Onomea Bioreserve Big Island Ceramic Art Tile

A pocket of Hāmākua coast about seven miles north of Hilo, where Onomea and Alakahi streams drop off Mauna Kea and the rainforest runs all the way down to the bay. The garden Dan Lutkenhouse cut from impenetrable jungle in the late 1970s, foot by foot, sits inside that valley now: boardwalks under ginger and heliconia, an orchid house, a small waterfall, an ocean overlook where the old sea arch used to be before the '56 quake took it. The trade wind comes up the valley most afternoons. Quiet that the road above does not reach.

Slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, in our family studio in Knoxville, Tennessee.