An Astoria printer layers paper and ink to tell stories of place
Native Hawaiian artist Miki’ala Souza’s collaged works evoke waterways, winds and migration.
Brangien Davis in Crosscut
For the past 16 years, Native Hawaiian artist Miki’ala Souza has lived at the turbulent confluence of the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean. But her home in Astoria, Oregon, overlooking Youngs Bay, is only the most recent of her waterside abodes.
She was born and raised in Honolulu, highly attuned to her natural surroundings, and spent years living between Portland and Hawaii, as well as a stint in the Solomon Islands. “I think about water a lot,” she says, “and its ability to move and connect all of us.”
That’s evident in her artwork: monotype prints of windswept seascapes that evoke currents, waterways and migration. These richly hued works alternately suggest soft clouds and dark storms and fiery sunsets. Some include crescent shapes that when vertical resemble spinnakers, when horizontal, Indigenous canoes. No people are present but you imagine them nonetheless, making their way across water. (continued on Page 2)