My overwhelming sense of curiosity has led me into many different jobs, and each one has provided new opportunities for learning and growth. I often held jobs concurrently, working for a company and also running my own consulting business on the side. A lot of that work has involved education and entertainment, thus I coined the term “edutainment.” I also wrote throughout my career— as a journalist, a documentarist, a historian, a researcher, a screenwriter, and now a novelist.
One of the fun jobs I have had was designing conference settings. The job gave me opportunities to travel to places I could not otherwise have gone. Hainan, Beijing, Vancouver, Toronto, Houston, and Yokohama were some of my favorites. I also designed numerous settings right here at home. Finding ways to create a traditional Hawaiian esthetic while incorporating the technical requirements of the 21st century was always challenging, but gave the artist and designer in me a great sense of satisfaction.
One of the typical technical challenges was finding ways to create backgrounds that would be flattering to our attendees, evoke a Hawaiian sense of place, not distract the viewer during videoconferencing, and be physically comfortable for the participants. Some of the things I learned were to avoid highly reflective surfaces (for both light waves and sound waves), use diffused lighting to avoid shadows, and be careful of color choices.
As a lighting designer, I understand how lighting needs to work with the room and its furnishings to provide the best environment to meet the client’s needs. Because of my background in traditional Hawaiian arts I enjoy using traditional Hawaiian materials such as kapa and hulumanu, as well as native and local woods in furnishings and lighting.
Manu (my husband) is a woodworker specializing in sustainable locally harvested woods, and we often collaborate on projects.