Our Artists
Simone Fromen
Simone Fromen is a contemporary oil painter based out of Honolulu, Hawai'i attending the University of Hawaii at Mānoa for her Bachelors in Fine Arts. Simone is the current director for the House of Bloom Artist Collective, and is driven to build a strong community of artists who work together to grow as individuals. Simone was given the director role in 2023 after the previous director of the formerly titled group "Pau Hana Painters" decided to step away, and she has been honored to be in the position ever since.
Simone’s art intends to capture moments of humanness. From the awkward off-guard moments, to the beautifully nostalgic, Simone’s paintings are meant to allow viewers to appreciate every moment.With a recent focus on childhood and the idea of play, Simone's subjects are often children engaging in outdoor activities and backyard fun. As a means to connect with her own childhood and to a time of playing outdoors in the mud, Simone's work captures a simpler time that all viewers can connect to.
Starting off with images she has taken on her own, Simone uses oil paint to capture the figures or scene while also allowing the paint to take on its own forms, leaving ambiguous spaces and moments to allow viewers to fill in their own memories and experiences.
Florani Camacho
Florani’s art is an ever-evolving narrative of her life as a first-generation immigrant from the Philippines, unfolding against the diverse cultures of Hawai'i. Her journey is a delicate balance between nurturing the connection to her roots and embracing the opportunities for self-discovery and growth. Through Florani’s paintings, she aims to capture the essence of everyday activities that serve as threads, connecting her past to her present while weaving the fabric of her individuality. As a part of Florani’s process, she reflects and makes careful observations of the multiple worlds she is a part of—her roots, Hawai’i, and her individuality. In her work, she hopes to convey the experience of growth, adaptation, and the continuous search for identity. Her art is a bridge, connecting her Filipino heritage to the ever-evolving narrative of her life in Hawai'i. It speaks to the hearts of immigrants and individuals navigating the complexities of culture and self-discovery.
Reed Lover
Color and flow are themes queer artist Reed Lover explores in his work. His work is primarily in digital media and acrylics, but has also created work in pencil, wood, ceramic, and fabric. Lover’s early paintings investigate the relationship between the mind and body; he has evolved his practice to include distinct color palettes and cityscapes. The intentionality of the colors is to evoke the viewer and enhance the mood of a piece.
Another part of Lover’s work is the mimicry of natural forms. He designs flora by using man-made materials and integrates minimalist composition. He hopes these forms, known as Mimics, incite the viewer to look inward and contemplate their relationship with nature.
Julianna Bolanos
As a glass artist, I pull inspiration for my paintings from the work I create in glass. I’m most drawn to surrealist two-dimensional and three-dimensional art and often incorporate occultist imagery while exploring themes of afrofuturism and extraterrestrial life. I often create first, then find out the motivation later, so my process is more intuitive and sub-conscious than deliberate. I believe everything is a self portrait, so painting is a way for me to explore areas of myself that aren’t so easily discovered otherwise.
Madi Mazzola
Madeleine is an artist and teacher born in Ojai, CA, currently living and working in Honolulu, HI. She works as a visual arts teacher at Wai’anae High School, and paints out of her garage, where she maintains a rich studio practice. She has been drawing and painting for her entire life, and she studied art at Dartmouth College, graduating with honors in 2019.
I am most drawn to art that creates a stillness where both love and grief can exist, and this is always what I work to make. I began to explore the utility of symbols to this end, and realized quickly that the intervention of our inner worlds as viewers meant that whatever I intended might be oceans away from the way it is understood. In my most recent work, I have seen my process as an excavation — unearthing thoughts, images, memories, symbols, and fragments of writing and music from deep in the geology of my mind that contain or leave space for the beautiful and the terrible. Using these recovered symbols embedded with personal meaning, though sometimes forgotten significance, I work backwards to decipher the meaning of their connection to one another, and then go further to the source of the feeling and then beyond that to the feeling itself, delving into the interior always, and again.
Kara Almonte
My paintings are made using a mix of media consisting of acrylic, watercolors, and oils. They are fueled by the overwhelming feelings that are often too complex to put into words. Sometimes we feel pure bliss and other times pure chaos, to the point where words cannot do our emotions justice. My artwork explores the human relationship with our own personal sentiments, often at their extremity. Inspired by organic shapes and patterns, my paintings reflect the connection between humans and nature. The natural cycle of our own emotions and the parallels of cycles in nature itself.
The process I use consists of both drawing and painting in a multitude of thin layers. This allows me to create a level of transparency via a slow build up over time. By working on multiple paintings simultaneously, the process itself becomes a cycle, with each work influencing the last. My work aims to inspire viewers to find their own connections within nature and perhaps, themselves. I invite them to explore their own emotions with the same forgiving temperament that we extend to nature.
