 |
Honolulu Academy of
Arts (1940s). (Postcard from author's private collection) |
On August 9, 1950, thirteen-year-old Ron Dias received publicized recognition of his creative abilities for the first time in The Honolulu Advertiser. A local radio show for kids conducted a design contest in late July, welcoming children to create a replica of Uncle Sam using a medium of their choosing. “Replicas of Uncle Sam included cut-out models, drawings, carvings, hand-sewn embroidered designs – even cookies baked in the shape and outline of Uncle Sam.”[1] The article does not share what Ron specifically created, but he came in third place. As a result, he earned a prize and got his picture taken with the other winners at the local radio station.
 |
| Lino Dias Jr. with his winnings from a design contest, August, 1950. |
In December 1953, Ron Dias’s creativity won his family home local acclaim. To celebrate the yuletide season, Kailua citizens were welcomed to attend an annual Christmas festival in their community. For the festival, local businesses and homes were welcomed to take part in an interior decorating competition with a Christmas flair. Ron put his burgeoning art skills to use and decked the halls of his family home, winning third place in the competition.[2] His cousin, Bob Artz, shared:
I
remember going to their house and seeing…during Christmastime, Ron had painted
a Santa Claus on plywood. A
cut-out. And Santa Claus was in a grass
skirt and he had…garland flowers around his head…and he was shirtless, of
course, because it was Hawaii…And he had little cut-outs…expertly painted, and
this was when he was young…That was their little Christmas display in the yard.[3]
Ron Dias’s time at Roosevelt High School in Honolulu was spent finetuning his art skills both day and night, along with singing solos in the school a cappella choir, designing sets for school plays, and doing “artistic work for Kona-TV,” Honolulu’s local TV station of the time.[4] For the latter, he sketched a cuckoo-clock for an advertisement promoting early morning movies on the channel.
Although singing was just as much of a passion for Ron, he dedicated himself to art, thanks largely to his high school art teacher, Armena Eller. “I have great memories of Mrs. Eller,” he said. “She was never one to just say ‘we’re going to do pastel today.’”[5] Under Armena Eller’s tutelage, Ron was assigned nontraditional art assignments, including a project that would change the course of his life.
Ron enrolled in evening and Saturday classes at the Honolulu Academy of Arts prior to his freshman year in 1952. He carried his Hawaiian upbringing with a sense of pride, and the Academy provided him a venue in which he could immerse himself completely in a world where culture and art collided. As shared in a 1954 article of The Honolulu Advertiser: “The academy was founded [in 1927] so that Hawaii’s children of many nationalities and races could receive an intimation of their cultural heritage and receive through the channels of art a deep understanding of Eastern, Western and Polynesian cultures.”[6] “It opened my eyes to the art world,” Ron said of the Honolulu Academy of Arts.[7]
 |
| Ron Dias paints Oh Men! Oh Women! actress, Enid Beaumont, September. 1955. |
With the refinement of his art skills, Ron was brought on to do work for the Honolulu Community Theater, thanks largely to the recommendation of Roosevelt High’s theater teacher, Grace McAlister. “She gave so much to the students,” he said of his theater teacher. With McAlister cheering him on, Ron’s first assignment was to paint a large portrait of the leading actress for the community theater’s production of Oh Men! Oh Women! in September 1955. Ron’s growing expertise also lent itself to makeup design for high school productions. Not a strong student academically, Ron exclaimed, “My art saved my ass!”[8]
Ron Dias’s four-and-a-half year stretch at the Academy of Art taught him everything he needed to know in attempting to be a fine art painter. The Honolulu Advertiser wrote in a 1955 article:
An
artist of some experience for his age [18], Ronny [sic] has studied art for
several years and has had examples of his work on exhibit at the Honolulu
Academy of Arts and at the Library of Hawaii, Kailua Branch, where he exhibited
in a one-man show.[9]
Ron risked stretching himself too thin upon enrolling in a commercial art correspondence course headquartered on the U.S. east coast. The Honolulu Academy provided him the opportunity to develop his fine art skills, but he yearned for more. “The Famous Artists School in Westport, Connecticut had offered a correspondence course that went on for about three years,” Ron said.[10] American art historian and lecturer, Rena Tobey, wrote:
In
1948, charismatic illustrator Albert Dorne had an idea. He approached America’s
most famous working illustrator, Norman Rockwell (known for his idealized
depictions of American life on the covers of the Saturday Evening Post), about
creating a correspondence school for commercial art, full of tips, methods, and
case studies to appeal to those who dreamed of becoming an artist.[11]
Ron described:
Well,
it started with four big books. It was a
red book, a yellow book, a blue book, and a gray book. And, each book was another level. And, you started very, very simply; doing
very simple assignments and normally [in] gouache and black and white – nothing
in color – you graduated to color later.
