How One Artist Celebrates Hawaiian Culture and History Through Design

How does where you live and where you’re from impact your work? For long-time Spoonflower artist and reigning Design Challenge champion, Lora Gallagher, her Hawaiian upbringing infuses everything from her Spoonflower designs to her Instagram captions. We’re sitting down with Lora to hear more about her creative journey, where she finds inspiration, her best tip for finding success on Spoonflower and more. Plus, learn how early interests in Hawaiian history, navigation and ethnobotany led her to surface design, serving as a reminder of how wherever you are in this great big world, it can lead to lifelong loves and discoveries!

Meet Lora Gallagher

Lora: I loved math and as a young student thought that I should put aside art to focus on business studies. However, I could not separate my love of art and creative pursuits from my classwork. I knew I wanted to find work that I would enjoy and love.

In my professional career, I hire designers to create logos, marketing collateral, photography and videos. I work with an advertising agency to create ads. My day is very full with meetings, recapping meetings and generally solving problems through marketing. My work doesn’t allow me time to create designs except for in-house projects.

My Spoonflower artwork is a hobby and I can only get to it on the weekends or on days off. I discovered Spoonflower when my daughter was learning to surf. I wanted to make her a beach bag but couldn’t find any fabric with surfers on it. I ended up coming across several designs on Spoonflower that I purchased to make a beach bag. I then saw that I could upload my own designs on Spoonflower.

I slowly started uploading designs and started entering the weekly Design Challenges. During the early days of lockdown, life and work was stressful. I was able to keep working but I had to take one day off a week and I used that extra day to relax, draw and create for my personal collection.

Lora: I think about the design topic weeks before I create the design. I approach the process first with a color palette and then the general idea. In the back of my mind, I am always trying to focus on how to make it different or unique, and at the same time useful for an interested audience. I try to find themes around Hawaii and love Asian themes.

Lora: I love everything about the Hawaiian culture and Hawaiian history, and I am extremely proud of being born and raised here. I am half Japanese and a quarter Spanish and a quarter Irish. As a child, I was always drawing and creating. My parents were really supportive of my art and I would always show them everything I drew. They always provided positive feedback and that positive feedback kept me drawing throughout my entire life.

My dad wanted me to go to art school, but as I got older I thought it was best to put art aside and pursue an advertising/marketing career where I could use my creativity and love of economics and math, and support myself with a lucrative career.

I was a business major in my undergraduate years at the University of Hawaii, but always took art courses. I was very fortunate to take a Hawaiian ethnobotany class from a very famous Hawaiian professor of botany, Dr. Isabella Abbott. She opened up my love of Hawaiian indigenous and endemic plants. Around that time, Hawaiian culture and the arts were undergoing a renaissance and new appreciation among the people of Hawaii.

While I tried to put aside my art, I found myself working as a graphic artist while I went to school. In one of my jobs as a textbook graphic artist for the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics, I worked for Dr. Richard Rhodes who was drawing the plans for the first Hawaiian voyaging canoe. I didn’t realize at the time, the importance of the Hawaiian Voyaging Society and its mission to prove that Hawaiians were skilled navigators, navigating by the stars. Can you tell I love Hawaii with all my heart?  

I am so very grateful that I was able to make these meaningful connections in my youth and to keep the fire and love of creating art active in my life. Hawaii’s last reigning monarch, Queen Liliuokalani really appealed to my heart. She was a woman who was placed in a very difficult situation. She was marginalized by wealthy American business men who cared only about keeping their lucrative businesses intact and saw her as a threat to their livelihoods. They plotted against her.  

Her life was one of faith, strength and graciousness. She tried to protect her islands and her people, but was imprisoned during the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. I went to an all-girls high school that was founded by a Hawaiian queen, Queen Emma. Our campus was next to Washington Place, where Queen Liliuokalani lived out her years after being released from captivity. We would get to visit her home a lot and we were influenced by those surroundings and were fortunate to be so near to those gardens and stately home. All of these influences are important in my own art and I feel very blessed to have these unique connections and experiences. 

Lora: I love the Spoonflower community and being a part of this amazing, talented and inclusive community of artists from all over the world. 

Lora: Taking part in as many Spoonflower Design Challenges as possible. 

Lora: Recently, it has been easier to find nurseries that cultivate Hawaiian indigenous and endemic plants. My husband and I are landscaping our yard and working on adding Hawaiian plants to our gardens. I can’t wait to have these plants bloom and grow so I can include them in my designs. 

To find Lora online, visit her website hnldesigns.com or Spoonflower shop or find her on Instagram and Facebook.

Shop Lora’s designs

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