Melissa Chimera

The mixed media work is comprised of hanging, vertical panels and references the human footprint. Chimera renders wooden o‘o bars (Hawaiian digging sticks) used to cultivate the Hawaiian lowlands,  contemporary earthmovers and tractors, commercial airplanes, Lear jet silhouettes, and the aerial map of the Maui airport runway. The frantic, vertical lines and the artists’ abstract stitching across all of the panels suggest the rapidity in which the Hawaiian environment was radically transformed since the arrival of the first humans.