there before. The only advice I can give is to find the idea that drives you, be responsive to your materials, and take whatever risk you need to put it out there.”

Pohl believes more people now than ever are feeling the drive to make art, especially after these recent COVID-filled years. The Downtown Art Center regularly offers more than a dozen classes, from oil painting for beginners to guided life drawing sessions to collage and mixed media workshops. Pohl is hoping to expand DAC’s facilities to one day include a film photo lab, metalsmithing shop, pottery studio, even glassblowing.

“When people bring ideas to us, if we have the space and the time and if
we can afford it, we try it,” Pohl says. “Big museums sometimes have it tough because their exhibitions take time and everything is usually more expensive. But when you don’t have a lot of money to work with, you can take more chances and get creative because... well, what have you got to lose?”
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