Heidi Buscher ’88 remembers “feeling a spark” the first time she touched clay under the guidance of former HPA art teacher Cindy Yarawamai. As a graduate of San Francisco State University’s MFA program, Buscher found success as a sculptor before dedicating herself to teaching, even showing her work at the Academy of Art Museum. After a decade of raising children and teaching art at Parker School, Buscher recently woke her dormant artistic practice from what she calls “a ten-year nap.” A carpal tunnel surgery made it difficult for Buscher to sculpt without experiencing pain, and she decided to pick up a paint brush instead. According to Buscher, the work “just came pouring out.” With the encouragement of HPA parent Gina Willman P’20 of Willman Interiors, Buscher has recently shown and sold selections from her debut painting series, Threading Through Time, a lush and thoughtful examination of Hawai‘i’s present, past, and future.
Can you describe the concept behind Threading Through Time?
There’s a technical aspect and a spiritual aspect when it comes to what I’m trying to capture. Technically, I’m trying to balance abstract mark-making with more traditional portraiture. Those two things can sometimes clash, but when it does work, I can feel it, and it just locks together. On a deeper level, I’m trying to convey a sense of spirituality, a sense of our humanity, and our connection to people and places that came before us. How can we humans be here, and love as hard as we love, and then just be gone? What remains are the stories, myths, and legends shared across time and civilizations. These myths truly anchor my work. There’s also a certain level of addressing the carving up of paradise. My grandfather remembers hunting ducks in Waikiki when it was still swampland. It’s a way of wanting to capture these places and how they change.
What materials do you draw inspiration from?
It’s a mixture. I’ve gathered thousands of inspirational source materials: patterns, fabrics, archival texts, handwritten letters, and early contact Hawaiiana imagery. Some of my compositions are straight paint to canvas, but many begin as physical and digital collages. I layer back and forth with pastels and pencils and other materials, then I’ll pull these into the digital realm and then back out again. The viewer might not know it, but in paintings like Surfer at Waikiki, I’ve got layers of abstract references in the skyline that I drew from old maps of Waikiki. Similarly, in the Naupaka pair I have layers of handwritten Hawaiian text and fabrics as textural layers embedded in the background.
How has teaching impacted your work as a visual artist?
You hear teachers say all the time that they learn from their students, but it’s really true. Teenagers are like mad scientists, and that inspires me. I don’t know if I would ever have started this work if I hadn’t been trying to keep up with my students. Their fearlessness is contagious and allows for dexterity of thought and creative risk-taking—an approach which helps with all these visual threads I am trying to connect.
Editor’s note: This story first appeared in the spring 2020 edition of Ma Ke Kula. Images courtesy of Heidi Buscher.