A temporal studio · Kānaka ʻŌiwi-led · Hawaiʻi Nei Pae ʻĀina

Studio

The wā is open. Welcome.

Founded May 2026
Founder Naiʻa Ulumaimalu Lewis
Working in Media · Art · Design · Time
01

Cultural frameworks are temporal frameworks.

A temporal studio working at the intersection of community, culture, media, and labor.

Every culture builds a way of keeping time, and that way is never only a calendar. It carries where a people come from, what they hold a lifetime to be worth, and how that worth is built across generations. Studio Wā treats time as the cultural question it is, and works along one arc: from knowledge, to diversity, to sovereignty.

The studio was born, not built. It was ten years in the making, and it arrives out of a long line of its own.

We begin in genealogy →

  1. Temporal knowledge Naming and holding the world's many ways of keeping time, beginning with the Kaulana Mahina and the Hawaiian frameworks the studio is rooted in.
  2. Temporal diversity Defending the plurality of those systems against a single global clock that prices every hour the same.
  3. Temporal sovereignty A people's right to keep time on their own terms, and to decide what their hours are for.
A world with only one framework for time is as impoverished as a world with only one language.

Time frameworks are cultural frameworks.

02

A visual vocabulary.

Four marks for shapes of time. The name for each graphic mark is a Hawaiian term chosen for the symbolism the mark already holds.

Pou Hana
The epoch
The most important post of a traditional hale. As a mark, two uprights name the epoch: the era held in place between them.
Kepakepa
The interval
The rapid staccato Hawaiian oli style where the silence between sounds is structural. As a mark, the visible gap between the two halves of the line is the interval.
Pākākā
The threshold
A low and broad doorway you must bend to enter. As a mark, it names the threshold: the intentional crossing between one era or another or from one state of being to another.
Muku
The portal
The moon at the close of the lunar cycle, when the sun no longer reflects its face. As a mark, the open circle names the portal: an appearance that lives outside chronological time.
03

Three registers. One practice.

Studio Wā operates across three categories of work. They are not separate programs. They are three aspects of one practice.

01

Temporal Tools

Instruments for orienting in time, tracking it, reading it, and practicing within it.

  • LuniSolar Compass Circular wall calendar
  • Pō Planner Lunar-based annual planner
  • Lunar Productivity Oracle A practice of self-knowledge
  • Under the Same Moon Booklet · global timekeeping
02

Temporal Practice

Containers for the personal and collective work of reclaiming a relationship to time.

  • Tending the Turn Seasonal ritual · free, quarterly
  • Temporal Courage Foundational teaching · $45
  • Lines and Portals Cohort course · returns late 2026
  • 1:1 Accompaniment By application or invitation
03

Temporal Imagination

Art, story, voice, and wonder.

  • Necessary Labor Podcast and newsletter · in production
04

iMahina.

The studio's lunar practice collection.

The collection is rooted in the Kaulana Mahina, the Hawaiian lunar calendar. It currently includes the LuniSolar Compass, the Pō Planner, the Lunar Productivity Oracle, and the Under the Same Moon booklet, all available now through the iMahina store on Salted Logic. A native iMahina app is in development.

Visit the iMahina store
iMahina app showing the Māhealani full moon: a golden moon against a deep purple sky, with lunar context displayed alongside.

App preview · in development

05

Our foundation.

Portrait of Naiʻa Ulumaimalu Lewis, founder of Studio Wā. Black-and-white photograph, close framing, direct gaze.
Naiʻa Ulumaimalu Lewis · Founder
LinkedIn ↗

"Story is the mechanism through which we understand the world."

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein The Edge of Space-Time

Art and culture are how humans make sense of time. To name an epoch, mark a threshold, hold open the question of what time is across generations: these are cultural and creative acts. Without them, time systems do not survive.

Modern economies extract from people in two ways now widely seen. They take value from waged labor without fair return. They depend on unpaid reproductive labor (childbirth, childcare, domestic and emotional work) that they refuse to count. The colonization of time is the third axis of extraction. It is what happens when a culture is denied the time it needs to imagine, tell stories, mark thresholds, and tend the relationships that hold a time system together.

Cosmologies birth cultures.
Their narratives carry our origins.
Together, they keep time.
06

Courses.

Three containers for the practice of temporal sovereignty.

The seasonal ritual, the foundational teaching, and the deeper cohort. Each one is live, taught by Naiʻa, and built to be entered at any point in the arc. Tending the Turn is free. Temporal Courage is the framework. Lines and Portals is where it becomes a practice in your life.

Tending the Turn Free · quarterly
Temporal Courage $45 · live
Lines and Portals $375 / $475 · cohort
Next session Summer Solstice · June 21
View all courses

The remains open. Return when you will.

From the studio's own hand

The work is drawn, not generated.

Every mark on this site begins as ink and pigment on paper. Original illustrations by Naiʻa Ulumaimalu Lewis.

Kanaloa seascape illustration
Kanaloa
Akua illustration
Akua
ʻĀina illustration
ʻĀina
Heʻe (octopus) illustration
Heʻe
Maunakea illustration
Maunakea
Mālama Honua illustration
Mālama Honua
Wahine Toa illustration
Wahine Toa
Moana Nui illustration
Moana Nui

Drag or scroll the strip · the same illustrations run beneath the duotone sections above.