ALA NIHO
Size: 10” x 10” x 1”
Medium: Monoprint series of 10 - Paper - mounted on birch ply board
2021
Ala Niho — Following a Line of Strength
Ala Niho is a series of ten monoprints, each mounted on 10” × 10” birch plywood panels. The title translates as “path of the tooth,” referencing the patterned edges of traditional shark tooth weapons and the deeper cultural meanings carried within Hawaiian knowledge systems.
The design intention is to encourage deeper attention — to look closely at pattern, repetition, and form, and to recognize how strength, protection, and ancestral presence are embedded within design itself. Rather than functioning as literal representation, the niho (tooth) becomes a visual metaphor: a repeating edge that marks lineage, resilience, and continuity.
Each print explores rhythm through subtle variation. The monoprint process allows small shifts in texture, pressure, and tone, so no two works are exactly the same. These variations echo the layered nature of cultural memory — shared, repeated, and carried forward, yet always shaped by individual experience and moment.
Mounted on natural birch plywood, the works invite a tactile awareness of material as well as image. Wood, grain, and surface become part of the reading, reinforcing the sense that knowledge is not only visual, but physical and felt. Taken together, Ala Niho forms both a conceptual and material pathway — one that traces inherited strength and reminds us that ancestral design continues to shape contemporary practice, quietly and with purpose.
THE PROCESS
ʻAla Niho was created through a layered process of painting, printmaking, and symbolic abstraction, culminating in the application of wax to seal the final surface. The title—referring to “tooth-like paths” or ancestral ridgelines—anchors the work in Kanaka Maoli understandings of lineage, movement, and encoded knowledge. Clark began by building up a visual field of repeated forms, glyphs, and geometric structures, invoking both traditional patterns and speculative Indigenous futures. These motifs were layered through print-based techniques and gestural marks to suggest maps, chants, and the spatial memory of land and kinship. The final sealing in wax acts as both a material and metaphorical gesture—preserving the layered marks beneath while softening the surface with a translucent veil. This technique evokes the idea of protection, permanence, and sacred containment, reinforcing the notion that knowledge can be held, concealed, or revealed across time. Through ʻAla Niho, Clark continues his exploration of Indigenous abstraction as a practice of cultural transmission—where process becomes a form of ceremony, and surface becomes a vessel for ancestral presence.
