Mark Lupenui

Boots Lupenui is a native Hawaiian artist, musician and storyteller living on Kohala Mountain on the island of Hawai’i. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences from Whittier College in Los Angeles where he worked as a professional musician for several years. He founded his current band, “The Kohala Mountain Boys”, to find and preserve old, unrecorded songs of the Kohala district of Hawai’i Island. Boots earned his Master’s degree in Fine Arts with an emphasis on painting and drawing from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. His work has been included in the Venice Biennale and the Cuban Biennale, both firsts for a native Hawaiian artist. Since then his work has been included in many shows from Hawai’i to Europe, including the Schaefer Portrait Challenge twice. He has won Sappi Paper Company’s “Ideas That Matter”, an international graphic design award and has been nominated for a Po‘okela Award for childrenʻs book illustration by the Hawai‘i Book Publishers Association. As a storyteller, his first documentary, “The Kohala Mountain Music Project”, was juried into the Made In Hawai’i Film Festival and he was subsequently awarded a Library of Congress grant to continue his documentary work in Kohala. He has also been a storyteller on “The Moth” mainstage. This April, his band, “The Kohala Mountain Boys” will perform a concert at the Library of Congress in Washingtion, D.C. His paintings, storytelling videos and music videos can be seen at his website, bootslupenui.com.