Announcing 2025 Volcano Awareness Month Art & Poetry Contest Winners — USGS Volcano Watch
The USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) spearheads Volcano Awareness Month each January on the Island of Hawaiʻi. This year, in addition to in-person talks and walks around the island, we hosted an Art & Poetry Contest, and we are pleased to announce the winners in today’s “Volcano Watch” article!
Winners of the Island of Hawaiʻi Volcano Awareness Month 2025 Art Contest. Upper left, Linda Hansen from Pāhoa, submitted a painting titled “Kīlauea welcomes Christmas 2024” that won in the adult division. In the lower left, Kaʻū High and Pāhala Elementary School 11th grader Añaza Nielsen won the high school category with their colored pencil artwork titled “Volcanic Activity,” which depicts the 2022 Mauna Loa eruption as a thermal image. The upper right shows “Lava Flow,” a watercolor and ink piece by Andrea Yanga, an 8th grader also attending Kaʻū High and Pāhala Elementary School who won in the middle school division. The lower right shows a lava pond created with construction paper by Milunaizarra Peltier, a 5th grader from Volcano School of Arts & Sciences, who won the elementary art division. USGS photo.
Participants were invited to submit a poem in haiku format or art recognizing Hawaii’s volcanic landscapes in the following age divisions: elementary (kindergarten–5th grade), middle (6th–8th), high (9th–12th), and adult. Nearly 60 entries were received, most from kamaʻaina.
Beautiful depictions in words and art highlight the diverse range of geologic processes and hazards we experience as residents in Hawaii, including the most recent episodic eruption in Halemaʻumaʻu at the summit caldera of Kīlauea. Many entries also reference Pele, the Hawaiian elemental forces associated with volcanic activity, highlighting the cultural significance of Hawaii’s volcanic history.
In the elementary school category, Sunny Mallams, a 4th grader who lives in Honolulu, won with her haiku, “Mahalo Pele:”
Lava shining bright
Giving birth to Hawaii
Mahalo Pele
“Pele’s Domain,” a haiku by 6th grader Austin Kesterson, who lives on Oahu, won in the middle school category:
Boom! Pele is here
Her hair rises through the sky
Fiery lava flows
Ella Hillstead, a high schooler from San Francisco, California, won the high school haiku with “The Harmony of Hawaii:”
Waves lap, sun sets on
Board basalt plains of land forged
By Pele’s fire
Travis Paradea won the adult haiku category with the haiku below:
You take your shoes off
When you enter someone’s home
Even for Pele?
In the adult art category, Linda Hansen from Pāhoa, submitted a painting titled “Kīlauea welcomes Christmas 2024.” She wrote, “Kīlauea gave us a brilliant show on December 23, 2024, as the caldera began to glow. The glow illuminated the walls of the caldera as the plumes of gas rose into the predawn sky.”
Students from Kaʻū High and Pāhala Elementary School won in the high and middle school art categories. Añaza Nielsen, in 11th grade, won with their colored pencil artwork titled “Volcanic Activity,” which they wrote depicts the 2022 Mauna Loa eruption. “This artwork represents the thermal camera view of the flowing rivers of lava coming down Mauna Loa. This artwork was inspired by seeing the glow of the eruption from my home during the night. This is represented through the colors I chose for this artwork.”
Andrea Yanga, an 8th grader, painted the winning middle school art, “Lava Flow,” using watercolors and ink. She wrote that it shows “an ancient eruption of Mauna Loa where the lava flowed from the mountain to the sea. The glow rises from the vapors of the lava touching the waters of the ocean. The artwork represents the beauty and radiance of these rivers of lava that formed Hawaiʻi island.”
Milunaizarra Peltier, a 5th grader from Volcano School of Arts & Sciences, won the elementary art division with her construction paper artwork depicting a lava lake. She wrote, “I drew a lava pond because people don’t draw lava ponds as much.”
The votes were very close in many categories, and we appreciate every wonderful entry. Winners and a selection of other contestants will be on display at a scientific conference in Hilo during the second week of February. The conference theme is caldera-forming eruptions at basaltic volcanoes, such as what occurred at Kīlauea in 2018.
Gro Pederson, a geologist and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Iceland (and former HVO volunteer) will be giving a special After Dark in the Park presentation at Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park while here for the conference. Join Gro at 7 p.m. HST on February 6 at the Kīlauea Visitor Center Auditorium, as she summarizes several eruptions on the Reykjanes Peninsula in Southwest Iceland since 2021. Volcanic activity in Iceland, monitored by the Iceland Metrological Office, has hazards similar to those in Hawaii: earthquakes, opening of new fissure systems, lava flows, tephra fall, volcanic gas emissions, and land subsidence.
HVO voters were impressed and delighted by every entry in the art & poetry contest; mahalo again to everyone who participated in Volcano Awareness Month on the Island of Hawaiʻi in January 2025!
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Volcano Watch is a weekly article and activity update written by U.S. Geological Survey Hawaiian Volcano Observatory scientists and affiliates.
