Hey it's May,

I have a special guest post by artist Anela Ming-Yue Oh for you today, and it's all about kapa 🌿. You'll love this, enjoy!

— May

May Babcock Founder of Paperslurry, papermaking artist at maybabcock.com, and self-proclaimed paper + plant nerd.

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​An Artist’s Relationship with Kapa: Hawaiian Barkcloth, the Process, and Community​

Based on the Big Island of Hawai’i, Anela Oh is an artist working in papermaking, clay, and fiber who “looks to the richness of my cultural history, the natural world, and those who have passed away as resources in constructing worlds.” Recently, the artist has connected with kapa and Roen Hufford, a 2023 National Heritage Fellowship recipient for her unceasing efforts to reclaim and expand the Hawaiian art of ka hana kapa.

I’m so pleased to share Anela’s incredible work and essay on her relationship with kapa, the process, and the community. Please enjoy this guest post! — May Babcock

The first week of me being situated on island, I came to be at Roen Hufford’s studio. Roen is a recipient of a National Heritage Fellowship for protection of kapa, and otherwise well known as an artist carrying on the tradition of Hawaiian kapa making, constantly transforming and pushing what it can be.

Kapa is a craft that is present across other Pacific Islands, South East Asia, and parts of Africa. It involves taking the bast of a tree, stripped as one whole sheet, and beating it out until it becomes a soft cloth. In Hawai’i this art form was almost completely lost, and Roen’s mother Marie McDonald was part of the revival; she also received a National Heritage Fellowship for lei making. This is thanks in part to archived knowledge but mainly to Pacific Island brothers and sisters sharing what is still in lived memory as well as a healthy dose of experimentation.

Hawaiian barkcloth is called kapa, and though it was primarily used as cloth for clothes and ceremony it is now being made mostly just to be made. Roen is what we call my kumu (teacher) and she has said (loose quote) “our ancestors made kapa because it was necessary, and today we make it also because it is a necessity.”

Kapa making starts not with the prepared fibers but in the wauke or paper mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera) patch. This plant comes genetically from the same plants that are used for papermaking across east Asia, and it was brought as a canoe plant by Polynesians and spread across the Pacific. I love the image of what is brought in a canoe when you voyage to an unknown place, some plants were brought for no other purposes than beauty or as dyes. The patches of kapa at Roen’s farm were started by her mother. When the trees grow, you have to go out into the patch and pluck young branches constantly as each branch will create a hole in the fibers of the kapa. So much time is spent just in relationship with these plants and watching them grow before harvesting.

When the trees are harvested we strip the bast that day. There are many ways to scrape/strip the outer bark off of the bast, but it is all done in the harvesting period so you are left with a beautiful, long, (whole if you are good at it) strip of bark-less bast. This is then rolled up and placed in salt water to ret for several days. The retting process is something that doesn’t happen across all the different pacific islands, but makes the bast softer and more pliable to beat.

When retted, the bast is beaten out on a rock (pohaku) with the use of a wooden tool (hohoa). This stage of beating out bast is called mo’omo’o, the first beating. Something special to Hawaiian kapa is that the beating process isn’t considered complete at this stage, kapa is complete when you take multiple mo’omo’o and layer them directly on top of each other and felt them together. This felting process is done on a wooden anvil (kua lāʻau) with a rectangular tool (i’e kuku) that has watermarks carved into the surface. These watermarks have different meanings as well as uses but can be seen when lifted to the light in the dry piece, as with papermaking watermarks. They will also be used as texture on the surface.

When I first asked if it was okay to come learn from her, kumu Roen said “of course, where else would you learn it? We have many papermakers who come and talk about how it is all connected.” Though it would not traditionally be called paper in Hawai’i, kapa making is part of the living history of the paper mulberry and absolutely can be used like paper. It is maybe a more expansive version of what can be considered paper, emphasizing the sculptural and cultural properties of this medium we love. Fibers being knit together through felting is an integral part of understanding connections between our materials and what experimentation can be done in paper. The kapa widens only through the layering and fibers supporting each other as it is beaten. I am eternally grateful for the intention of my kumu Roen, who sees bringing diverse voices and people into her space to learn kapa as part of the responsibility to the craft, continuing to experiment and push what it can be now as well as preserving technical knowledge of traditions. She is constantly experimenting in her own practice and pushing us to think beyond what we have seen, bringing ourselves every day to the fibers.
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Kapa traditionally was beaten in community, a group of women beating bast and talking about the needs of their community, their lives, fostering mutual support. And that is what we do every week, a community connected by these fibers taking care of each other and growing together. I cannot express the grounding nature of being united in this work and the generosity of our kumu every week.

To me, as a mixed race Malaysian-Chinese artist living in the kingdom of Hawai’i, kapa means many things. It’s a tradition lost to the nation my father was born in, it is connection between the many islands of the Pacific, including the ones where my family is from. It is the living breathing heart of my community in Hawai’i. It is a way to constantly be reminded of how connected craft is to culture and the past as a living present, that there is no linear way of expressing culture or continuing to steward and imagine its future.

Mahalo nui loa kumu Roen Hufford and my kapa hui.

— Anela Ming-Yue Oh

Anela Ming-Yue Oh (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist based on the Big Island of Hawai’i. She holds a BFA in Studio Art from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. She uses materials that have a life of their own such as clay, paper, and fiber to feed her studio practice and create environments full of hope. As a mixed race artist of Malaysian Chinese descent, her visual language draws from her heritage as a reminder that there are reservoirs of strength we can draw upon from those who have passed away to imagine and construct new futures. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at Sonoma Ceramics, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Tiapapata Art Center in Samoa and a Teaching Artist-in-Residence at the Oxbow School. She was also a West Bay View Fellow at Dieu Donné Papermill and traveled to Malaysia as a SMFA at Tufts Traveling Fellow in 2023. You can signup for Anela’s mailing list at anelaoh.com.

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Also, please visit roenhufford.com to learn more about Roen Hufford’s incredible work and the process of making kapa.

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