 Okay, we're live, we're back, we're happy to be with Darwin Leva. He's an artist and a sculptor, a painter and a sculptor. This is in a series called Profiles in Paradise. And we consider Darwin a profile we need to examine. Welcome to the show, Darwin. Thank you for having me. We're going to call this show Meeting Darwin Leva, okay? We want to meet and we want to understand how you operate and all that. So you appeared originally on Hispanic Hawaii with Richard Concepcion and it was in the notion I suppose is that you were Hispanic. But that's really not the point. Where are you from anyway? I'm from Cuba. Okay, Cuba. Cuba is getting drawn into the whole conversation about Venezuela now. Yes. Not so good. Anyway, so you came to this country before you studied art or after you studied art? I came when I was 15 years old. I was painting all my life, but when I came here, actually when I moved to Hawaii, that's when I started studying art more. I went to UH Manoa and that's when I got my bachelor's, I was doing my bachelor's in painting and then I changed my major to do my BFA in sculpture and that was recently last year that I graduated from UH Manoa. So which is your favorite, actually, Darwin? My favorite? Sculpture. Okay. I know that's a hard question. Yes, it is a hard question because normally my favorite is the last one that I do because I love all my paintings and sculpture and then when I get to do a new one and I start working on it, then I fell in love again with that and I just get into it. Once I finish, then that's my favorite. I just look at it and I just look at it until my next project. I'm enjoying this so much and I'm so glad you came down and we have some of your art and I really like your stuff and I want to go through it. Okay. I want you to tell us about what the influences were, what the experience was in creating the art. So we'll just go through a bunch of them that we have from you. Okay? Okay. Let's start with number one. What is that, Darwin? That sculpture is called Musical Glass and the idea, I really enjoy making that piece because what I did, I picked up a bunch of glass that was trash, pretty much, so I recycle all the glass and then I start cutting all the pieces and make it. But I want to make it into, with a sheet of glass, I want to make it something three-dimensional because normally when you do glass and you're using the sheet, a lot of the time it's kind of like flat. So the idea behind this, it was kind of like experiment was to do like a three-dimensional piece with a sheet glass and I was very happy with the result. I really enjoy how it came out. And then as a reference, I wanted to make it kind of like cubism and a lot of the work that I do has, you can see a lot of cubism into it. Well, I see whimsical in it. I see fun. I see, you know, rap your sense of humor around this one. Did you intend that? Yes, definitely. I was trying to get that vibe of music and colors and life and good things that music bring to your life. That was the idea behind this piece and that's what people, you know, what I want people to get out of it. When you look at it, then you feel all that that you just described. Why do I feel that music is an important part of your thought process? Is it? It is. The reason for that is like, I always listen to music when I'm making my work all the time. I mean, I have to have music all the time when I listen to it. Not only that, when I was in Cuba, growing up in Cuba, we always use music as a way kind of like to escape from the daily life, necessity and things that happen when you live over there. So music was in a way kind of like to forget everything else and then just enjoy life. And that's what we always were looking for on the weekends to go out, to listen to music every time, every opportunity we have. So definitely music is very important in my life and in my work. I wish I had grown up in Cuba, too. So when you listen to the music then in Cuba and now, what kind of music are you listening to? Mostly, I listen to Cuban music, but I do listen to all kind of, I mean, I like just music in general. So a lot of the time I change a little bit. I listen to music from the 80s, 70s, old music, and then a lot of Hispanic music. Would you say that the instrument you just showed us, let me go back to that for a minute, that guitar has got influence from Cuba, from your Hispanic childhood. Does it have influence from, does it have influence from, I want to ask you this with a lot of pieces, Picasso, the Cubism, I mean, what's in there? What's in there as far as your concern? Definitely has some influence from Cuba because the guitar is something that is very popular over there. People use guitars all the time. I remember going to the beach and people just sit on the beach and start playing the guitar and just people come and start dancing. It's a very popular instrument and so I like guitars. Now only for the music, I like the shape of the guitars. It's something about it that gets my attention. You change the shape. You do musical instruments in every which way. Yes. I like to play with the instruments and then kind of like come with my own interpretation of the instrument, depending what media I'm using. This one is glass, like I said before, it was a challenge doing the glass with something that I never done before. And then Cubism, I use as a reference, yes, to make this piece, trying to make it in a way where it was happy and colorful but different with this piece. Well, I get the feeling actually, Joe, you tell me if I'm right or wrong, but you're also sculpting the music itself and you're sculpting the experience of people listening to the music. In other words, this isn't just a guitar, it's a musical experience and if you look at it carefully, if