Dietrich Varez

Dietrich Varez  was one of Volcano’s best-known artists. For almost 50 years, Varez dedicated his life to the spirit of Volcano, its thriving art community and the rainforest that surrounds it. He produced hundreds of block prints dealing with almost every aspect of Hawaiian culture, mythology, and the life of the surrounding rainforest. He was an early supporter of the Volcano Art Center, where for decades he taught classes and shared his work with hundreds of people.

Varez was born in Berlin and came with his mother and stepfather to Oʻahu in 1948. He served in the U.S. Army, earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Hawaii, and moved to the Big Island in 1965 after purchasing a nine-acre piece of forest land sight unseen. At first he lived and worked as a bartender at Volcano House, and supplemented his income as a groundskeeper at the Volcano Golf Course and by carving images of Pele into scraps of firewood and selling them to visitors.

He soon started making wood and linoleum block prints and by 1974 was selling them at the newly opened Volcano Art Center.  After that, he never stopped producing and sharing his art, which appeared in a number of books about Pele and Hawaiian legends. He and his wife Linda lived a self-sufficient life off an unpaved Mountain View road in a house he built himself, but he held Volcano close to his heart and was always a supporter of the community and other artists. “He was always there when we needed him,” said Pam Barton, another volunteer at the time. He insisted that his prints be sold at rock-bottom prices and disdained the world of fine art, and the expensive prices that it commands. “I don’t give a damn about the art people,” he told a newspaper reporter in 1979. “I want to get it into your mom’s house and my mom’s house.”

He continued producing his art, including a well-known line of Hawaiian shirts featuring his wood-block prints for the clothing maker Reyn Spooner, until his death in 2018. The main gallery at the art centerʻs Niaulani Campus is named in his honor and there’s a large mosaic image of him outside the building.