Hawai'i

The Hawaiian Islands are the surface expression of a hotspot, a fixed plume of magma burning through the Pacific Plate as it drifts northwest. The result is a chain of islands that gets progressively older and more eroded from east to west: the Big Island still actively building itself through Kīlauea and Mauna Loa, Maui and its dormant Haleakalā, the older deeply eroded valleys of O'ahu and Moloka'i, and Kaua'i to the west, the most ancient and weathered of the main islands. The same plate movement that created them will eventually pull them all below the surface. Lō'ihi (now officially Kamaʻehuakanaloa), the next Hawaiian island, is already forming on the ocean floor southeast of the Big Island.

That progression reads clearly in the piece. The Big Island's relief stands visibly higher than its neighbours, each island sits within its own shallow reef halo, and the deep Pacific surrounding them, some of the most isolated open ocean on the planet, makes the chain feel exactly as remote as it is.

Made from digital elevation data, with a 2D bathymetric poster and hand-mounted 3D terrain on a rigid 2mm art board.

For anyone who has been to Hawaii and wants to take something of it home, or anyone drawn to volcanology, Pacific geography, or the geology of island chains.

• Scale: 1 : 1 000 000
• Dimensions: 50 × 70 cm / 19.7 x 27.6 inches
• Material: PLA bioplastic relief on premium art board