At the Bishop Museum's indigenous artwork show, "Mai Ka PIKO Mai," Sandy Adsett's bold abstract painting shows a vibrant play of color and line, while Marie MacDonald's piece on kapa cloth, with its muted tones and soft textural appeal, makes a quieter statement.

At the exhibit's center, brightly colored glass fishhooks hang over a barrel-sized platform covered in carefully arranged sand.

Markings in the sand give the installation both an ancient and modern quality — ephemeral post-modernism meets ritual.

Like many group shows, the work reflects the ideas of individuals but manages to relay a kindred spirit. And therein lays the point.

"Native art is not just one type of art," says Marques Marzan, cultural coordinator at the museum and artist in the exhibit. "You can see there is a wide range here. ... Traditional art isn't just one type of thing ... it's everything."

Indigenous artists traditionally have been marginalized by the mainstream art world, their ideas shunted and work lumped into quotation-marked craft or multicultural art.

The Bishop Museum show, which is on display through April 6, attempts to show the range of artwork being made by contemporary indigenous artists, its makers' ideas, and yes, traditions.

"Native artists draw upon their past, their cultural place of where they come from, and then convey it in a new way, maybe not new, but a different form that shows contemporary or modern environment," Marzan says. "There's always going to be people who are strict fundamentalists. There is also the other spectrum that says there is no past, we should just do our own things right now.

"And then there are those in the middle, people that connect the present and the future with the things of the past. And that is what this group is trying to do here, draw upon the cultural knowledge and history, and present it, but not always in the same form."

All the artwork in the show, which will travel to various sites around the U.S. after its run here, was generated at a retreat held this summer in Waimea on the Big Island.

Sponsored by the Keomailani Hanapi Foundation and two years in the making, the retreat hosted 115 indigenous artists from around the globe for a week of collaboration and work around the Hawaiian theme of piko (navel or umbilical cord).

The gathering included some of the world's top indigenous artists and master craftsmen from Hawai'i, Alaska, New Zealand, Canada, the Yukon, the Pacific Northwest, Australia, the Torres Straits, the American Southwest, Mauritius and the Cook Islands.

Selected from a pool of applicants, they were provided food, lodging and materials. Evenings of cultural exchange, artist demonstrations, field trips to Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park and three exhibitions were mounted during their stay.

"There were artists who literally didn't sleep," Marzan says. "It was intense."

This gathering was the fifth in 12 years for indigenous visual artists, the first of which was held in New Zealand. For many native artists, the benefit of such gatherings is multifold, but perhaps foremost, they create an atmosphere that can inspire new work.

The cultural component remains critical to creating that environment, Marzan says.

"So many native peoples have connections to the land and to the sky, which is not often thought about in Western cultures," Marzan says. "So if you were discussing your work, a (Western artist) might say, 'Oh so you are doing what again?' Whereas if you were talking to another native group, they might have a different interpretation or connection to what that artist is trying to convey."

Due to space constraints, the exhibit displays only about 40 of the 136 pieces made at the gathering. Still, event coordinators deem the event a success. Connections were fostered, and plans for another gathering in 2009 held outside of Hawai'i already are in the works. The exposure to working indigenous artists may also inspire others to join their ranks, says Hiko Hanapi, president of the Keomailani Hanapi Foundation.

In addition to the 45 participating Hawaiian artists, roughly 250 volunteers from the Kohala area shuttled the visitors to sites, brought food and provisions, and helped to set up and break down displays.

"Many of the volunteers were young Hawaiian men and women," Hanapi says. "They saw that these indigenous artists looked just like them. And they saw them using the stonework, or making jewelry or making jade. It was a mind-opener for many of our young of Hawaiian people, watching them make their art."

Sue Kiyabu is a freelance writer based in Honolulu.