I do, I will feel the music as well as the guitar. That's the intention. You know, I'm very happy that you feel that way because that's the intention behind the piece. I want people to feel the music when they look at it, definitely. Lovely. Let's go to the next piece. I'm really having a good time here today. Okay, now we have a violin. That's a cello. A cello, pardon me. And so like a lot of the pieces that I do, I always try to experiment. Now with the technique, but also with the material that I use. So this one here is made out of raw iron, and then it was kind of like different working with metal. And I was trying to do the cello in a way, again, that I was thinking about the music in Cuba, but when I was breaking this piece, like I broke it into pieces and I called it fragment a cello. I was thinking about Cuba, how we enjoy the music, how it's part of our life, but how the system and everything over there is so fragmented. And that kind of, based on those thoughts about the fragmentation of Cuba, the system, the things that are happening over there now, it brought me to making that piece. I was like, you know, I want to make something that represents a little bit of Cuba, but at the same time, again, you know, I always like to highlight the music and the happy part of it, what we enjoy the most. It's a different kind of music. If I look at the fragmented cello sculpture, I feel classical. I feel there's a classicism in that, and I feel that it's people are working at it, and they're finding new interpretations for the classical cello music. And they're busting through a generation gap. That's my reaction. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely a different feeling from looking at this piece, you know, with the glass. When you compare both of them, the glass is so sensitive, and this one is, like, something hard and rough. Concertative and classic, all in all. Definitely. So it's definitely a different feeling from one piece to the other one. How big are these pieces, by the way? Is that cello as big as a cello? Not that big, but it's about, I would say, close to four feet. So it's a pretty big piece. I'm going to occupy a corner of the room. Yes, it's a pretty big piece. The other piece is about, I would say, maybe, like, two feet and a half. Well, a guitar is smaller than a cello. Yeah, it is. It is. I don't want to do it live size, because then it's a pretty big space to put it in the house or someplace else, and it's just a representation. Every one day I'll do a real-life one. Well, I think looking at your musical sculptures probably helps us understand your paintings, and is the next one a painting or another sculpture? Ah! Ah! Now this one, I really like this one. Is this wood? No, that's bronze, casting. Cast bronze? Yes. Whoa. It's really interesting the way it wraps around. What are you trying to tell us with this? That was actually a very difficult piece to make. I'm sure. I like to challenge myself. So before this piece, I already done several bronze casting pieces, and I wanted something that was difficult, and I tried to do this piece, which was quite a challenge to make it, just because the composition and then putting everything together and making sure that didn't, you use wax when you're making the piece before you do the casting, and just making that piece and making sure that didn't fall apart was kind of hard putting everything together. Is it together now? Yes. If I push it, it's not going to fall apart. No, no, no. Now it's made out of bronze, so now it's already cast into bronze, so now it's good. What I get out of that is if I look through it, you know, it's transparent in its own way, right? I can look into the belly of the cello, yeah? That one is violin. Oh, that's violin. Okay, that would be smaller than the cello. That one is smaller. Oh, okay. That's even more interesting. And so if I look into the violin, I can see the music. I can feel the music. It gives me a window into the chamber that creates the music in the violin. Do you intend that? When I made this piece, I was thinking about normally when you do paintings and you represent the music and then a lot of the time you see in the artwork the musical instrument and then you see the music coming out of it and then people do lines just flowing around the music around the instrument. So I was trying to represent that with this piece. I was thinking, how can I make the violin for the music to come out in the same way but rather than just represent the actual music, what I did was that I create that shape that you see there with the violin and that was my way of making the music kind of like flow around the violin and that was the idea behind it. You know, if I had that in my house, I would put it prominently, but I would play, as you do when you create these works, I would play violin music so that there would be a connection between the work and the music and it would almost appear that the music is coming out of the work. I do listen to classic music, like I say, the type of music that I listen is very wide and all from classic music to Hispanics or a lot of all classic American music, country music. I mean, I listen to every type of music. So definitely classic music is a big influence as you can see as well in my work. You're trying to memorialize the music or at least your incorporation of the music into your thought process. Let's go to the next one. Ah, okay, now there's a connection between the sculpture and the street scene. This is a good example of so many pieces that you've done like this. There's an Hispanic strain for sure, a European strain, well, there's a cubism, there's a Picasso in here, and it is really, really engaging because you are on the street. It's almost like you're