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MAMA PRESENTS…Jason Schwartz with SABO 2001. Pidgin Express Hawaii Art Movement had a shot in the arm from artist Tom Taylor/ SABO. His art style using a palette knife and original application offered the world a fresh perspective.
Summary & Timestamped Transcript Below…
Summary
The video features an in-depth interview and artistic showcase with Sabo, a Maui-based artist whose work embodies the spirit of Maui and Hawaiian culture through a style he terms “Pigeon Express.” Hosted by Jason Schwarz of the Maui Arts and Music Association, the conversation explores Sabo’s lifelong dedication to oil painting, beginning at age seven. Sabo emphasizes the importance of cultural expression, family tradition, and creative freedom within his art. His style, Pigeon Express, is a unique, rule-free approach heavily influenced by local Hawaiian pidgin language and culture, characterized by bold colors, textures, and unconventional tools such as samurai swords, combs, and nails.
Sabo discusses his extensive artistic journey, which includes creating over 24,000 portraits, traveling globally to donate art to hospices and communities, and mentoring local youth in Maui by teaching free oil painting classes. His work ranges from primitive landscapes to abstract expressionism, always prioritizing emotional resonance and character over photorealistic detail. He also shares stories about his early days in New York’s East Village art scene, working alongside notable artists, and the inspiration he drew from that era’s creative energy.
The artist envisions expanding his influence by touring China with his art, aiming to inspire creativity on a global scale through accessibility and community engagement. The interview closes with Sabo performing a heartfelt original song, blending his artistic and musical talents, symbolizing his holistic approach to creative expression and connection.
Highlights
- [04:00] Sabo reveals he began oil painting at age 7, using French rabbit skin glue and materials from his father’s studio.
- [07:00] Introduction of Sabo’s unique “Pigeon Express” art style rooted in Hawaiian pidgin language and culture.
- [09:40] ️ Sabo uses over 250 tools including samurai swords and combs to create distinctive textures and effects in his paintings.
- [12:30] ️ Over 24,000 portraits painted worldwide, evolving from realism to character-driven, abstract expressionist style.
- [14:00] Sabo’s global art journey includes donating works to hospices and communities in Southeast Asia.
- [22:50] Ambitious plan to tour China with his art on a Pullman train, aiming to inspire creativity in small towns.
- [24:00] Sabo performs an original song “Climb the Highest Mountain,” blending music and art in his creative expression.
Key Insights
- [04:30] Early Immersion in Art and Technical Mastery: Sabo’s early start at age seven, using traditional and complex materials such as French rabbit skin glue, reflects a deep technical understanding and respect for classical painting techniques. This foundation underpins his ability to innovate later with texture and tool usage, demonstrating that mastery of basics is critical for creative evolution.
- [07:30] Pigeon Express as Cultural Identity and Artistic Freedom: The concept of Pigeon Express art aligns with the Hawaiian pidgin language’s role in identity and communication—fluid, informal, and deeply local. Sabo’s art breaks conventional rules, emphasizing expression over precision, showcasing how cultural ro24,000 portraits, Climb the Highest Mountain, innovative tools, ots can foster new artistic movements that celebrate local dialects and traditions in visual form.
- [09:50] ️ Innovative Use of Tools Enhances Texture and Expression: Sabo’s use of unconventional tools like samurai swords and combs reflects a broader philosophy of pushing boundaries in art-making. This approach adds tactile depth and narrative to his paintings, illustrating how material experimentation can create new visual languages and emotional impact.
- [12:40] ️ Portraiture as Character Study Beyond Realism: Painting over 24,000 portraits, Sabo transitions from realistic depictions to character-driven imagery, emphasizing personality and humor. This evolution highlights how portraiture can transcend likeness to capture deeper human stories, making art more relatable and impactful across cultures.
- [14:10] Art as Social Contribution and Global Connectivity: Through donating art to hospices and elder care centers, Sabo demonstrates how art serves therapeutic and humanitarian purposes beyond galleries. His work in Southeast Asia embodies art’s power to heal and connect communities, reinforcing artists’ roles as cultural ambassadors and agents of goodwill.
- [22:50] Vision for Art Accessibility and Community Engagement: Sabo’s plan to tour China with his art on a train reflects an innovative model for art dissemination, focusing on grassroots engagement rather than elite urban centers. This vision promotes democratizing art access and inspiring creativity in overlooked regions, fostering cultural exchange beyond conventional art markets.
- [24:00] Integration of Music and Visual Art as Holistic Expression: Sabo’s musical performance underscores a multidisciplinary approach to creativity, where music and visual art inform and enrich each other. This synergy exemplifies how artists can use multiple channels to communicate emotions and stories, enhancing audience connection and expanding the scope of their artistic voice.
