About Volcano Gallery's Lead Artists
The Past, Present, and Future...Our Story...
Volcano Gallery / Aloha Accents (TM) is a working jewelry & art studio featuring the unique creations of husband and wife artists and long-time Volcano residents Ken and Beate Arnopole.
Message From the Artists:
We specialize in unique handcrafted creations "Made in Hawaii", specializing in Koa Wood Gifts, Jewelry, Gemstones, and unique wall-art. Our Studio is located in Volcano Village on the Big Island of Hawaii, just 1 mile from the entrance of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
We welcome visitors, but as we don't have regular retail hours please call ahead to make sure we can be available for your visit. ( Cell/text: 808-967-8617 )
Attracted by the spiritual power of the Volcano and remoteness of the area, we moved to Volcano in 1994 and ever since enjoy living on our private acreage being surrounded by a beautiful tropical rainforest. Volcano is a magical and inspirational place to live and create things of beauty. We are feeling blessed to have been able to make this unique special place our home.
When moving to Volcano we were looking forward to a change ... living life at a slower pace and fulfilling our desire to work together on a daily basis as a team, and mastering our talents to be able to become full time artists. This was a big change from our previous hectic corporate life ( Ken as an Industrial Designer and Engineer, and I, Bea, as a Graphic Artist and Software Programmer) but a welcome adventure. Married in 1986 our journey together has been nothing short of unpredictable, and our road was filled with many obstacles and challenges, but "adaptability" ( nowadays called "pivoting" ) happens to be one of our many talents that helped us try to make a living in this unique and very remote area of Hawaii.
Living in the artist community of Volcano..
With a new life in Volcano we started working on our goal to acquire the tools, knowledge, practice, and loyal customer base to support us becoming full-time artists. . On the long road to this goal, we worked in a variety of areas to cover the bills: A micro-size Pizza Company (Rainbow Moon Pizza), baked delicious cakes, croissants, bagels, and sweet treats for the local Volcano Farmers Market, and operated vacation rentals as Volcano became more popular with tourist that wanted to stay in the area. Our endeavours included being the hosts of a tiny Volcano Cafe for a short time ( Volcano Coffee House) and even a Candy Company ( Aloha Candy Co.) that produced a small quantity of high quality 100% Hawaiian Chocolates and other treats for a limited customer base. We are delighted that now we are able to focus full time on our Hawaii inspired beautiful handcrafted Jewelry, Wood Gifts and Home Accents, and enjoy creating new one of a kind pieces of beauty every day.
The art of Lapidary and Gemstones...
Along the road to becoming full-time artists, Ken learned and perfected cutting gemstones and is now a Master Gem Cutter recognized by the International Gemcutter’s Association. He is the only colored gemstone cutter in Hawaii, and also a Professional Certified Gemologist (CG)..
We consider ourselves “Makers of Beautiful Things” and feel very privileged of being able to live in perhaps one of the most picturesque places in Hawaii, the upland rainforest of Volcano, which is located right next to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, and truly a unique location.
Each new creation starts with a spark of an idea that becomes the desire to turn that idea into a piece of wearable art. We collaborate together to come up with a design that is pleasing to the eye and we both can agree on, and then work together to shape metal into a thing of beauty and transform natures raw elements into something great. First we design.. then we create.. and then it is for you to enjoy. All our creations are intended to bring a little bit of the Hawaiian Aloha into your heart and home.
The Varez - Arnopole Collaboration...
There are unique circumstances that may have led us to cross paths with Dietrich Varez First, I, Beate, share the same roots with Dietrich Varez of both of our families being from Berlin, Germany.
Dietrich was born their in 1938 and experience the war-torn Berlin till his mother married an American and moved to Hawaii at the age of 8, whereas my father (Heinz Kiekebusch) was born in Berlin in 1934 and also experienced the war torn-Berlin first hand, but his mother (my grandmother) was killed during a bomb attack in 1945. Left with no mother and a father that had gone to war and to that date not returned, my father was left alone with no parent at the age of 10 and later escaped to West Germany before the permanent Wall between East and West was built.
A shared love for The Volcano Rainforest...
But similarities don’t stop there.. Just like Varez, we initially bought a property in Hawaii “sight unseen” after reading a small ad in a paper that said “ 6 acres for sale in paradise” – “ Owner Financing”… and just like Varez in his early years after buying his 9 acre property the same way with their savings and trying to locate it in the jungle, we stood in the road where our new property was supposed to be and said “.. well.. we own 6 acres here somewhere”... if we can ever find it..
Just like Dietrich, we enjoy living in the rainforest, enjoy our seclusion, being hermids of some kind, and enjoy to just “create” while being surrounded by the peacefulness of the remote rainforest of Volcano . The process of creation in seclusion is more important to us than fame or fortune. Neither Dietrich, nor us, was in favor of the lime light of being a famous artist, being places one is expected to show up, or be at a certain place at a certain time when someone else wants you to, or having to do things a certain way because that is a way you should do it. Neither of us wanted to be influenced by other artists or techniques and each of us desired and enjoyed developing our own style.
Varez Wearable Art:
We always admired Dietrich’s artwork when we first saw it back in 1994 after moving to the Big Island, and envisioned creating special jewelry pieces based on his block prints right away even back then. However at that time gold had sky-rocketed and the right tools and equipment were just to expensive then for us to afford. Then given that most galleries only work on consignment, with their limited resources it just did not seem financially viable to produce the artwork in real gold.
So then 20 years later the Varez Wearable Art Jewelry finally was born. We finally had accumulated all the tools needed ( there is always another new tool on the wish list, though – one can never have too many tools ..) and together we have perfected the process that allows us today to produce Varez inspired Jewelry in 925 STERLING SILVER, 24K GOLD over STERLING SILVER (Vermeil), and fine Jewelers Copper as unique affordable Wearable Art. Just like Dietrich produces his block prints one at a time, by hand, each piece of jewelry we create is sculpted one at a time by hand. Then each piece is fired, and later polished to a lustrous finish.
After showing Dietrich a sample of one of the first pieces he was delighted what he saw and it was decided that the time was right to produce the envisioned Jewelry with Dietrich's art and to introduce it to the public. Dietrich Varez exclusively licensed his artwork to us for producing jewelry and home accents, which will include solid bronze, copper, silver, gold, and gold-plated creations.
It is important to us to create wearable art that is affordable, just like Dietrich always wanted to sell his prints as reasonable as possible. He wanted his prints to be able to be in your Mom’s house and in his mom’s house, not just the rich and famous that will store their expensive artwork away in a vault. Just like the new Bronze and Copper Jewelry is wearable art to be worn, not to be stored away.
We are extremely proud of being able to work with Dietrich Varez and to create jewelry with his artwork. In the process we learned the stories behind each of his prints and now have an even bigger admiration for each block print he created, and are extremely excited to share their creations with the rest of the world.
Like two peas in a pod, this is a collaboration that was meant to be… it just took time to happen, but good things sometimes move slow..specially in Hawaii .. but when they do.. it is amazing.!