And just teaching you all of the fundamentals of how to approach a
professional job; how to do it like the professionals do it.[12]
Upon completing assignments within each designated book, Ron mailed them east to Connecticut to be graded. He continued:
That was very, very difficult to get through that because you never saw a person. You never talked to a person. And I know that it wasn’t always Norman Rockwell who was correcting your paper because you would have the name of the person who was correcting your paper and showing you where you had gone wrong and if your perspective was off. That’s another thing too – I didn’t understand perspective and I knew that I was going to need that heavily if I was going to be getting into illustrative work.[13]
It is certain Norman Rockwell wasn’t grading Ron’s work in the fall of 1955. As shared in an October 28 column of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin: “Mr. Rockwell is currently winding up a tour around the world in 60 days, making sketches for a series of Pan American Airway ads.”[14] Rockwell’s publicized arrival in Honolulu on October 24 provided a rare opportunity for Ron Dias to meet the famous artist. Hawaiian articles mentioned Rockwell’s Famous Artists School in Connecticut and “several…students who now live in the Islands” expected “to see Rockwell during his visit.”[15] These Famous Artists School students got their chance, and Ron was included in the small group.
 |
Norman Rockwell with Ron Dias, October 1955. |
 |
Paradise of the Pacific magazine clipping. |
Around the time of Norman Rockwell’s visit to Oahu in the fall of 1955, Ron’s high school art teacher, Armena Eller, informed him of a national stamp design contest. “She’d go out and she’d find commercial projects…for us to do as class projects,” he said of his teacher.[16] Eller challenged her students to take part in this unique opportunity. Contestants were tasked with creating a stamp design “of any one color or black and white measuring 7 by 12 inches” that focused on promoting friendship among children all over the world.[17] In 1956, Morris C. Rothblum of the Courier-Post out of Camden, New Jersey wrote:
The national stamp competition was conducted between September 9, 1955 and March 10, 1956, through cooperative efforts of the United States Office of Education and the Council of Chief State School Officers, an organization of official heads of school systems in states, territories, and possessions, with headquarters in Washington, D.C.
The
moving force behind the Children’s Stamp idea is Lady Hilda Butterfield of New
York City, who, in her capacity as a private citizen, has fostered the
children’s stamp in several countries, including the United States, in the
interest of international friendship.[18]
“I didn’t know what I was going to do with this thing,” Ron said of the stamp design. “I knew nothing of stamps.”[19] Upon reflection in his elderly years, he shared:
We
had such a melting pot of people [in Hawaii].
I didn’t know what this prejudice stuff was. I never really knew it existed…Maybe that’s
what set me off with the stamp. With the
body of kids down there being all of the different nationalities…and learning
and being together facing the world in friendship.[20]
“Friendship – the Key to World Peace” was the slogan used to accompany Ron’s stamp design. Ron felt using a key in the design would be a suitable choice, so he decided to depict one radiating light on a group of young faces from all over the world. As for his artistic approach, he explained:
What
people don’t realize [is] there were two designs. The first one was a pencil sketch; a very
tight pencil sketch. And that was sent
in and that was the one that was really okayed, but there was another, that I
still have, [that] was given back to me.