In sum, the video offers a rich portrait of Sabo as an artist deeply connected to his cultural heritage, innovative in technique, and committed to community and global impact, making his work a significant contribution to contemporary Hawaiian art and beyond.
Transcript
Aloha welcome to another Mama presents I’m Jason Schwartz your host Mama Maui Arts and Music Association we’ve been here in Maui since 1991 and we’ve had the great pleasure of having some very interesting people sitting in our studio today we are here with Sabo hey hey how’s it welcome hey yeah you know uh you really exemplify I like to think of like a a
03:19
standard Bearer a torch bearer of what the Maui Arts and Music Association is all about because you in your life and professions Embrace music and art and you have very significant cultural uh I want to say ramifications of your art like we did a show together here in Maui uh about just your art and we were sharing literally hundreds of pieces and right now you’ll see a couple of those pieces being put on the screen and uh did you know that there are a couple of pieces on the screen right now
03:56
yeah that’s incredible is that what’s going on that’s going on right now so editing function of your uh capabilities uh in the video real yeah well you know it’s like you have so much work and we did uh all those images I figured why don’t I bring them in here that way we can just sit and relax and talk a little bit and let the images do the walking on the Ard uh I can’t believe that I did as many images in a millennium as I did now you have been painting for years yes yes
04:28
I have when did you begin well I 7 years old is actually when I did my first oil painting that won a contest wow yeah it was in Washington grade school you know I was 7 years old and I did a painting with material I took from my father’s Studio without asking and he wasn’t even angry what does your father do my father was doing oil paines oh he was an artist as well yes and uh I took the materials and I assembled them I made my own stretcher bar I stretched the C I use tax instead of Staples and for my
05:04
sizing I use French rabbit skin glue as a sizing they it was like sizing previous to uh gessos like we use acrylic gessos I used a sizing material that was French rabbit skin glue it was from glue made from rabbit skins mixed with marble dust and this put a real slate likee surface on my canvases my early pieces well the first piece I did was the Washington Monument at Washington grade school in West Alice Wisconsin and it was a sinker because it was the Washington Monument what does a sinker mean that means you can win it
05:47
just by picking the right topic you know picking the right category you know for what your image is going to be what kind of style did you use that style was brush work and I used brushes and I clean the brushes but I think I use three brushes on it like a I use round like a number eight and then I used a flat like a a 1in flat to put my background in on and um you had another brush there that was almost like a Japanese lettering brush you do like realism or do you use I mean no it was more in the school of a
06:25
primitive landscape okay I didn’t have any people in it I just had Washington Monument and I had a specific view of it that didn’t exist you know it was something I made up and that’s what uh impressionism and expressionism is all about I see I wanted to make a more liberal School of work of art that’s more pertinent to everybody so I said well since I am a third generation or Manner and my son is the fourth generation I can start a School of Art based upon an expression that he had and
07:03
that was pigeon Express yeah we wanted to talk about that because to me is that his concept that really seemed to be yours from what I’ve seen well I I actually am the grandfather of that school cuz my even my grandkids my four grandsons have done work in that school and what I hope to get is like um more generations and more artists interested and I have more artists interested here right on Maui what is Pigeon Express you put it in a few words well pigeon Express was a term okay my son came up
07:44
to me one day he was looking at what I was doing and I was using unusual tools to sculpt oil on canvas and he says you know how some people speak in Pigeon here in Hawaii we have this local dial I guess it is right pigeon pigeon is like a local Style English I can say where does my son say where is he going I say he stay going he stay going he stay going okay we like something better it’s more better more better more better that’s more better more better for you more better for me you know there’s a lot of
08:28
terms in pigeon that just open up a freedom to give a certain flavor to the language so pigeon Express in the art only exists on Maui it’s pigeon Express is the only place in havian islands where they get pigeon like that so it’s an expression using pigeon using your local expanded that’s what you really mean by allowing having allowances for anything to get the expl explanation through to another party with a lot of Aloha okay you know but it has no rules it has no regulations well like when you see the
09:14
pictures that we’ve been flashing up on screen they’re all your images so I see things and I think of um something that doesn’t strive to get detail you use a lot of color and and you you have a great desire to play with and work with different textures and different tools for creation like I love when you told me that you did this piece with a samurai sword oh I’ve worked with um 250 different tools wow in the last year in the last year 250 different tools like by example well afro
09:57
piics plastic brushes plastic Combs um 9in Nails I like to nail it you know and so what do you do with these nails or these Combs they’re the ones spreading the paint medium yeah they’re actually used as TRS you know or in etching tools as Combs you know in ancient tattoos in the South Pacific they used rakes that look like an afro piic and then they would put the pigment in there well I’ve done this on canvas I’ve dragged the tattoo rakes across the canvas and then put the pigment in so I was like
