Form meets local-style function at fishcake’s annual kagu exhibition, which this year addresses a common household problem: where to put your slippers.

"You go to a party, you get there late, and you notice an ocean of shoes near the front door," said David Landry, University of Hawaii at Manoa art instructor for utilitarian sculpture. "When you leave later, after you’ve had a couple of glasses of wine, you find it’s tough to find your shoes and then put them on. You probably have to lean against a nearby wall."

So, Landry and students from his summer woodshop class "were posed with the challenge of finding a solution to the modern-day getabako" (shoe box), artist and fishcake curator Keiko Hatano said in a news release. "Every house in Hawaii needs one of these and nobody sells it."

Since 2010, UH students have been putting on the kagu show ("kagu" is Japa­nese for "furniture") at fishcake’s Kakaako showroom. This year’s edition, which opened Friday and runs through Jan. 4, features 11 pieces of imaginative and functional designs ranging in price from $900 to $1,600 — all in koa.

J.B. Friday of the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources at UH-Hilo donated young, harvested koa from Hawaii island for the project.

"Managed koa is usually harvested at 75 years minimum," Landry said, "but the wood that was harvested here was around 25 to 30 years old. The college was doing a study on young koa and asked fishcake what koa pieces of this kind could be priced at."

That contact led to the koa donation for student use. The project was bolstered by the Hawai‘i Forest Industry Association’s interest in encouraging student involvement in its mission to manage and advocate for native forests.

After using lumber from home improvement stores in past shows, it was a welcome challenge for Landry’s students to work with what’s commonly known as the king of Hawaiian woods.

"We were thrilled to have both free lumber and for it to be koa just sliced off the trunk. The students were able to have a real milling experience, to do the actual planing, joining and drying. Since this has never been done before, I originally thought this would be too much for them, but they took to it after the first two days.

"The fact that they could see the color of the wood come out after applying mineral spirits to it, it’s easy to get seduced by it," he said.

Judges from the Design Within Reach store at Ala Moana Center chose the show’s pieces based on functionality.

"I liked that a utilitarian angle was thrown into this year’s show," Landry said. "It introduced a real-world experience to the students, where places like fishcake will buy and sell this stuff."