Megachurches, megastores and Hummers — thanks to the decade-long real-estate boom, Lahaina is looking ever more like a San Jose suburb. But suburban sprawl is not all that people have brought with them from the mainland to Maui — there is also a small but steadily growing group of artists, performers and gallery operators.

MASTERS OF ART

Just opened in the newly revamped Pa'ia train depot is the Masters of Art Gallery.

Ray Masters, a native of England by way of Malta, arrived on Maui's north shore 20 years ago to make windsurfing videos. Captivated, he returned again and again and finally moved to Maui in 1999. Frustrated with Lahaina galleries that charged as much as 75 percent in commissions, he contemplated opening his own exhibition space.

Masters naturally found his way to Pa'ia, once the epicenter of the island's sugar industry, now an enclave of windsurfers and yindies (indie yuppies). There, he leased the defunct 1910 train depot on Baldwin Avenue, where railroad cars once carried passengers and sugar to Wailuku (the trains stopped running in 1966).

Last year, Masters began converting the depot to a multigallery complex. The space had been used to shape windsurfing boards since 1983, and the artist had to scrape layers of fiberglass off the cement floor.

Now Chai Yo, selling art and objets from Asia, and jeweler Carmen & Co. are installed, and in his own Masters of Art space, Masters shows the work of Maui-based artists such as Jerry Morgan, who makes oversize fruit out of fiberglass — his papaya coffee table is pure pop art. Masters also throws semi-monthly "art parties."

"It's something that was sorely missing on this side of the island," says Masters. "I know there's a couple of galleries here, but they're very much bent towards the tourist end of the market."

In front of the gallery is a lunch wagon (Masters prefers the term "mobile kitchen") called Cafe del Ray, which serves "toasties" (think panini made with white-bread slices) and deli sandwiches. This summer, Masters will start a members-only supper club. "They'll be upscale cool private dinner nights," says Masters. How can one join? "By begging me ... with lots of money," he says, laughing.

Masters finances his project with his day job — as a graphic designer, he has lent his bold concepts to everyone from Swatch and Reebok to the Detroit Grand Prix and skiwear company Elho. He has done the posters for all of Maui's pro windsurfing events.

FROM TRIBECA TO KAHULUI

Like most longtime Manhattanites, Nora Burns couldn't imagine moving to Brooklyn, let alone an island in the Central Pacific. But when her husband, Pedro Giron, accepted a job as an emergency-room doctor at Maui Memorial Hospital in 2004, the mother of two packed her bags and left her Tribeca loft for Maui, where she's been ever since.

Settled in sleepy Kula, but homesick for downtown New York, Burns decided to bring Manhattan to Maui, with her new Coconut Cabaret performance series.

Shelling out travel expenses to bring performance artists and experimental comedians to the Maui Arts & Cultural Center's McCoy Theater in Kahului was a risky proposition. But in March, the cabaret's debut — a performance by drag-ish character "Dina Martina," the alter-ego of Seattle actor Grady West, received an immediately favorable response. A mixed audience — from guileless heterosexual surf girls to witticism-a-second gay men — laughed and clapped as West, looking a little like a young Frank DeLima in drag, his face smeared with red lipstick and wearing a grotesque old-school leotard, did his ironic slapstick schtick to a good-size crowd.

The same went for last month's performance by The Nellie Olesons, Burns' own Los Angeles-based comedy troupe. The summer includes performance spoken-word ranter Mike Albo and recovering child star Alison Arngrim (who, in a roundabout way, is the Olesons' namesake, having played bratty Nellie Oleson in the television drama "Little House on the Prairie").

Comedy performance has a long tradition in Hawai'i, although usually of a more conventional standup variety. At first, Burns wondered how locals would respond to the cabaret's more experimental performers.

"This very local girl came up to me the other day and said, 'Oh, I loved your show, I loved the Ann Coulter piece,' " said Burns, lithe as a ballerina and vibrating with big-city energy. "So you shouldn't underestimate what people are going to like or get."

Maui's population has tripled since the 1960s. The island's roads, low- and middle-income housing, and water supply have struggled to keep up with the surge. At the same time, Maui's newest residents bring with them tastes for art and culture shaped largely by the Mainland, and artist/entrepreneurs like Masters and Burns are here to entertain them. But for Masters, as a longtime visitor and resident as well as an entrepreneur, features of the old Maui ought to be preserved.

"It's up to us to make sure it stays as nice as it always has been. It's up to the people."