Sean Yoro refers to Saint John as his "second home."
Like the sirens of Maritime lore, the LA-based muralist and artist Sean Yoro, also known by his artistic nom-de-plum Hula, and the Kapu Collective could not resist returning to Saint John.
The world-renowned artist is once again painting a mural, this time at Market Slip. The artwork will be painted on a 28-ft tall aluminum composite canvas and once it is complete the mural will be given a permanent home in Saint John alongside the city’s other public art.
The painting of Hula’s 2017 mural, Huna, at Pugsley Slip was widely covered by media outlets and brought a lot of international attention and interest to Saint John and the Bay of Fundy.
Yoro was a late bloomer as an artist, which was difficult to believe considering his body of work.
“There’s not a lot of people that grow up to want to be artists in Hawaii, so I actually didn’t stumble into art until I was eighteen. It was just a random charcoal class at college I took as, and from the first day I loved it,” he said.
The very next summer he moved straight to New York and tried to pursue an arts career that he “naively” thought was going to be very simple.
“I thought I just had to move to New York, and that’s it, you will be successful,” he said.
Home Away From Home
It was a case of serendipity with Yoro and the Kapu Collective coming to Saint John; the city had already been on their radar.
“We are always are brainstorming different ideas and the Bay of Fundy was on our ‘To Do’ list, to try and find a way to be able to paint a wall out here,” he said.
The group was doing their iceberg project, a’o’ana, in 2015 when Discover Saint John emailed Yoro’s manager.
“The lighthouse and everything they sent me was literally printed on our wall, already on our inspiration board.”
Yoro says he found similarities between Saint John and Oahu, Hawaii where he, his twin brother Gabe and friends grew up.
“The town that I grew up is away from all the main attractions of Hawaii and it’s definitely a tighter knit community, but when I came to Saint John the first time, I felt that tight knit community here as well,” he said.
Artist Sean Yoro, twin brother Gabe and photographer Payton Purdy
To him, Saint John’s community felt like a second home.
“Everybody was so nice; it was just so comforting, because that was when I was still living in New York and to go from New York to here was such a relief for me. We all felt at home like we could have we could have grown up here.”
However, he freely admits that there was a learning curve in figuring out the logistics of painting 28 feet of wall that is underwater half of the time and working with nature.
“Almost every project to some degree, nature always has its variables that you can’t account for, we’re always learning and adapting on site,” he said.
“I naively thought it was going to be way simpler than it was. There was just so much to untangle and plan but once we finally did, we had a blast. Thankfully this year we are veterans now.”
He explained they are aiming for eight days of painting but will be in Saint John for thirteen days in case there is bad weather.
“The first day we rigged up all the ropes, got everything measured out and on the second day we sketched out the whole painting,” he said.
The themes of his artwork are uncomfortably timely, Yoro explains, revolving around climate change, nature, animals, challenging people to look at things from a different perspective.
“It’s sad to say, but we have so much to draw from because no matter everywhere where we turn, there’s a new story here and there that has to do with just devastating things that are coming and changing.”
The female form is often the subject of Yoro’s murals, and in a way reflects Mother Nature herself, he explains.
“How would you capture her in her own environment or in a place where she may not even fit in naturally?”
“I started with a lot of abandoned concrete waterfronts in New York when I first started this concept creating a balance of having these really beautiful figures in these abandoned desolate places, but you still had the peacefulness of the water.
Going Viral
Yoro believes social media and the Internet were a huge turning point for him, because if he had created his series in any other time, they wouldn’t have been able to be as impactful and get in front of so many eyes at once.
“It was such a viral overnight thing in the beginning, I never really saw the power of the Internet until that day.”
Huna’s creation was covered by a multitude of art, surf, and lifestyle websites, and their respective social channels, and the 2017 mini-documentary about the mural was shared over 25 million times through social channels.
“I’m so in awe of how social media changes the world and how we connect and even for me personally. I am able to gather so much information than I could as a kid and have access to information and people’s art that inspire me.”
“I think my art would have been a lot more different without social media and the internet itself.”
The future looks bright for Yoro and the Kapu Collective. They have more of their iconic murals planned across the US, Hawaii and Europe and are preparing future projects.
“It is about figuring out how we can tell more of these intricate stories that are happening in in real time.”
“I really want to get a quicker response time to kind of the issues that are going on because it feels like news nowadays moves so fast. I want to keep up to date and be able to translate art projects into these kinds of real-life stories that are happening right now.”
For more information about Sean Yoro and the Kupa Collective’s artwork, check out Yoro’s Instagram and the Kapu Collective’s website , Facebook page and YouTube channel.
With files from Danielle McCreadie.