touching the parts of the street, you're walking down the street, you feel it around you. That's my reaction. But tell me what you thought when you put it together. This painting is called Musical City and the idea behind that was for you to feel that way when you walk in the street. The idea behind was Cuba and there is a very, you see a lot of photos of Cuba, the capital, where you can see kind of like similar scenes to this painting. And the idea was that when you are there, music is everywhere and you can feel it all over the city. And that was my idea behind this painting. I wanted you to see that the music is incorporated in the architecture and the streets. Everywhere you go, the music is there. And so I tried to incorporate that aspect into this painting with the guitar becoming part of the architecture and the musician in the corner blending into the walls. So that was the part of what I want to portray to the viewer in this painting. You feel it as you're one more time in that painting. You feel it and the whole thing is music. It's got that fragmented style that you had with the cello and the violin. So it's the same kind of musical touching. So I would say my conclusion only, but see if you agree, is that there's always music in your work. You listen to it, you enjoy it, you paint by it and you incorporate it. Yes. Yes. I think it's a good subject because no matter what your background is, no matter where you come from, music is something that makes everybody happy. You listen to a different type, but still everybody always looks for music in a way to feel themselves happy. So I think it's a good subject for me to paint about. Yes. I think that's a worthy point to make is that your work, at least for me, makes me feel happy. It is an expression and happiness. I mean, you'd really rather have it that way than the other way. So we'll find those threads as we go forward. For now, we're going to take a short break and then we'll come back and we'll see more of your work and we'll try to connect how they're the same and how they're different and how you as an artist and a sculptor are evolving in your journey. Oh, exciting. We'll be right back. All right. Thanks. Aloha. I'm Wendy Lo and I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at two o'clock live from Think Tech Hawaii and on our show, we talk about taking your health back. And what does that mean? It means mind, body and soul. Anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're going to be talking about, whether it's spiritual health, mental health, fascia health, beautiful smile health, whatever it means, let's take healthy back. Aloha. Aloha. My name is Andrew Lening. I'm the host of Security Matters Hawaii airing every Wednesday here on Think Tech Hawaii live from the studios. I'll bring you guests. I'll bring you information about the things in security that matter to keeping you safe, your co-workers safe, your family safe, to keep our community safe. We want to teach you about those things in our industry that may be a little outside of your experience. So please join me because Security Matters, Aloha. Profiles in Paradise with Durin Leyva. Durin Leyva, he's a painter and a sculptor from originally from Cuba, but now here in Hawaii and part of our art scene and we are so happy that he is classy, classy work. So the happiness part, I see it, I feel happy by the mesh of colors and architectural forms by the way you do the cubism and all that. But how do you achieve that? I mean, you intend to achieve it. You intend to achieve it using Hispanic motif and Hispanic colors and Hispanic forms. Tell me about the experience. Yes, I do intend for people to feel that way and what I try to do is just a combination of things that I experience and the culture that I live and I put it in a way that I can bring people into the painting, the colors that I use, the forms, a lot of the techniques that I have learned through years of painting and doing sculptures. I try to bring all that together and put it in a way where I can get the viewer into the painting and make them think and make them analyze what I'm doing and people react in a positive way to this. People like it and people enjoy doing this. Use oils or acrylic? What? I have used acrylic in the past. Now a lot of these paintings that I'm doing is oil, but I experiment with a lot of different medias. I use watercolor, oil pastels, pastels, I do drawings, so I try to use all different type of media. Do you have to be an artist in your family? Is this a DNA thing? No, no, no. This is something that I like to do myself. What about the Hawaiian influence? You went to school here, you really started seriously painting here, I guess. What influence, if any, is there from your Hawai'i experience? I do. Actually, I've done a lot of Hawaiian paintings. I have a lot of Hawaiian painting. When I started here, my early paintings mostly were all Hawaiians. I was doing Hawaiian painting for a long time and then I decided that I needed to do some of the work related to Cuba and the music, but definitely Hawai'i had a big influence on the work that I have done. Unfortunately, we don't have any photos to... If I had to guess, I would guess that your Hawaiian paintings look a little bit like Gauguin, am I right? You can correct me. No, you would be surprised. They're still a little different. I would say they're different. I tried to cooperate the same style. Was a little abstract in the way that I made the composition and things like that, but I tried to resemble a lot of the classic paintings, all paintings from Hawai'i in a more contemporary way. That's what I was trying to do with my work. Put their creativity on it, yeah. Yes. Well, next time you come back, I want to look at your Hawaiian