Jo-Anne Kamuela Kahanamoku-Sterling jokes that if she has to be interviewed about her life, she's not answering questions about anything she did before age 50.

"I was naughty," she says, laughing.

Kahanamoku-Sterling, now 78, credits featherwork with "soothing the savage beast," as she jokingly puts it. She credits the voyaging canoe Hokule'a with bringing her to featherwork.

"The canoe is our most important cultural artifact. Everything attaches to it: food, religion, navigation," she said. "It is a far greater experience."

Kahanamoku-Sterling was a crew member on Hokule'a's trip to Tahiti in 1980. She has traveled with the Polynesian Voyaging Society to many destinations in the Pacific.

It might have been her destiny to travel the world. She has a birthmark on her left leg, a sign, the old Hawaiians would say, that she was excitable, always doing something, apt to move around.

Indeed, she has lived in many places. She spent two years in New York, worked for IBM at UCLA, made a home in Makawao, Maui, and decided to settle on Moloka'i but ended up in Kona.

She is the daughter of Samuel Alapa'i Kahanamoku, brother of Duke Kahanamoku. Sam was known as the rascal, outgoing brother compared to Duke's soft-spoken nature. Her mother was Sarah Dexter from Tahiti. Kahanamoku-Sterling and her brother are the only living children of the Kahanamoku brothers.

When she was a young child, her parents divorced and her mother took her and her brother to Tahiti. Her father went to court to get the children back, and she returned to Hawai'i to live with him. Tahiti is still home for her, as much as Hawai'i is home. She lives in Kona now, settling there because she wanted the rural quiet of Moloka'i with a little more selection in the corner store.

"Kona is spacious. You can drive out of one element into another."

She started learning featherwork from teacher Ethelreda Kahalewai in the 1980s. While helping to create educational curriculum for the voyaging canoe, she began to learn more about Hawaiian art forms and Hawaiian regalia.

"Hawaiians had the feathers," she explains. "They didn't have precious stones and such."

Her aesthetic was first formed in childhood visits to the Honolulu Academy of Arts and Bishop Museum. Her auntie often took her there because, "Art does soothe the savage beast," she said. Her time in New York visiting museums and art galleries also shaped her artistic vision.

She started to focus on capes when she was commissioned by the new owner of Maui's King Kamehameha golf club to create an art piece. She created a 4-foot by 5-foot feather cape in blue, yellow and black that was framed and is on display in the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed club house.

Kahanamoku-Sterling emphasizes that though the art form is traditional Hawaiian, she herself is a contemporary artist.

"The man asked me, 'How do you make this?' and I answered him, 'With glue.' "

Still, it is a painstaking process. "One by one" is how she puts it. That cape had to be done within a month's time and she was working on it day and night.

Though it is focused work for a travel-around kind of person, she finds the process very satisfying.

"I found working with the feathers gave me a better state of mind. It gave me more understanding. Doing something made us not so bitter about changes we saw in society."

But even this calming, centering art has taken her to far-flung adventures. Kahanamoku-Sterling likes to tell the story of when she taught featherwork to a group of ladies at the Kaunoa Senior Center on Maui years ago.

"One day I went in and told them, 'OK gang, we're all going to Honolulu!' and off we went. These ladies had never seen Bishop Museum or 'Iolani Palace before and they just cried."

Since that excursion was such a big hit, Kahanamoku-Sterling had another idea. "OK gang, we're going to the Big Island." They rented vans and drove all through Hilo and on to Kona, stayed at the Manago hotel and had a great time.

"After that I told them, OK get ready. We going Tahiti!"

And they went. Her senior-citizen students wore pareaus, did hula demonstrations and shared their knowledge of Hawaiian featherwork with people they met in Tahiti. They had a blast.

Kahanamoku-Sterling is currently working on a 3-by-3-foot cape of blue peacock feathers that will be displayed at the Hilton Hawaiian Village.

She also just got a commission from the Ritz-Carlton Kapalua to create 24 hand-held kahilis. Those have to be finished by April and she's only made one-and-a-half, so far.

Kahanamoku-Sterling will travel to O'ahu next month to receive the Ho'okahiko Award from Duke's Waikiki, the restaurant named for her uncle. At a private awards ceremony on April 24, she will be honored for her dedication to preserving Hawaiian tradition through featherwork.

The event will be held in a private room away from all the hubbub of the restaurant. After all, her "naughty" days are behind her, or so she says.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.