Abigail Romachak

Hawaii, USA

Abigail Romanchak’s art empowers and asserts a Hawaiian sense of identity and culture. She believes that native cultures are jeopardized once they stop speaking to people in the present. As an artist, she seeks to perpetuate Hawaiian culture not through traditional means, but contemporary ones, so that it may endure for generations to come. Abigail’s work reveals an essential alignment between multiple systems of marking and is greatly influenced by the conceptual terrain of human imprint on the natural environment. Abigail explores the boundaries between marking, claiming and making the unseen and overlooked ultimately visible.

Romanchak holds a BFA and MFA in printmaking from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Abigail’s work shows nationally and internationally. Her work belongs to many public and private collections including, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Australia National Museum, The White House, The Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, Hawaii State Art Museum, and The Nature Conservancy of Hawaii. Abigail received the Ellen Craig Choy Award, as most outstanding artist, in the 2010 Biennial IX at The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu. In 2015, Abigail was awarded the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation fellowship. This fellowship made it possible for Abigail to produce a new body of work for a group exhibition, ‘Aloha ‘Aina’ at The Lower Saxony State Museum, Hanover, Germany, Galerie Rash, Kassel, Germany, Linden Museum, Stuttgart, Germany. Most recently, Abigail received the Joan Mitchell Fellowship and is exhibiting a new body of work in Portland, Oregon at the Center for Native Arts and Cultures.

As one of the most isolated island groups in the world, Hawaii has limited water resources, making these islands highly vulnerable to climate change. On August 8th, 2023, the island of Maui experienced an unprecedented series of wildfires that contributed to the loss of one hundred and two lives and thousands of acres of land, including the historic town of Lahaina. Fortunate to survive, Abigail recalls driving past a grove of burnt trees in the aftermath of these catastrophic fires.
Interested in how scientists use tree rings to provide clues about past climate conditions, Abigail created Wai, a layered woodcut print depicting a microscopic view of tree ring patterns during wet and dry seasons. Essentially these intricate marks are a historical record of weather patterns over time. Wider rings signify abundant rain, while narrow rings indicate harsher conditions like drought. These carved lines memorialize a shift in climate aecting not only Hawaii but cherished environments all over the world.

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