Sunday, October 16, 2011
9 AM – 12 PM
Lyon Arboretum

Blues skies and cool breezes greeted the thirteen participants at the Lyon Arboretum special tour and Taisaku project. Chairmen Karen Kirk, Earl Shimabukuro and Charmaine Yee-Hollison greeted Mashuri Waite, Collections and Grounds Manager and our docent tour guide for the day. The group proceeded up the trail to Inspiration Point, with brief stops for Mashuri to explain the flora. Among the plants were an awe inspiring giant palm that would produce the world’s largest blooms, ripening cacao pods, the Acai Palm, tea and coffee plants, a soap tree, and a hale with a native Hawaiian garden.

After the tour, Karen divided the group up into three teams and had everyone select some of the materials the arboretum staff had gathered to build the taisaku sculptures. Taisaku means epic, or large. The sculptures created from “cookies” or cross sections of tree trunks, palm fronds and dried branches were sawed, drilled and screwed together to create pieces on the main lawn of the arboretum. It was a lesson in engineering and physical exertion to create three distinctive sculptural pieces.

Group 1 Sculpture

Group 2 Sculpture

Group 3 Sculpture