10:41
tattooing oils you know but it whatever you’re doing with it it’s uh you have to have some explanative in Pigeon Express you don’t you don’t even have to explain it it can be a family tradition you can keep it a secret you know so this pigeon Express is a local Quality Art expression on canvas oil on canvas specific medium it seems to me though personally that it doesn’t only seem like a local thing it seems like a core for something that expresses that origin I think of it as primitive
11:21
originality where um you’re not worried about a way the light falls on the f Fabric and you’ve got to darken it a little so it matches exactly that’s not the detail you’re really working in you’re working in in a more abstract way where you communicate what something is and you get a feeling for it through its texture that you use or mixing colors on canvas without making mud okay everything all my Strokes are really bold I am across the canvases a lot of them from one end to
11:57
the other in my movement you know it’s it’s more of a maestro with oil than just you know a painter see if you’re using tools to apply oil to Canvas you’re doing something that’s unacceptable you know basically in modernism it is abstract expressionism it is but what I consider uh painters in the school of portraiture they look at some of my portraits and uh they don’t appreciate the values of what I’m doing I see and I think my portraits are very important you know I’ve done 240
12:36
portraits in my lifetime and I think they’re very important because I’ve gone from things looking like people to things looking like characters I like the more character imagery you know so and I got a sense of humor now I didn’t have a sense of humor when I first started out in art I was pretty strict I was doing a lot of churches and a lot of Landscapes and but oil on canvas you know over 3,000 times wow in 54 countries so on beaches on mountains on by streams Woods you know one sec we’re going to hang on
13:18
because that noise will definitely be right in the middle of our soundtrack so we’re going to pick up about the streams yeah but that’s how I live my I lived Le that’s what you get if you do see have done this art all over the world yeah the last place was three years ago I came back from doing southeast Asia there I donated I took 35 pieces with me boils on canvas large format 3 ft by 4T and I donated the hospices where people were dying in hospitals Elderly Care Centers burn centers you know they still got a
14:05
problem with landmines going on I went over there and hun some heart you know so that was my contribution to my journey and my quest in the east at that time and I had a lot of fun doing this so sometimes I’m not painting I’m you know selling art and I’m developing the contacts in the art world and I’m giving donating art you know I tried to donate it here a couple times and uh bureaucracy is different wow you know interesting well I’ve been really always enjoying your stuff I mean each piece is such an
14:44
interesting expression you explaining your art wait till you see some of this maybe we should pick one why don’t we go look at one of your pieces and how does that seem yeah good good good let’s do it let’s look at something so tell me about this one okay this is a,1 Hearts what I mean by that is I did 100 Hearts 10 times in movement each time I’m talking about movement this was done with different knives it was done with splatter you take on your pet and you make your oil up your pet is all your
15:23
colors of oil that you’re using for specific painting and then rather than applying it Del ately to the canvas I kind of took and threw it on the canvas then I worked it now I had to work it into an image so I did a heart image now I did this for about 4 hours and the images that I counted the times that I did a heart was 1,000 times so I did one more to make it 1,01 hearts and that is the energy that it took to make this creation and I didn’t make any mud in it you know which is really good
16:04
because when you’re adding colors to colors and you’re working different levels you can turn something into mud but at this point in my career I don’t do that you know it just doesn’t happen anymore but it used to when I first started out well let’s look at that next one right there this one right here yeah what’s that one this is fairies in the Stream there’s a a little kind of male a little female figure down here here the stream with these kind of islands okay that’s like in Southeast
16:35
Asia if you go to cang gang kosoy you know down there in the South China Sea the islands are formed differently and this could be like a nuclear sky and this cloud formation looks like almost like smoke was blown out of the volcano here that’s going off in the form of these big UFOs and they’re in the flowers They’re just hanging around by the water so this is Pigeon Express right this is I’m able to escape an open expression with no rules no rules but wonderful colorific you know expression totally different pallet
17:16
than anybody else’s someone told me that you used to work with Andy Warhol what’s that about oh when I worked in the factory yeah well we were students in New York City really yeah NYU is the campus for artists in America especially in the’ 60s and 70s if you wanted to meet anybody uhhuh and Elon worked for him also but he was doing light shows Alan V yeah and uh they had a band there every day you know playing music and it was a constant party so what we got to do was be part of the party all we had
17:50
to do was a little work get some work done and uh we always had something to eat but you know Gourmet Foods you know what I mean I mean really happening so is that the beginning of your art career or no you well I don’t I think that I was doing art before that but I grounded out there in the East Village they have a place called Washington Square and in the summertime they have a jured art show well I took first place and sold all my work I made an Upstate New York and got in the art show just by
18:22
