Emalani is a multidisciplinary artist, or in more colloquial terms, a modern-day renaissance woman. Her last name is, yes, a given name, so from a young age she was inspired to live up to it. Emalani was a constant doodler, experimenting with crayon, Crayola pen, and finger-paint, but her true joy was making (what her mom called) “environments” for her toys. Give her an old shoe box, a glue stick, and pens, and she could create an elaborate one-bedroom studio apartment for Extreme Green Teen Skipper or Puddles the Ty Pluffie Duck (who else had these gems?)

 

Fast forward twenty years, and she’s still doodling and dabbling in just about anything that can be called art: jewelry with hand-made pendants; ceramic goblets with delicious food-scapes; pillows of things you never knew you needed but now desperately want (shrimp, olives, the whole shebang).

 

Emalani just completed two commissions for two chefs (old boss’s hot sauce company and new boyfriend’s cooking gear), and now is tackling her first large scale painting commission (it’s a dog, and it’s a good dog, that’s all we can say).