The Contemporary Museum's First Hawaiian Center exhibition space offers the harried worker or visitor a welcome respite from the downtown hustle and bustle with three new exhibitions of contrasting and intriguing works.

STEPHEN NILES

Stephen Niles' paintings include images painstakingly and carefully painted from photographs, without cropping or editing.

His work falls into that grand tradition of realist painters — classic and contemporary — who emphasize the reproduction of minute details.

After his studio art education at the University of Hawai'i- Manoa and New York City's Pratt Institute, Niles began artistic life as an abstract painter concerned with flatness.

His return to figurative work continues his interest in what he calls "the literal subject as a kind of flatness stand-in."

His recent hanger series demonstrates how painting can be about many things at the same time: the literal, the flat design, hangers and paintings — both of which are about a different kind of "hanging."

As he puts it, "the random yet specific framing of the hangers, their arrangement in the painting, and the spontaneous rhythm of color and contour struck me as truthful."

These impressive large oils on linen — although they dangerously skirt the boundary between accomplished illustration and fine art — show well in the often-difficult First Hawaiian Center exhibition space.

Inspired from textureless photographs, the canvases also evidence a sensual connection with the precisely applied paint that makes them interesting close up and at a distance.

Less successful, however, in terms of their intrinsic aesthetic interest as well as holding their own as exhibited objects, are his earlier pieces from his "Imminent Series," smaller gouache on paper full-length images of various people.

Niles definitely is a talent to watch.

MAY CHEE

The second exhibition in the outer upstairs space consists of a selection of May Chee's works from the early 1970s to the late 1990s.

Born in Honolulu in 1921, Chee was a student of the masters Isami Enomoto and Claude Horan, and has been active in the contemporary arts scene here for more than 40 years.

Her swelling, robust ceramic vessels are distinctive expressions of her interests, influences, and technical and design talents and abilities.

The shapes and decorative surfaces of ancient Chinese neolithic pottery vessels inspired Chee's mature work.

Beginning in 1979, Chee visited China several times, exploring museums and the important archaeological site at Xian.

Employing the dark and light contrast of the abstract geometric patterns of the Chinese prototypes, she has made the work bear her own personal mark by incorporating elements of our Hawai'i environment — fish and birds, cows and goats, flora and rainbows.

Chee's materials likewise are grounded in things Hawaiian: stoneware hand-built clay, decorated with wax-resist and glazes made from the ashes of mango, kiawe and shower trees.

This exhibition, co-organized by James Jensen and Allison Wong, is a fitting tribute to the work of one of Hawai'i's authentic treasures.

DAVID HAMMA

Maui printmaker and painter David Hamma shows unusual drawings, paintings and prints in the back upstairs gallery.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Hamma also is a musician who has produced several albums, some under his own label, Skinny Chest, founded in 1995 as an art and literary journal.

Originally shown in 2003 at the Hui No'eau Visual Arts Center in Makawao, Maui, this exhibition includes recent prints exploiting a variety of techniques.

Like Paul Klee — some of whose work seems grounded in similar musical sensibilities expressed in visual media — he experiments with materials that produce various line qualities to create sensuous and organically inspired works.

Hamma's choice of technique depends on what type of image he intends to create.

He utilizes etching to produce a sensitive linear sense of touch unique to the medium.

He also uses multiple plates and processes such as spit bite, hard ground and drypoint.

He often prints on gampi, a very thin translucent Japanese paper, which is attached to a stronger backing sheet using the chine collé method, producing a layering of marks that enrich the tonal effect of the print.

This technique can be seen in his most recent prints "Ear Circuit," "Sweaters in the Stream" and "Ray Garden."

While printmaking allows an extended period to work out the problems inherent in a particular image or thought, drawing and painting allow for greater spontaneity and working in the moment.

His drawings have an improvisational air, made in a quick impulse of gesture and movement, generally completed in a single session using a combination of pencil, ink, acrylic and silkscreen.

Hamma is interested in cycles of growth and decay, death and rebirth.

"Sometimes my work is loaded with personal iconography relating to both the mundane and the mysterious," he said. "Other times it is a sparsely populated place intended perhaps to produce a calm reflectiveness."

The natural and organic elements in his work are intended to be nonrepresentational.

Like Klee, Hamma is not trying to re-create the beauty of the natural world, but like the alchemists of old, the attempt is to extract an essential essence, the secret life of plants and of all living things.

David C. Farmer holds a bachelor of fine arts degree in painting and drawing and a master's in Asian and Pacific art history from the University of Hawai'i-Manoa.