"The world is just on fire. Art doesn't even make sense anymore," the artist and Kaimuki resident recalls thinking. "What am I doing here? What does it mean?" Ireijo, born on Hawaii Island and raised on Maui and in California, was especially heartbroken about the koala bears that couldn't escape the fires. She decided to use her art to express her grief.
On a wall in downtown Westport, Connecticut, where she was living at the time, Ireijo painted a mural of a koala using charcoal from the bush fires that a friend sent. Three other artists participated as well, each painting a different endangered species. When it rained, Ireijo's koala washed away, leaving tear-like streaks and highlighting our mutual connection through the natural world. That project inspired Ireijo to make more "vanishing murals."
In 2021, The Nature Conservancy commissioned her to paint a mural for the Maui Ocean Center. The illustration of a young woman, modeled on her teenage niece, Ava, had hair made of salmon-colored coral against a turquoise background, surrounded by other marine life in vibrant rose, gold, emerald and red. Ireijo used non-permanent chalk-the color has faded over time, leaving behind only white, figuratively enacting how coral bleaching is destroying the reefs along Hawaii's coasts.
Artist Jana Ireijo wipes away “Vanishing Pueo” at Kahilu Theatre on Hawaii Island, one of a series of temporary works made from natural, locally available materials. Like Buddhist sand mandalas, Ireijo’s vanishing murals are meditations on impermanence.
Most recently, Kahilu Theatre on Hawaii Island exhibited "Vanishing Pueo," Ireijo's mural of the native Hawaiian short-eared owl. She used charcoal from wildfires that swept across Hawaii Island in August 2023, red dirt to paint the bird's ash- and rust-colored feathers, yellow pigment from local olena (turmeric) and hibiscus flower stamens for its amber eyes and water from nearby Waikoloa Stream to moisten the pigments. Ireijo envisioned the owl rising out of the earth with a message of impermanence and then returning to earth—on March 3, the last day of the exhibit, Ireijo washed the mural away.
Other vanishing murals include renderings of manta rays, whale sharks and portraits. Ireijo said she loves all her illustrations, but Nani, a humpback whale she's drawn repeatedly, is her favorite. Is it painful to watch something she loves disappear? It doesn't completely, she says. "I feel like I'm holding on to it at the same time. When I wash it away, there's always a ghost imprint. It's very therapeutic. During these past few years, it's just easier to realize things change. We can be a part of the future but at the same time letting go."
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