A Softer Side (Mr. Hardin)- in my Drawers

Day #9 of What’s in My Drawers.

This archival digital print is from my Ranch Camp Series about my home and neighbors in our rural plantation neighborhood on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii.

I loved my little plantation house right next to the sugar cane fields of Waialua. The red dirt, the cane monsters (big trucks) working sometimes through the night just outside my windows, and the roosters crowing- also through the night. I was going through a divorce, eventually returning to the house we had bought together and renovated. I went back to school to get my MFA at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

I was also feeling sad and lonely, but found great solace in being in this house surrounded by neighbors who had lived in Ranch Camp for generations. Mr. Hardin’s house and mine were at the end of a short dirt road. His chicken coops, dogs and rusted farm equipment with directly in front of my house, but all I saw (most of the time) were the beautiful Koolau Mts. in the far distance beyond the sugar cane fields. He was kind of a gruff guy, often never much more than a grunt hello to me. But as time went on I would stop by on my way back from the mailbox at our corner and he would let me draw or photograph him.

This is the softer side of Mr. Hardin, playing music with his grandson on his lap.