The pencil sketch they kept. The
other one, which was a painting of the stamp, I still have ‘til today.[21]
For the painted version, Ron used tempera paint in green values. He said it was a “very difficult medium to handle because you couldn’t blend with it too much unless you were using it more as a watercolor.” Ron continued:
…I was teaching myself how to do drybrush and how to do stippling and how to do different things to get the…like the sky, I didn’t do in a watercolor wash, I did in a stippling technique, which was like…a brush that you cut way down where the bristles are very short [and] you stipple it on…So I was trying a whole bunch of different techniques I had never tried before, too, on this stamp illustration that wasn’t very big. So, it was kind of confining to be trying to do something on a smaller scale.[22]
 |
Ron Dias holding the
pencil sketch version of his stamp design which was
submitted to the national contest for initial approval, circa. 1955. (Ron
Dias’s personal collection) |
Ron Dias submitted his pencil and painted designs sometime in the fall of 1955. He began getting word of his placement in the contest by Christmastime of that year. “I started getting these letters,” Ron said of the placement notifications he received in the mail.[23] The December 15, 1955 issue of The Honolulu Advertiser posted:
Ronald
Dias, Roosevelt senior, was chosen territorial winner of the postage stamp
designing contest sponsored by the Council of Chief State School Officers in
Washington, D.C.
His
design is now in Washington, D.C., for further judging and is based on the
theme of “Friendship is the key to peace.”
It pictures a key in the upper right shedding rays of light on children
of the world set against a cloudy sky.
It was designed for the United States three cent postage and was painted
in shades of green.[24]
As placement notifications trickled in, Ron’s busy high school life continued. At the time same, he began writing letters to the Walt Disney Studio inquiring about employment requirements. “Every letter was answered by a different person,” he recalled, and the fact that he got responses at all was a thrill for him.[25]
Submissions for the national stamp contest closed on March 10, 1956. Children’s Stamp expert, Kerry Heffner, stated, “March 15, 1956 was the day they picked the winner.”[26] The following article was published in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin two days later (the article mistakenly lauds the contest as an international affair):
Ronald Dias, Roosevelt High School senior, was tongue-tied with delight today when he learned that he had won an international [sic] contest with his design for a United States three-cent postage stamp.
“Oh
gosh. I’m tickled,” he said when the
Star-Bulletin informed him of his world [sic] championship.[27]
The article continued: “If Postmaster General [Arthur] Summerfield approves his design, it will be used on a special children’s friendship stamp, the Associated Press reported from Washington.” The article closed with: “The thrilled high school artist said he hopes to work for Walt Disney in California after his graduation this summer. He said he has written to Disney who has given him encouragement toward an art career.”[28] Around the same time, Dias shared with The Honolulu Advertiser: “As far back as I can think I’ve always wanted to work at the Walt Disney studios.”[29] “They were very proud of him,” Bob Artz said of Ron’s parents. “They were very excited for him when he won the stamp competition…It was lifechanging…for all of them.”[30]
Artz’s describing this event as “lifechanging” is an apt one, and perhaps the reason the Dias’s put their property at 137 Kapaa Street in Kailua up for sale as early as February 1956. Lino and Eva Dias had poured a lot of money into their son’s art education by that point, and given his sound art skills and correspondence with the Walt Disney Studio, along with his climbing placement in a national stamp design competition, it’s safe to assume that they were prepared to move in exchange for their son’s dream coming true.
Ron finished out the remainder of his 1956 senior year at Roosevelt High with no word as to whether his stamp design was accepted for printing by the Postmaster General. He once said:
I didn’t have a very fun high school life…Most kids were…out there having a lot of fun and I was bogged down, but I’m kinda [sic] glad now that it worked out that way because I was ready for a lot of things when they came my way.[31]
Ron Dias’s favorite place to collect his thoughts was in the Oriental Court of the Honolulu Academy of Arts. There he would recharge and lightly sketch for pleasure on a concrete bench that reminded him very much of the one the Fairy Godmother sat upon in Cinderella. Across the way came the gentle din of water cascading from the mouth of a Chinese dragon fixture. When the timing was right, he captured this place of solitude in a painting. It wasn’t so much important to him that it won an award, but that it was the first piece that he was proud of. He never got the painting back, but the feelings that little court evoked never left him.
References
23. Ibid.
26. Kerry Heffner, Interview by Vincent Randle, January 21,
2019.
27. “U.S. May use Postal Design Of Youthful Island Artist.” Honolulu
Star-Bulletin, March 16, 1956.
28. Ibid.
29. “Isle Boy’s Stamp Design Wins International Prize.” The Honolulu Advertiser, March 17, 1956.
30. Bob Artz, Interview by Vincent Randle, February 25, 2018.
31. Ron Dias, Interview by Vincent Randle, September 15, 2012.
No comments:
Post a Comment