“Dr. Saito’s Office,” the art show being exhibited at the Schaefer Gallery at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center, will be disassembled Feb. 17. The installation has generated much comment and misunderstanding.
Some gallery visitors have commented that this Maui doctor’s early experiments using concentrated rays of the sun may have caused more harm then good. Some question the professional ethics of photographing his female patients partially undressed. Newspaper reports from the early ‘40s indicate that he left the island under mysterious circumstances.
I stumbled upon the doctor’s curious solar ray apparatus in an antique shop in Paia shortly after arriving on Maui in 1989. I’ve been researching the life of this “early new age practitioner” for the last 20 years. I obtained some information and bizarre photographs from his granddaughter.
Now my hope is to locate any former patients of Dr. Edward Saito who had an office on Baldwin Avenue in the 1930s. Please contact me at tom@tomsewell.com
Tom Sewell
Haiku
