The Grand Wailea Sculpture Project

The Royal Hawaiian Family King Kamehameha 

and co. Jan was excited, he had big plans for 

some park with all the royal family.  But later 

when I started taking classes the sculptures 

were gone and he never spoke of the 

project again.

I first came to Hawaii in 1989 to attend Brigham Young University on the beautiful north shore of Hawaii in a small town called Laie. Hawaii is such a wonderful place to go to school, the agreeable climate, beautiful smells, sites and wonderful people everywhere. One truly has a sense of awakening, of coming alive. My senses where further stimulated when I was taken by an art friend to the on campus ceramics studio, the building where all sculpture and pottery took place.  The place was filled with figure sculptures and other ceramics. When entering the ceramics studio you walk right into an open area where all the sculpting takes place.  As I walked through the door I first saw a group of figures Jan Fisher was working on, a group of King Kamehameha and his family. They where half sized figures, grouped together with the man himself, King Kamehameha, at the front. For a budding artist to see such works in the making, it was awesome. Jan had his back to me and was working on the piece.  He craned his neck around as we entered and I was introduced as a new arrival from New Zealand that wants to be a sculpture student.  Jan was very nice and gave me a brief tour of the studio.  He showed me some pieces he had been working on and told me what various projects students do here. I think I must have peaked his interest as there was a long line over the years of top art students from New Zealand.

My First sculpture in Hawaii: 
Christ in America

At that time Jan himself was fairly easy going and would often come to class late and would always talk about a book he was reading and things he was doing with his family.  As the term wound down he got a call from an architectural firm that was in charge of a huge project building a luxury hotel on Maui, The Grand Hyatt Wailea, later changed to the Grand Wailea.  That got him really excited, full of enthusiasm and visions of large sculptures gracing an upscale resort.  In retrospect it was great timing for me.  In these two years he would do a dozen or more larger than life size figures for the hotel as well as three other major commissions. This was ideal for me because I could see the full process of a sculptor vying for commissions, proposals, dealing with clients creating maquettes and ultimately creating the full piece to be molded and cast in bronze. It was a hands on in real time experience.  What was really good for me and all the students was the fact that he did all his work at school in the same classroom we sculpted in so we got to sculpt our own stuff right along side him.

The first sculpture(in the round) I ever 
did in Hawaii was a shark for the 
Wailea Project.

Not only this but Jan was willing to bring me along with him and participate in the work in any way I wanted to. As the school shut down for summer Jan was able to have the ceramics studio to himself.  He let me and another senior student, Brett Garret, work on some of the small pieces he would propose to the architectural firm for the hotel. He had me do a 28 inch tiger shark, very nice of him considering my inexperience.  He guided me and I did the best job I could.  He kept telling me to go study sharks learn all you can about sharks.  At the time I thought what does he mean?  All you need to do is look at a picture and sculpt that.  Now I can see he wanted me to gather as much information as possible and use various pieces of information or whatever insight I had learnt and boil it down into the piece.  But at this time I just thought why do I need to read and look up a bunch of stuff?  I just want to sculpt.

After we had got together some sea life pieces for the architects we took them over to the office to show the people on the hotel project.  He even let Brett and I come to the meeting and carry our pieces in the office.  I had done a shark, Brett a few turtles and Jan a whale or two.  In the meeting I saw Jan present his ideas and see their response. I think I even spoke.

After the meeting Jan was so happy.  We went to MacDonald's and had a small bite to eat. Then he realized he had forgotten his portfolio at the office.  So we drove back there, Brett and I waiting in the car while he went in to grab it.  He was in there for quite a while and we wondered what was going on.  When he came out he was completely different and we drove home in silence.  The next day Brett said we are out, the architects worried out loud to Jan that they wanted good work from him, not inexperienced beginners like me and Brett.  So my shark was out and no longer wanted so I removed it from the ceramics studio. 

These three small sized female figures were not the original maquettes Jan took for
approval, those ones were much smaller.  These ones and the male counterparts
were made to be cast and sold in a gallery.

I hardly went around to the ceramics studio after that for the rest of the summer. At times, it was fun to come in and see Jan working on figures of Hawaiian dancers for the hotel.  He took the maquettes or small models into the firm to be reviewed, we were not invited to those meetings!  It was good for Jan as these ideas and other figures he presented were approved.

The force behind all this, the creation of the hotel and the desire to decorate it with sculptures was a Japanese Billionaire Takeshi Sekiguchi.  The whole project was very expensive, they went all out for this one.  In todays dollar it would have cost easily over a billion dollars. 

