EP 41 Artist Abigail Romanchak on uncovering the unseen Hawaiian environment through the visual language of printmaking

Land and People

Abigail Romanchak was born and raised on Maui and is a native Hawaiian printmaker who conveys the Hawaiian environment–the sounds, bird songs, human footprints across Haleakalā–through the medium of printmaking. She has both a Bachelors and Masters in Fine Art with a specialty in printmaking from the University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa and her work has been shown and collected by museums and institutions throughout the world. She takes her inspiration from uncovering the hidden, sometimes minute patterns in nature and art–from nearly invisible watermarks made by Hawaiian kapa beaters on wauke (or mulberry) to the rings made by trees that mark cycles of drought. Through her bold use of abstract lines and geometric shapes, her work is an intentional departure from commercial representations of the Hawaiian landscape, specifically in the following work: her Kahea series (or the visualization of Hawaiian bird calls), the silence of Haleakalā as represented by sound waves in the Ke Ano series, the Pilina series of prints made with ash from the Kula 2023 fires on Maui, and her Tracked series of human conservation activity.