Dog Eaters

the story behind the glass poi pounders

Posted on 12.03.12 9:16PM under Uncategorized

Malcolm Wong started blowing glass at the University of Hawaii, Manoa with Steve Correia at the “new” Art Building in 1977. He graduated with a double-major in Art and Psychology and then went on to earn an MFA in Sculpture before moving to Japan with his wife, Junko and one-year old son, Dustin, in 1983.

His glass is collected in the Honolulu Academy of Arts, Contemporary Arts Center and in private collections around the world.

From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s Malcolm directed and produced music videos in Tokyo. In 1999, after recovering from a motorcycle accident, a friend recommended a hot glass studio, MC Glass Lab, in Itabashi-ku, Tokyo. So after a lapse of 16 years, Malcolm started blowing glass again. He currently rents blowing time at Sarue Glass Studio in Koto-ku, Tokyo.

In 2007, the Wongs sold the family home in Nuuanu, Honolulu and bought land in Wailuku. During the construction of the house, the handle of a broken poi pounder was found while excavating and grading the land. It was put into a planter with a kukui nut tree and sometime between then and when the tree was planted, it disappeared.

Oliver Dukelow at Ke Kahua was kind enough to gift several bags of huli which has grown into three lois of taro on the Wailuku land. Having a lot of taro and losing the poi pounder artifact motivated Malcolm to make poi pounders of his own. These are made of glass are sterilizable, dishwasher-proof and are USDA approvable! We hope you find them interesting to look at, but please remember that they are very functional as well!

Post Comments





XHTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

* Required. Your email will never be displayed in public.