The first time I stood at Puʻuloa, out past the Chain of Craters Road, I stopped thinking about making anything. Thousands of figures, circles and dots are pecked into the pāhoehoe there, some of them centuries old. People came to this hard, new rock and left a mark that said we were here, and this place mattered.
What moves me is the patience. There was no brush and no kiln. Someone knelt on lava with a harder stone and struck it, again and again, until a shape held. Each petroglyph is a small act of faith that the land would keep it, and it has.
Many of the small cupped holes held a newborn's piko, the umbilical cord, placed in the rock for a long life. That idea stays with me: the same lava that buries roads and forests was trusted to hold a family's hopes.
It's the heart of my work. Destruction and creation share the same ground. My reliefs are carved into clay, not stone, and they are my own designs, not copies of anyone's kiʻi. But I make them in the same spirit: by hand, slowly, so the land and the people who came before can be felt in them.
Clay from this earth. Fire that decides.
— Rhett Parham
Visit Puʻuloa with care: stay on the boardwalk and never touch, trace or step on the petroglyphs. Learn more from Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park.
New to lava words? Read the Lava Guide, or see the Volcanoes National Park Reliefs.