paintings. Definitely. Next time, we can bring a lot of the Hawaiian painting and then we can talk about all the Hawaiian work. Right on. Let's go to the next one and see what that one looks like. Ah, talk about color. This is really a study in color. It's your color, Derwin. This is a statement of how you feel about color. And definitely. This painting is one of my early paintings. When I started doing this type of work, this was probably, I think it was like the third painting that I did with this style. It was just about colors, mainly. This painting was a representation of colors. I was inspired by the carnivals in Venice with the mass and the colors. That's what I, you know, I always so attracted to the colors and I want to represent that in this painting. Yeah. It's also the forms. Can we go back for a second? Those forms, although they're much more, what's the word, fluid than Paul Clay, the combination of unusual and creative forms juxtaposition of the forms and the color around the forms. It does remind me, distantly, of Paul Clay. Yeah, I would say some of the work may have some similarity. For me, you know, I think every painting that I do is kind of like a learning step. And this one specifically was, I was trying to work on the abstract aspect of it. I wanted to represent, you know, the idea, but I wanted people to work hard to find it. Like, I mean, I was trying to use a lot of the colors and I wanted people to look at it and then spend time looking for the forms and things like that, because it's kind of hard to see first. I mean, you see a lot of the colors, but you have to actually take a minute or two to be able to see the forms. So I was just kind of like trying to work in that aspect of abstraction. Would you say that's the direction you're going toward abstraction? I mean, you're already abstract, but yes, you know, it's part of abstraction. I mean, abstraction is part of my work, definitely. And I enjoy enjoying that some of the work, you can see it right away. You have to look into it. I think that made the painting interesting because, you know, a lot of the time when you do something very realistic, very something that looks like a photograph, a lot of people look at it and they appreciate the technique, the effort that you put into doing this type of work. But because we are so saturated with image, I mean, we already look at it and we recognize it immediately. We kind of like discard that work. I mean, we recognize that it's very difficult to do, but then when you do something that has an abstraction to it and people have to take a minute to look into it and try to decide what the painting is about, what the work behind the lines. Yes. So much more complex, so much more to understand with abstraction. That's what I get out of that type of work. I think people react to that a little different. So definitely I have a lot of abstraction into my work. Let's look at another piece. I want to see as many as we can now. Okay, now you've toned down the color here and you look more like Picasso. I'm sorry. Yes. Yes. And again, every piece that I do is an experiment to me. And this one, because I did so many colors on the other one, I tried to limit myself, the palette on this painting and I was like, I wanted to do something monochromatic, something that didn't happen in that, which was very difficult for me because I enjoyed colors so much. But I also like the challenge and I like to do things that are different and I decided to do this painting using only black, white and a few other colors, but very, very minimal, very monochromatic. And I really enjoy it. I mean, when I finished this painting, I was in love with it. I mean, it was so different from the previous painting. It's a knockout. So you have the musical instruments, you have the street, you have those tactile bricks there in the street, you have this whole commotion going on on the left side, and it's up to the viewer to try to figure out what that all is. Yes. And he has to deal with it in order to go down the street to figure it out, to see what's beyond. I really like this one a lot. Let's go to the next one. Ah, now this is sort of in the middle of those two, isn't it? Yes. Yes. It's called musical loss, and the idea was about Cuba and how the music is part of the street and things like that, but I wanted to, now we saw monochromatic on this painting, but I wanted to have, like you say, in the middle. I wanted to bring some of the colors, but also thinking about Cuba, how the cities, you go to all part of the city, Havana, or some of the other cities, it's so destroyed. A lot of the colors are so monochromatic because the architecture is all and it's faded, they hadn't been, you know, there is no renovation, there is no new paint, so everything looks all. But it speaks of a grandeur years ago. Yes. I mean, you see these and I mean, and you can still enjoy the architecture. You enjoy the places and the history behind us. A lot of these colors faded bring the history, you know, you can see the history through those walls fading, and I want to bring some of that into this painting. I wanted to have some of the music, some of the color, but at the same time I want to have some of that old things that you can find through the city. That's really multi-dimensional. We only have a minute left, so I'd like to go through the rest of them real quick, and you can just tell us the names and what the subject is. This one, the celebration of the background is the cathedral in Havana, and I was inspired by the, I want the musicians to be celebrating in front of the cathedral, and I mean this painting we can talk for a long time, it has a lot of, I want you to come back and spend a half an hour on this one. Okay, next. This one is