Georgia O'Keeffe's Hawai'i

Georgia O'Keeffe, a legend of 20th-century American art, has had her life and work, well documented during her lifetime and since, take on mythic proportions. Similarly, Hawai'i is also mythic in our national psyche, perceived as a paradisiacal place of healing and renewal. In 1938, the Dole Pineapple Co. invited Georgia O'Keeffe to come to Hawai'i to produce two paintings for their national advertising campaign. Like other great artists of her day, including Kuniyoshi, Sheets, and Noguchi, she accepted, and in the spring of 1939, she spent nine weeks in the Hawaiian Islands.

On Maui, where she was hosted by 12-year-old Patricia Jennings, the daughter of the Hana sugar plantation manager, O'Keeffe had an encounter that would affect both women for the rest of their lives. Patricia, an isolated introvert who was homeschooled and raised by a highly critical mother, was nurtured by O'Keeffe, a mother figure. In turn, O'Keeffe, who was in the throes of marital duress and health challenges, recovered emotionally and physically during their 10 days together, and produced 20 little-known yet magnificent works of art.

In "Georgia O'Keeffe's Hawai'i," Patricia Jennings Morriss tells the story of their encounter, offering glimpses and a fresh look at the process of the great artist through the eyes of a pre-war teen in territorial Hawai'i. The book features the reproduction of O'Keeffe's 20 lush paintings of Island flora and landscapes, which have only been displayed all together once since their exhibition at An American Place in New York in 1940, where they received critical acclaim.

Art historian Jennifer Saville asserts in the introduction that O'Keeffe's nine-week sojourn in the Hawaiian Islands helped shape her career, bridging themes examined earlier to later subjects. This heartwarming, informative read fills a gap in our knowledge about the life and work of one of this great artist.

Reflecting on her time on Maui, O'Keeffe wrote, "I enjoy this drifting off into space on an island." Years later, she added, it was one of "the best things I have done." The book has been described as a "lovely scrapbook with beautiful reproductions of the Hawaiian paintings and stories about Jennings's time with O'Keeffe," a "charming, funny memoir" that adds Jennings's voice to the "O'Keeffe mythology," and a work that "masterfully contextualizes a mercurial woman whose art changed the world."

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