The first set of approvals for Wailea were the six Hawaiian dancers, 3 male and 3 female and a mermaid for the front area of the hotel. The deadline for their creation and delivery in bronze made it so that Jan would only have about a weeks clay work on each of the 7 foot figures or 7 weeks to finish them all. Once done, a mold maker would be bought in from the mainland and the molds send to a foundry in California for bronze casting.  With a big budget, Jan was able to hire assistants and models (I could not be hired because I was a foreign student) to pose, weld up the armature and make the oil based clay.  The clay was mixed and made in a steel drum, when cooked to the right consistency it was dumped on a big piece of plywood and allowed to cool a bit.  While still warm and easily pliable, it was taken into Jan who grabbed great handfuls and started slapping the clay to the rebar armature.  Within an hour the whole figure would be blocked up, unheard of speed for such a large project.

I  blocked these three small male figures up and Jan
finished them. He paid me by buying the wedding
and engagement ring for my fiancé. Very nice since
the second alternative for a poor art student was
the rim of a soda pop lid.

Jan worked long hours and had his models pose for him though out this time. For the three females he used pretty much the same person for these and the other pieces he would create.  The models name was Shawna.  She had maybe some Polynesian but seemed more Latin to me.  For the male moldels he used different guys, his son Gary, and Hawaiian name Kenamu and one other.  Sometimes when one male was modeling another would help get the clay cooked.

Jan wanted to have all six pieces going at the same time so when one model got tired he could switch to another sculpture and model. The models wore shorts or bikini.  The figures were first blocked up nude then the closing was added.  Doing them nude first, the figures would have life and proper anatomy coming through even on covered areas. When one walked into the ceramics studio the floor was dominated by this big project. Jan wanted the students, their work, to be pushed and kept over to one small side of the studio.  This seemed a little restricting but to see the sculptures being created was worth it.  One time during the day Jan was working in the studio without a model when the door opened.  Jan was hunched over and did no see the person.  The light came in, there was a long pause, then the door slammed.  Jan figured something was wrong and went to look out and saw the back of a school administration person walking away. It must have got back some how that old Fisher had a much of nude statues in the school ceramics studio. Jan chased down the official and explained his working method and how the pieces were not going to be nude.  Contrast this with my girlfriend, Kelly, who went in and thought the place was so awesome, so I married her! Many students and visitors loved coming in the studio at this time.

Jan did such a good fast job on the work, the architectural firm and even Sekiguchi himself were impressed. They were going to get another artist to do works for the garden/lagoon area but Jan was able to do some maquettes and get to do works for there as well.  He was contracted for 7 more pieces including some Hawaiian legends like the Kama Pua’a.

A scaled up version of the pig man,
Kama Pua’a approved

The Hawaiians have a legend of a pig man, the native Americans a wolfman who could change his appearance from a man to a raging pig.  Jan did a sculpture of him for the hotel on Maui.  He started off with a maquette for approval.  He had the maquette at his home in Kaaawa.  One time during the day when the house was empty, he went upstairs to take a nap.  While half asleep he heard the sliding door open and a strange sound like feet smacking the linoleum floor.  It could be heard moving around in the kitchen then onto the carpet and the distinct sound of it coming up the stairs.   Jan said oh no it’s coming up here!  He covered his face with the blanket and refused to see what had just flung open the door to his bedroom and was hoping around his bed.  I’m not looking I’m not looking he said to himself.  Eventually the visitor went down the stairs and left.  He later asked a Hawaiian friend what that meant.  He said the Kama Pua’a was coming to see the sculpture you did of him and he liked it.

A dainty figure of Hene and the Mo’o. Jan would say it
was a polynesian version of Eve and the serpent.

Like I said I didn’t help that much, being a foreign student, but I did work a little on the pieces if he needed the help. On one occasion a large sculpture he was working on Hine and the Mo’o had a big crack developing in the lizards tail. Jan had to leave for the evening so he left it to Don Smiler and me to fix it.  Our first approach was to drive spikes into the clay near the crack and repair the break.  But as we drove spikes in the crack became bigger until a very big chunk fell off! So i said lets do this right and lay in a better support structure with rods and pack in fresh soft clay.  If we try and stick the fallen piece back in it will just fall out again.  So Don and I went to work and to make sure it was packed good I had Don slap and pack the clay in with the side of a hammer.  As we got it back to where it was I said hey stop!  Look at that!  Don stepped back and I said look it looks way better with that texture and the hammer marks in there, it looks really good.  It looks like the tail is about to move. We were so proud of our work.  I thought it looked better.  Well Jan came in the next day and...it was like how parents feel when their toddler smears peanut butter all over the furniture, he hit the roof!  Me and Don were in trouble, but Don had got there before me and took the brunt so by the time I got there Jan was just mumbling to himself quoting from the movie Amadeus ‘too many notes?...which ones should I change your majesty?..too many notes!’

The final winding up of the project, all the additional pieces were done with great effort by Jan and his helpers.  Interestingly, after shoving all these things through so fast, instead of being installed in time for the opening of the hotel, there were construction delays and the sculptures languished in storage.