Curator Katherine Love at the opening of her Allyn
Bromley: At the Edge of Forever exhibition in January.
The exhibition is on view at HoMA through June 15, 2025.
Artist Allyn Bromley is an inspiration. At 96, she continues to go to her Nu‘uanu studio to create every week. An influential figure in Hawai‘i arts, she taught generations of students at Leeward Community College and at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, where she was director of the printmaking department. She retired in
2000 as professor emeritus.
Now on view at the Honolulu Museum of Art through June 15 is work she created over the past eight years. The exhibition, Allyn Bromley: At the Edge of Forever, features mixed-media print-based works that are intricately assembled from hundreds of hand-printed paper elements (many were torn down or cut from previous prints), as well as components such as plastic boxes, wire, wood and cord. These works explore themes such as memory, loss and the environment. The show also includes a work comprised of charred pieces of wood fencing, a grim reminder of the power of natural forces as well as the hope that resilience brings.
Just as Bromley gives new life to used materials, she is also inspired to find fresh meaning in familiar subjects. “I like to see if I can take something as trite as a flower and turn it into a provocative, more universal or larger idea,” she says.
She is also a great supporter of the arts community. She recently used some of her assets to create an endowment for a visiting artist program at the Honolulu Museum of Art. In the 1970s, she attended workshops at the museum with two well-known visiting printmakers. The experience was so gratifying and impactful that she wanted to make a gift that would enable future generations of Hawai‘i artists to have similar opportunities.
HONOLULU MUSEUM OF ART
900 S. Beretania St., Honolulu, HI 96814
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