The Academy of Arts at Linekona

Jennifer Rubin sits across from me, biting into a slice of pizza with candied pineapple, cinnamon, and crystallized sugar. She wrinkles her nose and frowns.

“I remember this from when I was a kid,” she says. “It would’ve been better with apple slices.”

You don’t like it? I ask. Seems interesting. I’d try it myself, but I don’t like sweet things.

“No, it’s good,” she decides. “Unique. It’s an original thing compared to all the usual stuff out there.”

Behind her, there is a buffet of pizzas lying half-eaten. She takes another bite, balancing the wafer-like slice delicately on her fingertips. Her hands are covered in a mixture of clay dust, rust, and what I hope is red paint.

“I’m sure I’ll be fine,” she says, about her hands. “I mean, I’m used to it by now.”

Jennifer has sixteen children. Her hands are evidence of having spent two hours with them today.

-- --

Bradley Capello looks out into the garden behind his office. A handful of overweight pigeons fight for a piece of bread that Al, the jovial security guard, has just thrown to them. A tiny sparrow flies out of nowhere, nabs the bread, and takes off. Al slaps his thigh, amused, and lets out a guffaw. Brad chuckles once.

“Happens every time.”

He turns back to face me. “I’m sorry; where were we?”

Linekona School, I say. The stone gray building across Thomas Square Park; the building we’re in. The former Lincoln Elementary School, McKinley High School, the College of Hawaii, and now the current educational arm of the Academy of Arts.

“Oh, that’s right.” He says.

He tells me that the school offers a wide range of art classes for adults, including varieties of painting, textile and fiber, printmaking calligraphy, figure studies, metal, and ceramics, as well as art classes for young adults, from kindergarten all the way up to high school. Most between $175 and $250 for a ten-to-twelve week course. Class sizes are based on attendance, usually between twelve to twenty.

The school is the only one of its kind, operating at its level, on the island—and for more than just the classes. Brad takes a flier out for Pecha Kucha and hands it to me, the international event where artists can run a slideshow of 20 pictures—of anything—for 20 seconds and to talk about each. They’ve had six so far; the Honolulu branch was hosted at Linekona.

“There’s potential for Linekona to be bigger in the local community,” he explains. “We’ve got venue space; I want the public to know more about us—that the arts in Hawaii can be more interactive.”

Brad says that he just hopes more interested people will actually interact.

“I know that people can be apprehensive about visiting museums,” he says, “but the Academy’s working on that. Linekona is working on that, too.”

Come, he says, the classes are getting out.

We step out of the office and to the foyer out front. Children from the day’s classes run to meet parents, who wave and thank teachers and assistants who wait outside.

Times are tough, Brad tells me, but as long as people continue to support local arts and artists—in this case, by going to Linekona or the Academy of Arts to see work or to take classes or to send their children—then he says that the school will continue to be there.

Behind us, Jennifer walks her class out and a little girl runs up out of nowhere and gives her a hug. Jennifer is about to pat her on the head when she notices her hands, covered in black paint, and decides against it.

In an apparent hugging mood, the little girl gives Brad—and me—a hug, too, before running off.

Brad tells me that he hopes that wasn’t too strange. It wasn’t, I say, but I add that I generally dislike sweet things. He chuckles and muses that the school feels the same from when he was little and took classes himself. Maybe they’re too traditional, he says.

No, it’s good, I decide. Unique. An original thing.