Margaret Stanton is an artist who paints murals

The Sugar Plantation Era Mural is in Honoka'a Town on the Big Island of Hawaii, and depicts a historical scene of the sugar cane harvest, here on Hawaii's Hamakua Coast. This 9' x 16' mural is located on the main street on Honoha'a at the front of the Honoka'a Club Hotel. It sits up high and is lit at night. The Hotel's owners, Adelle and Jory,  really like talking to visitors about the sugar plantation days, which had huge lasting impact on the community and culture on the area. They use the mural to tell how the workers harvested the sugarcane, who the cane cutter's were, how they looked, and the conditions.  Sugar cane grew all over this area on the island, and almost nobody escaped being affected by it.

At harvest time the fields were burned to get rid of the leaves. Workers were completely covered. They wore high boots and huge, thick gloves. They wore hats and wrapped their faces to protect them from all the debris in the air as a result of burning the fields before cutting.   Cotton shirts with a small, checkered pattern everybody had. Pants were a style of overalls that the workers gave a special name to. It was...... for al the patches sewn onto them. Individual workers cut the sugar cane by hand using a short machete of sort and pulled each cane stock to the ground so that it could be carried away.  Two, working together with these long sticks, balanced great piles of cane and carried them to the water flumes, which in turn, washed the sugarcane downhill to the roads where the carts and horses waited to take it away. Entire families stayed in the fields at harvest, and they took their meals and cared for children there. The harvest lasted for months!

Many different ethnic groups of people arrived here on the island of Hawaii to live and work during the days of the sugar industry. Today, there are residents in Honoka'a and all along the Hamakua Coast who not only remember the Plantation Days, but who were cane cutters themselves!

     "While painting the restoration on the mural, I met and spoke with a man whose daughter brought him down to see the mural's facelift. (I had no idea people of the community were relating to the mural and cared about it. The Hotel's owners said that visitors look, too. with interest and curiosity about Honoka'a history.)  He was a Cane Cutter, in the old days. He told me that he actually only worked for part of a year after graduating high school. The conditions, he said, were terrible! He was so hot covered up like that! And dirty! He decided to go to the Army instead!  He also told me that you would never see the sugar cane laying like that, every-which-way. "You'd get fired for that", he told me. "It had to be layed out straight so they could carry it out fast." 

Margaret went to work on the design for the Hawaiian Heritage Mural which is now on the Waipio end of town set back off the road and facing the street. This 9' x 12 " mural is sometimes lit at night.

Margaret Stanton won the commission to paint the mural, a mural which became three murals for Honoka'a and the Hamakua Heritage Corridor. She found out that they liked her work, but wanted a new design. three designs, for each theme. The project was gaining a lot of community support, and beginning to take on a life of its own.

In October 2008, ten years after the two Honoka'a Murals were painted, Margaret Stanton re-colorized the two murals.

For more information about the materials, construction and restoration of the murals contact Margaret by e-mail here on her Home Website. Click Contact.