ruse I just pull up with a van broke and let me in and they let me in that somebody didn’t show and they had another space and okay you can put your stuff out there and I did a live piece and none of the artists would work in a crowd so I threw together a piece there and I had let everybody that came by and looked at my stuff do a little something in the painting so of course it was a Community Focus the piece that we did together and that’s what one first in the show wow yeah so it was kind of cool
18:58
and I stayed in the girls d for about a month after that yeah they pass me around that’s what made me an artist on New York and then well my first wife was an art Professor when they say where’d you get your instruction everybody I’ve known ever since I was a kid has had some you know creative side to them so it was all kinds of you know sharing and learning experience and I just chose to be specifically in an oil painter you know I I really do other stuff I do but it doesn’t last it doesn’t have the same
19:36
durability this stuff is you can wash it and clean it this is about a qu inch thick it’s going to last about 2,000 years wow you know I think so well good you know I don’t know in uh recent times when I’ve met somebody who really lives his work you’re a full-time painter you’re a full-time o p that’s what I apply all my energy to toward and if I had some more time and some more energy it would go in the same direction I also know that sometimes you’ve done art shows you have another
20:22
show PL oh yeah what I’m doing right now is I’m developing a web page and I got one I just started today as we speaking I just got online and none of these things are easy I’m computer literate I can do everything but I didn’t have a machine okay a PC so now I’ve got one now I can do this web page and then I can approach people on the net to do my next exhibition cuz what I want to do is take this show around and just show it to people if I can and I’ve been had one offer but I
21:00
don’t want to go there it’s Canada it’s cold Toronto b i I love to go there sometime but yeah but not the B I can’t go in the winter you know I’m impervious to cold I just you know stay away from it but they has some surfing excuse me a minute this seems to be a little noise challenge where’s that coming from I start we live in a a housing with a lot of kids around us and they’re just got out of school they’re part of my free program of giving free art lessons they
21:34
each done a painting already an oil painting I made about 50 oil paintings painters in the neighborhood just in my community that’s Year all local kids so you get get them involved in art I I let them do one piece and then the next one let them do some of them done two three pieces you know I’ve got some back as presents I have upstairs I got a little collection you know that they got to give it back for some reason or another I take it do you have any goal of what you’d like to do with
22:06
your life and your work I had really a good idea China is half the world’s population I’d like to take this show and Frame It Out Max it out put man on a Pullman railroad car you know a sleeper and everything with all my art in it and pull off of every siding right every little bohawk town in China and break my art out right there at the train station and have a show play some music and go to the next little place you know a real barn and Bailey approach to uh Western Civilization art and music
22:51
yeah would you put money into piece I hope so you know but we’re actually we’re not getting the support that we need just for expressionism on the World level okay all our attributes that are creative should be encouraged you know if anybody is doing anything creatively encourage them but how do we stimulate creativity you have to take creativity around two people and expose them to it and they say this is what my art is about they look at it and they say I can do that M you know and that’s why I did it is I want to
23:32
encourage creativity I want them to say I can do that and then let them try and do it you know I think that in the time that we have left we should get Sabo to play a little music for us what do you think you think that would be a good idea I’ll play a song would you play a song for us I play something let’s see the guitars of tune might take a second I’m going to jump off so I can frame this right hi let me play a song for you this is called uh climb the highest [Music] mountain I climb the high mountain you
25:12
you know I would swim the wi sea yeah only if I know that you’re waiting there for me and cross the Sand you know that burning Sani time yeah only if I know I could find you one time my friend because the road of life has many twist and turns every step along the way yeah is a lesson learn but every friendship made is one go darn harder cuz it’s that one true love baby that’s how we yearn as [Music] friends I’ll be a friend to the undying end your friend so what do you think of that
26:20
through the magic of Television I’m here I’m not there I’m here you know that was an interesting song you write that one yeah yeah yeah that’s a you know one of those love songs as he was singing it I was thinking wow so both sounds like Jimmy Hendrick you know that Jimmy Hendricks was a friend Jimmy Hendricks sings like you sing well he did you know I don’t want to say that I taught him how to sing because that’s not true but when I lived and worked in janis’s last band
26:54
okay oh you she said to me she said the spirit of Jimmy lives on it oh really yeah you know because I was I had certain vernacular that came out of that era in the hate okay and I say the hate I don’t mean h a t e i mean h a i g h t h a i g which is hate ashberry San Francisco San Francisco which was a folen point for the peace movement throughout the world we had BN and Lovins and we had happenings and it was all for world peace and uh all my brothers and sisters that were from that era I hope they found peace
27:36
you know I hope so too well we really appreciate having you here with us and uh we’re going to do some more TV with Sabo here real soon but I just wanted to give you people a chance to get to know and be introduced to one of our Local Heroes