Boz Schurr
Boz is currently a drawing, painting and computer illustration and animation teacher at Kamehameha Schools Kapālama. She is also a freelance graphic designer, muralist and artist/illustrator. She enjoys traveling the world (when she can), painting murals around the island, running, drinking coffee and chilling with her cat. Boz’s artwork explores the broad scope of mental health experiences using the visible color spectrum as a visual allegory.
There is a strange disconnect between mental illness and normalcy – as if there is a stark dividing line between the two: Black and white, us and them, completely separate. I believe this arbitrary classification, ill, healthy, recovering... is very similar to how we catalog our colors: blue, red, green... The visible color spectrum reflects the human experience. An experience where colors cannot be contained as single, definable points. The spectrum is one band of ever shifting, transitioning hues, as are we – our lives and our experiences are continuous and overlapping, yet discreet.
Nikki Aviles
Nikki Aviles is a local self-taught artist born and raised on Oahu. She is a graduate from Washington State University with a degree in Graphic Design, and minors in both Fine Art and English. Nikki is no stranger to working with a collective of artists. She is one of the original members of Painting Hawai'i, a local group of muralists in Honolulu, and also works with Plein Air Picnic events. As a working studio artist she creates custom canvases and works as a vendor for pop-up markets around the island.
Jessica Ackerley
I am a self taught visual artist who has been honing my craft for the past three years through copious amounts of YouTube videos, walks through Chelsea art galleries, and the occasional art class at local Hawai’i art school, Fishcake. My creative endeavors have not been limited to just visual art. As a professional guitarist for the past fifteen years, my focuses in jazz, improvisation, composition and experimental soundscapes have deeply informed my recent visual practice, merging it into an interdisciplinary focus. This has brought opportunities for residencies at Atlantic Center for the Arts and Arctic Circle, as well as grant awards from Canada Council for the Arts. Currently, I am pursuing a PhD at University of Hawai’i in Music Composition and live in Ala Moana with my husband and our tabby cat, JHawk.
As a painter I augment vivid hues amongst the juxtaposition of micro and macro sized objects. This is executed through the enlargement of botanicals against broad bird’s eye views of topographies. These environmental elements explore the possibilities in not only how they each can “fit” from a compositional and proportional standpoint, but also a means to investigate the environmental impact across distances between my birth place, Alberta, Canada, and current residence of Hawai’i. Upon first viewing, each painting projects a mask of beauty, but between layers of plant life are cropped aerial land masses of Albertan oil excavation sites. What may initially appear as a nod from traditions in landscape and still life painting, further challenges the viewer to observe upon closer inspection various threads that tie drastically different geographies with both negative and positive impacts.
Madeline Mynatt
Born and raised in Hawaii, my artistic journey is rooted in the everyday life and rich culture of the islands. Currently a soon-to-be graduate in the art program at UH Manoa, I find inspiration in everyday life for my work as a freelance artist and sneaker maker at Golden Goose Deluxe Brand. Along the way, I've had the privilege of contributing to various group shows, each serving as a chapter in my ongoing exploration of creativity.
Navigating within the realms of illustration, textile art, and printmaking, my creations are meant to show a diverse spectrum of everyday life—from whimsical animals to intricate dinner settings and expressive portrayals of people and hopefully injecting humor into each piece. I aim to craft a varied and engaging visual narrative that resonates across different subjects and settings.
Lily Marcoux
Born & raised in Oahu, I’ve had a passion for art throughout my childhood, regardless of whether I expressed with painting, mixed media, etc. In 2022, I graduated with a diploma in the International Academy of Business & Design Arts. In 2023, I began painting tattoo flash, studying Japanese art & creating street art. I use my social media to promote my art for those who enjoy the content of both worlds.
I am a painter & mixed media artist inspired by the history of tattoo art. My work acknowledges American traditional, Japanese, & Neo-traditional. My goal as an artist is to evolve consistently & experiment with different mediums. I’d like to continue to study the techniques of Japanese artwork & incorporate into my composition.
Jojo
I am currently pursuing a BFA in Painting at UH Mānoa. Iʻve been painting since 2022 and found it to be my favorite medium.
My work to date explores how I express myself with color and the dynamic subjects that I find beautiful, like drapery and trash bags. Occasionally, my paintings derive from personal experiences and the like, but you will often see some form of drapery in my art. I think that is important for artists to have; not necessarily to revolve your art around a subject, but finding the beauty in the small and mundane.