For most of its eleven years, the South Kona Artists' Collective has been a February event. Studios opened for one weekend, cars lined the shoulders of upcountry driveways, and then the work went back behind closed doors until the next year. That changed this fall. Starting October 2, 2026, SOKO Artists began hanging a rotating exhibit in a Kainaliu dining room, with a new show on the first Friday of every month. A holiday sale at Yano Hall follows on December 12, and the 2027 studio tour comes after that. In practice, the South Kona art calendar now covers the whole dry-season run from October to March.
A tour that kept outgrowing its weekend
The collective began as an idea. According to West Hawaii Today's 2017 account, artist Linda Purcell Satchell proposed it in the summer of 2014, with photographer Kathleen Carr and painter Pamela Colton Thomas as founding members and eight South Kona artists in the first planning group. Ke Ola Magazine tells it a little differently and credits Carr and Satchell with starting the conversations about an open-studio event.
The tour that came out of those conversations grew steadily:
| Tour | Artists | Locations |
|---|---|---|
| First, March 2015 | 13 | 6 |
| Second | 16 | 9 |
| 2017 | 22 | 11 |
| Ninth annual, 2024 | 21 | 14 |
By 2024 the artist count had leveled off, but the number of stops had more than doubled from the first year. The 2025 tour was billed as the tenth annual. Members work in painting, pottery, photography, assemblage sculpture, jewelry, printmaking, woodworking, fiber and mosaic. That's a lot of work to see in two days of driving between studios, and the next two additions to the calendar give it more room.
December came first
The first addition was a holiday sale. Hawaiʻi Public Radio's community calendar listed a SOKO pop-up holiday sale at Yano Hall on Sunday, December 8, 2024, with 12 member artists. A year later, Big Island Now billed the December 7, 2025 sale as the collective's second annual holiday market, with glass, pottery, fiber art, mosaics, painting and jewelry on the tables.
This year's sale is on Saturday, December 12, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., again at Yano Hall. The two earlier sales were held on Sundays.
Yano Hall has a story of its own. Rodney Yano Memorial Hall, at 82-6156 Māmalahoa Highway in Captain Cook, opened in December 1970. It is named for Sgt. First Class Rodney James Takahashi Yano, a Kealakekua native who received the Medal of Honor. Big Island Now's 2014 report on its renovation describes a county facility used for senior programs and community events. SOKO's listing places the hall "in Captain Cook by the Kona Green Market," which is a handy landmark for anyone who already knows the stretch of highway near the Amy B. Greenwell Garden.
Then a wall that changes every first Friday
The second addition is bigger, because it doesn't depend on a single date. SOKO Artists says it was invited to show work at SOKO Kitchen and Cocktails in Kainaliu on a rotating basis. Artists change on the first Friday of each month, many pieces are for sale, and each new exhibit opens with an artists' reception from 4 to 6 p.m. The collective's own description is warm: "We're excited to share our namesake's space, and we know you'll love their delicious food and great atmosphere!"
Here is the posted schedule as of this writing:
- October 2 to November 5, 2026: Catherine Wynne, Ellen Crocker and Trudy Koszarek
- November 6 to December 3, 2026: Ginger Sandell and Mark Martel
- December 4 to 31, 2026: Lorie Taylor and Connie Sizemore
- January 1 to February 4, 2027: Kathleen Carr and Debbie Miller
- February 5 to March 4, 2027, tentative: Kabira Lyon
Hawaiʻi Public Radio's calendar listing shows the receptions running 4 to 6 p.m. on Fridays through the current show. These are posted listings, so dates can shift. The February slot is already marked tentative.
Who is on the wall through the end of the year
The series opens with fiber, a medium that can get lost in a crowded tour weekend. Ellen Crocker works with paper, textiles and wood through painting, stitching and carving, and says Japanese sumi-e ink painting shapes her approach. Trudy Koszarek makes traditional quilts and art quilts. Catherine Wynne makes art quilts, traditional Hawaiian quilts and patchwork quilts, and also offers custom longarm quilting. Their show stays up until November 5.
November moves to paint. Ginger Sandell paints nature subjects, and a 2022 Ke Ola profile describes her shift from acrylics to oils and her painterly realism. Mark Martel works across landscapes, wildlife, portraits and figures. According to SOKO, he moved to Hawaiʻi in 2013 and has made more than 600 paintings and drawings since.
December pairs Lorie Taylor, who works mostly in acrylics and collage, has gone back to oils, and makes realistic flowers from clay, with Connie Sizemore. SOKO's biography says Taylor retired to Hawaiʻi Island in 2017. Their show opens with a reception on Friday, December 4.
With the December show opening on December 4 and the Yano Hall sale on December 12, the first half of December has two ways to see and buy members' work within about eight days. Each happens in a different town on the same highway.
What a first Friday looks like at Mango Court
SOKO Kitchen and Cocktails is at 79-7460 Hawaiʻi Belt Road, Suite A 104, in Kainaliu. The restaurant places itself in Mango Court and describes a weathered tin-roof building with a sunroom set among tall palms. It calls its cooking local, mauka-to-makai fare: fish, chicken and kalua pork smoked daily, local catch, ceviche, ahi tartare, and cocktails made with local ingredients.
A few details on the restaurant's website affect how a reception evening works:
- No reservations. Seating is first-come, first-served.
- Group size. Tables hold parties of up to eight.
- Friday hours. On Fridays and Saturdays the kitchen runs 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and the bar until 10 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, the kitchen closes at 8 p.m. and the bar at 9 p.m.
- Closed days. The restaurant is closed Sunday and Monday.
Because the 4 to 6 p.m. reception ends well before the Friday kitchen closes, you can meet the artists and still sit down to dinner the same evening. Without reservations, though, the table depends on who else arrived for the reception. Each show also hangs for about a month after its opening, so any open day from Tuesday to Saturday works for lunch or dinner in front of the current exhibit without the reception crowd.
January leads back to the tour
The final months of the schedule connect the restaurant series to the event it grew from. Kathleen Carr, a founding member and photographer in both published histories of the collective, shares the January 1 to February 4, 2027 slot with Debbie Miller. Kabira Lyon's tentative show would start February 5. The 2027 studio tour follows on Saturday and Sunday, February 27 and 28, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., at Yano Hall, artist studios and other venues across South Kona.
By then, anyone who has made a few first Fridays in Kainaliu could already have seen work from the ten artists on the posted schedule before the studio doors open. The tour still covers the most ground, but it's no longer the only time in the year to see their work.
At Hōkūlia, the shoreline park, the farmland and the people who live and make things along this coast are all part of ownership. If you'd like to talk through how the Kealakekua and Kainaliu calendar fits with life at Hōkūlia, our team is glad to share what we know.
