A lifelong resident of Hawaii, Steve Yuen is an architect and urban designer by training, principal at Group 70 in Hawaii, and has returned to art and printmaking in the last 5 years.

As a practicing architect, he has brought his experience and ability to bear on a variety of planning and architectural projects in Hawaii and the Pacific. His approach is environmentally, culturally, and economically holistic and contextual, and is based deeply on values related to community and the importance of civilized social engagement in any context.

He has also been involved in the planning and design of unique interpretive, community and visitor facilities in the natural and cultural landscape. He is currently a partner in the development of an integrated community resource, village center and surf park including health, recreation and sustainable agriculture in Palm Springs, CA, and more recently in Kalaeloa, Oahu

Recent work in Hawaii within a community context has focused on a guest-host relationship that establishes the primacy of place--the host culture and its enduring connection to the natural environment as a basis for hospitality. Recent work has involved integrating agriculture and Hawaiian culture into a visitor destination within a rural community on the island of Hawaii.

Selected Exhibitions

Honolulu Printmakers Annual Juried Exhibition. Hawaii SFCA Award and Purchase.
Lo’i Gallery, American Savings Bank. Four Artists Invited Exhibit.
Arts North International 27 Juried Exhibition, Minneapolis, Minn. First Place Award, Prints.
Honolulu Printmakers Annual Juried Exhibition. Pegge Hopper Gallery Award.

2022, 2021, 2020. Upstream Gallery. Hastings on Hudson, NY. Small Works Juried Exhibition

Individual Exhibits

Prismatika. Fishcake Hawaii, Kakaako.
Imagining the Chinese in Hawaii: 12 Commentaries. Hawaii’s Plantation Village, Waipahu, Hawaii.
The Kona Landscape: 10 Commentaries. Central Kona Center, Kealakekua, Hawaii

Artist’s Statement

The interpretation of place can provide a deep understanding about ourselves and our existence. Exploring the changing visual relationship between the original culture and landscape, and the influence of urban development over the last 100 years in Hawaii has led to a clearer understanding of the personal connections to places I have made over my life.

Recent artwork has explored 3 broad topics:

The changing of littoral environments, from the near shore reefs, to the muliwai, where streams or fresh water meet the ocean. In a prevailing pattern occurring over a hundred years or more, the gradual loss of fresh water to first industrial agriculture and then urbanization has resulted in a loss in vibrancy and health of the brackish environments. I am trying to honor what I have seen that remains.

A reflection on the changes that have taken place in the Kona landscape, exploring the visual relationship between the original landscape, the post-contact subsistence landscape and the significance of invasive species and the built environment of a largely rural place that is undergoing an inevitable urbanization.

A celebration of the original settlement patterns in Kaimuki and Wilhelmina Rise, one of Honolulu’s first suburban communities developed in the 1900s in an area with a unique volcanic geology and topography. Interior views explore the evolution of house plans, the scale of rooms, and the intentional connection between room size, furnishing, and connection to natural light and to the outside. This investigation has led to the broader investigation of mid-century suburban residential development patterns and their effect on both the natural landscape and on the older pre-war built context.

A Critical Note on the Printmaking Medium Employed

After years of drawing by hand in architecture and design, I have embraced a different creative process using an electronic medium in which the original is begun and entirely created as a computer drawing. While modeling software is used, the end goal is entirely the creation of 2-dimensional images.

Each piece is a unique work of art and is not a photographic enhancement or digital representation of a previously-created hard-copy original. The work is a unique creation begun and developed wholly as a drawing and model in the electronic medium. There is no physical original artwork from which copies are created by scanning or digital photography.

The original is thus recorded as an electronic image file, and the manifestation of that as a print has been created with archival quality printing.

The print image is exactly the original and is a limited-edition digital print using archival quality inks and paper. All prints are part of a limited edition of 12 or fewer. Each work is framed in a custom Doug Gordon wood frame with plexiglas.