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| About the Artist: Dietrich Varez | ||||||||||||||||||||
 Dietrich
Varez (born 28 March 1939) is an iconoclastic
printmaker-painter. His work is among the most widely recognized
of any artist in
Hawaii.
Dietrich finds inspiration for his art from Hawaiian folklore and the natural beauty of the native 'ohi'a rain forest surrounding his home located in a remote area of Volcano, on the Big Island of Hawai'i, where he lives with his wife Linda ( also a noted painter ).
DIETRICH VAREZ first came to Hawai'i at age 8, when his mother
married his stepfather Manuel Varez. After the war-torn Germany
he'd known, it was love at first sight, and his romance with
Hawaii still grows. Shunning publicity and working in the
simplest possible fashion with linoleum blocks or canvas, Varez
continually shapes his strong personal expression of Hawai'i.
Early life[edit]Varez was born in Berlin, Germany, at the start of World War II. His father, an architect and engineer of Lithuanian heritage worked on military construction. His mother Ursula, was a Polish-Swedish translator of English. As the war ended, Varez’s father left his family to fend for themselves and he went into hiding from occupation forces, a period Varez has said was “pure misery.” Ursula divorced in 1947. In 1948, she married U.S. Army Sgt. Manuel Varez, who adopted her sons, Dietrich and Christopher, and brought the family to his home in Oahu, Hawaii. Dietrich graduated from President Theodore Roosevelt High School in Honolulu and from the University of Hawaii with a degree in English. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1962, earning the rank of second lieutenant, and then served in the Army Reserves in Honolulu while earning a master's degree in English at the University of Hawaii. He married Linda Denneberg, a native of California who had come to Hawaii as a competitive surfer and stayed to become an artist, in 1965. Varez, with his wife Linda and recently born son, moved to the Big Island in 1968 after purchasing a 9-acre (36,000 m2) property near Kilauea Volcano, sight unseen. For several years, the family lived in cabins at the Hawaii Volcano National Park, or in a tent on their land, supported by Varez’s groundskeeping job at a nearby golf course or as a bartender for the Volcano House, the 1877 lodge in the National Park overlooking the caldera of Kilauea Volcano. He supplemented his earnings by carving firewood scraps with the image of Pele, Goddess of the volcano, which he sold at the bar, and later he made woodblock prints, mostly giving them away but selling some in the lodge gift shop. In 1974, the nonprofit Volcano Art Center opened, providing increased visibility for his work. Varez prints became increasingly popular, eventually allowing Varez to earn a living as an artist. Art[edit]
Varez has also adapted prints to fabric for a line of Hawaiian shirts with clothing maker Reyn Spooner, and he has also painted in oils on a limited basis. The newest addition is that he has authorized his use of artwork and adaptions thereof to Aloha Accents in Volcano, Hawaii for exclusively creating beautiful jewelry and home accents. Lifestyle[edit]The studio where Varez works and lives is in a rural forested area near the small town of Volcano, Hawaii a few miles from the entrance to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. He built the house himself after many years of living in tents or cabins on the land or in the Park. For most of his life there, he and his family have lived a self-sufficient pioneering life. They capture rainwater for their needs, and had no electricity for thirty years. The road to his home has been described as “barely passable.” Varez and his wife rarely leave their homestead, virtually never travelling off-island. Unconventional approach to life and business[edit]Varez, as a self-taught artist whose career developed outside framework of the institutional art world, maintains a strict policy of keeping prices low and distributing directly to the widest audience. This is consistent with his earliest practice of giving away prints, and only then, when demand required it, of charging nominal prices to cover his expenses. It was only after several years of a growing reputation that he decided to make his living from the sale of his work, and he has expressed in interviews a deep ambivalence toward being considered a professional artist.
Contrary to the usual practice among printmakers, he refuses to limit his editions, printing until a block is exhausted. He dates his prints according to when the print was struck, not, as is customary, when the block was carved. These individualistic practices may have limited the value of his work to collectors, but Varez has said he is committed to staying outside the artificial boundaries of art world conventions. "The printmaking business needs some new blood and new traditions,” he has been quoted as saying. References[edit]
Source: Wikepedia Creative Commons
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The Hawai'i of old - when spirits inhabited every tree and
stone, and gods walked the earth - is Dietrich's inspiration.
Varez has published more than 225 wood- and linoleum-block
prints. The subject matter in most of Varez’s work is inspired
by traditional Hawaiian legends, integrating mythological
figures in scenes with flora and fauna typical of the diverse
Hawaiian environment. His work is informed by graphic
interpretations of traditional Polynesian designs, as seen, for
instance, in
