Martin Charlot — a Hawaii resident for more than 40 years who described himself as “painter, muralist, writer, actor, filmmaker, iIllustrator and educator” — died Oct. 2 at the Hilo Benioff Medical Center in Hilo. He was 79.
“Martin Charlot was a celebrated artist, muralist and filmmaker, beloved by the Hawaiian people,” Charlot’s daughter, Kawena Charlot, said in a prepared statement that mentioned her father’s “Hawaiian Folkways” mural at the Kaneohe McDonald’s, his “Stars in Paradise” mural at Consolidated Theaters Kahala, and the mammoth “He Lei No ‘Aulani” (“A Lei for Aulani”) mural, more than 200 feet long, in the Maka‘ala lobby of Aulani, a Disney Resort &Spa, in Ko Olina.
The Disney property opened to the public in 2011.
“Working with the Disney team was very gratifying for me,” Martin Charlot said in an interview posted by his publisher, Watermark Publishing, several years ago. “My father, Jean Charlot, lectured to the Disney artists when he was a young man and made lifetime friends. I enjoyed meeting these artists when we would visit them in rare trips from Hawai‘i to Hollywood when I was a child. Hugging the tentacles of the octopus that battled with Capt. Nemo was the ultimate in cool to me.”
Martin Day Charlot was born in Athens, Ga., but his father moved the family to Hawaii when he was 4. The islands were his home for the next four decades. Writing in a private autobiography years later, Charlot said that although his father was internationally known as a muralist and illustrator, and also as a University of Hawaii art professor, within the family Jean Charlot was “a quiet spoken French immigrant with time for his family and time for his work.”
“About the age of fourteen someone asked me what it was like being the son of a famous artist and I wondered who they were talking about … We lived in Faculty Housing on the campus of the University of Hawaii, a modest house in a neighborhood of houses that were exactly the same, very much like sugar cane plantation workers families and everyone did what my father did, they were professors … How was I supposed to know that he was Jean Charlot the famous artist.”
Even though he didn’t know that his father was “a famous artist,” Martin Charlot and his siblings grew up assisting him with his murals. They helped prepare materials, learned how to paint on walls and eventually participated in painting sections of the murals.
Charlot’s youthful experiences working with his father inspired him to make art his career. Starting with the knowledge he’d acquired from his father, Charlot went on to study with Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and Joseph Albers, found his own artistic voice, and went on to a prolific career.
One of Charlot’s career highlights, the “Hawaiian Folkways” mural, was inspired by his participation in the Waiahole-Waikane struggle to prevent the replacement of rural poi farmers by a developer’s planned suburban sprawl in the 1970s. The mural showed a day in the life of valley residents. Kaona (hidden meaning) within the art represented more than 100 island proverbs.
Charlot revisited the work in 2007 when he partnered with Watermark Publishing to create “Local Traffic Only: Proverbs Hawaiian-Style.” Described by Watermark as “a loving look at Hawai‘i’s people, illustrating the varied and vital lessons that life has to teach,” it paired close-ups of the mural with the proverbs each section portrays.
“When you’re an artist, the life you live are the tools you make work for you,” Charlot told Honolulu Star-Bulletin arts writer Joleen Oshiro in 2008. “Waiahole was suddenly the visual for this mural. In writing stories, my day can become a scene I write.
“What I love about doing art is that nothing ever goes to waste.”
Charlot is survived by his sons Kekoa, Kumalu and Kipano Charlot; his daughter, Kawena Charlot; and his grandchildren Noelo Charlot, Saxony Charlot, Malia Gitz Charlot, Hannah Gitz Charlot and Keone Charlot.
A celebration of life will be held Saturday at the family home in Kahala.
RSVP to Kawena@ KawenaCharlot.com.
