Kalihi, O‘ahu

Hawaii Walls 2023
Ulu Pū Kākou

In May 2023, Welcome Stranger participated in Hawaii Walls (formerly POW! WOW! Hawaii!) to paint our first mural ever. Doing primarily client-based work, it took a lot of soul searching (and arguing) to figure out what we wanted to paint for ourselves and, more importantly, the families and communities of Kalihi that use Palama Settlement on a daily basis. After a dozen or so drastically different concepts, our idea and artwork finally clicked into place during the final hours with a mad dash to City Mill to get paint mixed the evening before the event.

“Together we grow.”

To us, this message was simple while leaving room for the viewer to interpret a meaning for themselves. Whether you think about it as a partnership, a family, a community, an island, or even broader, we grow better when we grow together. We used endemic ‘ōhi'a lehua trees for our letters as a symbol of new growth, and set it upon a basalt rock wall to symbolize a strong foundation.