called Café Metalab, and the church behind is, the cathedral behind, actually is a cathedral from the city of where I'm from, Santa Clara, and I was inspired by that. I always walk by that cathedral all the time, and I never walk in, and looking back, I always want to go inside that cathedral. I think I only went like maybe once or twice, and so I want to kind of like bring it in into my painting, memories that I have from my childhood. Sure, sure, sure. But there's a figure there. Yes, there is a woman sitting on the table with a wine, and the cross, so a lot of the subject behind is... There's an irony there, isn't there? Yes, it is. A cathedral, another woman who looks like she's a good time. Yes, that's right. And those are things that are part of the Cuban life right now, things that are happening. So I want to bring it kind of to life. That's the idea behind it. These are paintings that you have to study. Okay, what's next? We'll whip through the last few of them, and I do want to see them all, all the ones we have anyway. Now there's another woman here, no? Yes, and this one is called The Blue Guitar, and it's a woman on the street sitting, playing a guitar, and I use as a reference the sculpture musical glass, the one that we talked about before, and I use that into the painting. Now on the walls I roll Patrio Muerte, which is something that is used as a way of propaganda. Fidel Castro used to use it in his speech, which means either fatherland or death pretty much. Now, but then on the painting, on the top I roll a 90 end. I use that as an address for the house on the painting, but I was referring to Miami, which is 90 miles north of Cuba. All kinds of symbolism. Yes, and I use that as a way, kind of like a third auction, because in Cuba it's fatherland or death, but then the third auction is 90 miles north. It's Miami, which is freedom. And that's the idea behind it, and then the woman is just on the street sitting and playing and forgetting about all the things that are happening around her. I've noticed that in each one of these paintings there's layers of possibility, and there's a story, and there's something worth studying and learning from. Let's go to the next one. Oh, talk about musical instruments. This is a beautiful musical instrument. That's not a violin. That's a cello. Back to the cello. Yes. How do you do that? The color and the depth of the color is beautiful. Thanks. This one is called a cello player, and I saw a photo of this guy in Cuba walking around with a bit of cello on his shoulder, and I was thinking, wow, that cello is huge, and he's probably, whatever he goes from place to place, he has to carry it. He doesn't have a car, he doesn't have anything. He has to carry that thing to go play from one place to another. He must be tired. I was like, I'm thinking he got a rest, so the idea of the painting was him sitting down resting. You caught the moment. I was like, he got to sit down, and then I painted a big cello resting against the wall, but then the graffiti behind CDR and Bivalent Music, La Musica, and no Castro, it's obvious my intentions there, everybody wants music to be part of their life. Castro is not a good choice. And then CDR is something, it's a committee to defend the revolution. It's something that in Cuba you see everywhere, it's on the walls, and they use it as a propaganda to control the... So much here. It's loaded with messages. It is. Every painting that I do always have a lot of messages behind it. There is always story. You study it, enjoy it, know about it, be able to explain it to other people. Let's go to the last one, last picture. Now that's interesting. It's a person sort of stooped over. What is happening here? It's called La Violinista, and it's a woman playing the violin. A lot of the paintings that I did before normally are on the street, people outside, outdoors. So I want to do this painting indoor. I want to show some of the architecture of Cuba but like inside the house. But I also want to bring some of the outside still. That's what I... And this specifically painting is based of a city in Cuba that is called Trinidad. And it's a classic city everything, the architecture everything is colonial. I mean it's from 500 years ago, a very old city. And I want to bring some of that into my painting. It's kind of hard to see on the photo but on the book and then some of the other things around the painting has some message. Like you say, I want to show the music but I also want to put some of the things that are happening in Cuba or represent part of the Cuban life into the painting. But would the Cuban market, the Cuban viewer, the Cuban person want to have your paintings or would he be afraid? Oh no, they will. Actually I got an excellent reaction from people like a lot of the Cubans when they see the painting they understand a lot of the message. I don't have to explain it. As soon as they see it you see that their face just, you know, you see everybody smiling and laughing about it because they can understand the message. They know exactly what all those symbols and all those words means. Beyond the words, beyond the symbols, beyond the historical layer of these paintings though there is a universality about them. Universality of music, universality of form and shape of color, a universality of happiness. There's a certain optimistic aspect to them and I really enjoy every single one. And you have to come back there when you come back and show us your Hawaiian collection. Come back and tell us more about how you establish these layers and what messages you send out to the world. Thank you so much. Oh, thank you for having me in the show. I really enjoy it. Great discussion. Thank you. Hasta vienda. Hasta luego. Hasta luego. Where do I go?