Two women in particular, Lolita Freeland and Joan McKelvey, launched the idea of a local artists’ collective. “That was a time art began to really rear its head,” says McKelvey, now ninety-one. She remembers the arrival of artist George Allan, crewing aboard a dubiously historic whaling ship called Carthaginian, destined to become a town monument. Allan, a pioneer of Maui art and creator of the wall of palette-knife oil portraits on permanent display in the MACC’s Castle Theater, says, “Lahaina was a great little town, full of nice people, laid-back.” He worked with community volunteers to clear out the junk and rodents in the courthouse’s basement jail, now an exhibition space. Even though he was a vagabond Aussie, “They all took me in hand,” he says. “We all had fun. Someone gave me an easel.”
And then Maui art moved ahead—friendly, inclusive, mounted on the free-spirited summer-of-love model of 1967 Lahaina Arts Society.
