The artists and community stories behind Wailuku’s SMALL TOWN * BIG ART.

At 33 Market Street, recessed windows become an ocean, with constellations offering a way to navigate. Inside the Wailuku Garage, artwork follows the landscape upward, from taro patches to mountains and clouds. Along Main Street and Wells Street, other murals draw attention to the streams, landscapes, and experiences that connect the town.

These works belong to SMALL TOWN * BIG ART, a public-art initiative that invites a closer look at Wailuku. Each has an artist behind it. Each also carries the contributions of people who helped shape its meaning.

Learning the stories behind these works offers a new way to see Wailuku and the people and places that have shaped it.

A Beginning Built on Listening

SMALL TOWN * BIG ART developed through a 2018 Our Town grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Its founding collaboration brought together the County of Maui and Hale Hōʻikeʻike at the Bailey House/Maui Historical Society to develop public art grounded in Wailuku’s distinctive sense of place.

Maui Public Art Corps, established in 2020, grew out of that pilot and expanded the work across Maui County. Community dialogue remains central to its process: artists listen, research, and develop their ideas in response to the place where the work will appear.

Mary Kawena Pukui’s ʻŌlelo Noʻeau: Hawaiian Proverbs and Poetical Sayings provides another foundation. Artists work with community consultants to connect their projects with selected sayings, giving each commission a starting point for interpretation.

The broader program includes murals, sculpture, dance, music, animation, and recorded storytelling. Its murals offer a particularly inviting way to explore Wailuku, with stories unfolding across familiar buildings and everyday public spaces.

Finding Your Bearings

Wooden Wave · Wailuku Garage

An everyday arrival becomes part of the art experience at the Wailuku Garage.

Artists Matthew Kawika Ortiz and Roxanne Ortiz, who work as Wooden Wave, created six large-scale artworks for the garage in 2023. Developed through community consultations, the collection also helps people recognize different levels and find their way through the building.

The imagery moves through distinct environments. On the kalo level, taro patches and irrigation channels establish a connection with cultivated land. The mountain level introduces waterfalls and stream life. Above, clouds and pueo bring the sky into view.

Wooden Wave’s practice combines illustration, research, and site-specific storytelling. Here, those interests serve a practical purpose: the building’s directional system becomes an introduction to the landscape beyond its walls.

Explore the artwork and project film.

Reading the Stars

Edwin Ushiro · 33 Market Street

For Wailuku Hoʻokele / Wailuku Wayfinders, Edwin Ushiro worked with the building’s recessed windows, creating three sections that place the viewer before an open sea.

Within them, constellations become a way of thinking about stories: individual points that connect to help people find their bearings.

Ushiro grew up in Wailuku and trained in illustration before working as a storyboard artist, concept designer, and visual consultant. His mural developed through conversations with community contributors, including Kepā Maly and Lopaka White, whose recorded exchange helped inform its direction.

The work asks viewers to consider how traces of the past remain around us and how listening can make those connections more visible. Installed in August 2022, it brings that idea directly onto Market Street.

Meet the artist and hear the project’s conversations.

Following the Water

Cory Kamehanaokalā Holt Taum · 2121 Main Street

At 2121 Main Street, Return to the Source turns attention toward the ʻoʻopu and its journey upstream.

Mural artist Cory Kamehanaokalā Holt Taum developed the work from a recorded conversation between Clifford Naeʻole and Hōkūao Pellegrino. Its imagery considers the challenges stream life encounters in a built environment and the responsibility of caring for the conditions it needs.

Taum is known for large-scale paintings on varied surfaces, including concrete and metal. In this work, the built surface becomes part of the story, with the ʻoʻopu facing the challenge of moving through concrete along its route.

The mural offers a reason to think about the waterways running through town and the life they support. Its title also suggests a broader invitation: return to the source, observe carefully, and learn from the place around you.

Discover the mural and project documentary.

More Murals to Explore

Continue exploring with these additional works documented in the SMALL TOWN * BIG ART collection. Each link offers photographs and information about the artwork.

• EliEmmanuel Jarus · 2027 Main StreetInspired by time spent with Wailuku residents along the streams and ocean, this mural reflects the artist’s observations of water and life.

• Pō MekeʻauE.H.A.: Kirk Kurokawa, Elmer Bio, Amanda Bowers, and Noble Richardson · 2049 Wells StreetA collaborative work drawing on the valleys, rivers, kukui, and mountain landscape surrounding Wailuku.

• Kaulana Nā Wai ʻEhāCory Kamehanaokalā Taum · 2085 Main StreetA tribute to the four streams of Nā Wai ʻEhā, with patterns connecting the uplands and ocean.

• Celestial GuidanceMary Iverson · 1132 Lower Main StreetPlacing the observatory atop Haleakalā alongside a navigation compass, this mural explores different ways of looking to the stars and understanding our place in the world.

Put the Stories on the Map

The program’s interactive artwork map connects locations with photographs and individual project pages. Its legend distinguishes works currently on view from temporary projects, making it a useful starting point for planning a visit.

For additional context, the free Hoʻokamaʻāina app offers public-art, historic, and cultural walking tours of Wailuku.

Choose a few works and leave time to explore their project pages. Hearing a conversation or watching a short documentary before visiting can change what you notice when you arrive. The locations span several streets, so use the map to select a route that suits your visit.

The Next Conversation

The approach developed in Wailuku continues through Maui Public Art Corps and its work across the county. Its ongoing commissions remain rooted in public dialogue, with opportunities to follow projects, participate, and contribute through the organization’s website.

In Wailuku, the existing collection offers plenty to discover. Start with a mural that catches your attention, learn who helped shape it, and follow the story a little further. The next time you pass that wall, window, or familiar building, you will have another reason to look.