Kāʻanapali resident Jo Rockwell had a growing interest in industrial art after she moved to Maui, where she became familiar with the sugar mills. She bought her first oil painting of the Pioneer Mill 18 years ago at Village Gallery in Lahaina.
Her art collection grew to 39 works produced by local artists, believed to be the largest private collection of “sugar art.”
Rockwell had plans to keep the artwork in her house for as long as she lived there but said that, in order to ensure the collection would end up in good hands one day, she would eventually donate it to the University of Hawaiʻi Maui College.
However, shortly after the Aug. 8 wildfires devastated Lahaina, a series of subsequent fires continued to burn near her home. The fear of losing her work finally convinced Rockwell to permanently move the collection to UH Maui College.
“Now that it’s finally home in its permanent place, it’s just a thrill to me,” she said. “I haven’t been over to see it yet, but I will, and it will be sad in some ways. But if that’s the best place for it, that’s where it belongs.”
The art collection is now on display at the college's Pā‘ina Building. Some pastel paintings are 8 by 10 inches, while others are 4 by 5 feet.
Jocelyn Romero Demirbag, the director of development from Maui at the UH Foundation, said the artworks are impactful. Her father was a doctor who cared for many plantation workers.
“All of my friends, somehow, they were connected to the plantation at some point,” Demirbag said. “It was what surrounded us growing up in Maui as a kid.”
She said a painting in the collection shows a part of her neighborhood, detailing the bus stop and a truck with workers sitting in it.
Rockwell said the paintings are there for generations to view.
In the aftermath of donating her art collection, her walls were bare. Rockwell reminded herself that she was an art collector and moved some of her other paintings of Lahaina before the fire from part of her home to the living room.
“In the living room, you see things that people remember, but they’re not there anymore,” she said.
