Machines that once made sugar turned into art
Sweet Inspiration: Maui artist salvaging old mill materials for display in Puunene
Haiku multimedia artist Tom Sewell cranks the handle of a valve he has transformed into a work of art recently in his studio located in Puunene Mill’s former tractor repair shop. The Maui News / MATTHEW THAYER photos
A heavy duty steam relief valve (right) tops a Sewell sculpture on display in his Puunene studio gallery. The valve is in line with other pieces featuring huge gears and grinding wheels.
Haiku multimedia artist Tom Sewell examines a giant valve that once served Puunene Mill and now stands in his tractor repair shop studio as a piece of heavyweight art.
Not all the found art treasures Sewell has assembled weigh a ton. He opens a cardboard box containing a set of vintage bearings.
Haiku multimedia artist Tom Sewell cranks the handle of a valve he has transformed into a work of art recently in his studio located in Puunene Mill’s former tractor repair shop. The Maui News / MATTHEW THAYER photos
A heavy duty steam relief valve (right) tops a Sewell sculpture on display in his Puunene studio gallery. The valve is in line with other pieces featuring huge gears and grinding wheels.
Haiku multimedia artist Tom Sewell examines a giant valve that once served Puunene Mill and now stands in his tractor repair shop studio as a piece of heavyweight art.
Not all the found art treasures Sewell has assembled weigh a ton. He opens a cardboard box containing a set of vintage bearings.
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PUUNENE -- Apart from the occasional jet roaring overhead, shuttered Puunene Mill is silent as Tom Sewell leads a visitor around his sculpture studio gallery located in the mill's former tractor repair shop.
The Haiku multimedia artist's longtime obsession with documenting the mill and its workers has led him to lease the airy 17,000-square-foot steel building. On display are heavyweight sculptures assembled from massive gears, gargantuan valves and machine tools he salvaged from the mill. Valve and tool handles are worn smooth from many decades of use. Some pieces sport welds, scars bearing testament to bygone repairs.
Large photos of plantation workers adorn the walls. In one side room a multimedia video and audio loop plays, while an adjacent former office shelves small treasures like fine wooden boxes holding lathe tools and sets of never-used bearings still in their cardboard container. Salvaged desks and file cases contain stacks of mechanical drawings and trade publications.
On the main floor a recent rainstorm has left puddles where balky bulldozers were once stripped down to their guts and reassembled. Sewell's many hours chronicling the steam-powered facility allow him to cast back from this clean, ordered environment to the living, breathing mill with all its thunderous sounds and sickly sweet smells. Back in those days, this onslaught of the senses was jarring only at first. Rumbles of the press and hot, humid blasts of steam gradually became part the background.
Sewell says a long-ago personal tour of Paia Mill by manager Brian Ross hooked him. He began photographing the two mills and that led to the 2006 Enigma of the Mill multimedia production featured at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center's Schaefer International Gallery.
"I got to understand the magnificence of the mill," Sewell says. "I became obsessed. My current obsession is to preserve what I can of the mill. To honor the workers and make art of what is being thrown away."
Embracing another man's junk as his treasure, Sewell sees beyond the rust and obsolescence to find not only beauty, but history as well. He envisions all the forgotten hands and expertise that went into each tool's design, manufacture and use. Some pieces on display he has only a vague notion of their use. That's one reason he extends a standing invitation to all former mill employees. Maybe they'll stop by and tell him what the thing did.
"Old employees sometimes visit," Sewell said. "I photograph them. It's been fun to hear the stories. It's fun to sit and talk to the guys."
It pains Sewell to see items being sold for scrap metal. He says he is offering full scrap prices to get his hands on old equipment and other castoffs before they hit the bin.
"I feel the history of Maui's sugar mills must be preserved and celebrated. If everything is just melted down and sold as scrap, it is a tremendous disservice and a huge loss," he said.
Several of Sewell's pieces are made from old blank sheets of steel from which welders and machinists cut row after row of parts. In their desire to use every possible square inch of the thick blanks, the workers created repeating designs that resemble cutout paper snowflakes. Welded into cubes, the strangely delicate objects could be the poster children for the "found art" movement. It just took an artist's eye to spot their potential.
Sewell says his desire to preserve goes beyond equipment and decorative sheets of steel. He wants to see Puunene Mill itself saved.
"I would like to see the mill purchased and turned into a creative arts hub," he said. "It could have studios and shops. It's a real pipe dream, but what can I say, I believe in miracles. I expect them every day."
Sewell says once COVID-19 is brought under control, he hopes to open his studio to the public. For now, it is open one day a week to visitors from the nearby Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum. It is also open by appointment only to "serious collectors, architects and property developers."
For more information, Sewell can be contacted at 214-3324 or tom@tomsewell.com.
* Matthew Thayer can be reached at thayer@maui.net.