Arty Auckland

I think I have had enough to say - too much say some sports fans - on the subject of just how - excessively say some - arty and crafty is the city of Auckland. Well just in case you feel the creativity is restricted to the city centre and notorious K Road, come with me on a little open studio tour of the western suburbs of Auckland. 

The painter, sculptors, potters and fashion designers opened their studios on the  mountains and foothills of the Waitakere Ranges. 

I spent eight hours of last Sunday aboard a bus for a tour of the studios, which was organised by Auckland City Council and the Corban Estate Arts Centre in Henderson. 

The offices and one of the galleries of the Corban Estate Arts Centre 

One of the members of Studio 37 - Pottery Studio Oratia at her wheel.

I couldn't leave this gorgeous cat Kylix in their studio and bought it for feline felicitation. 

Korean couple Sang Shoi Sim and Kuem Sun Lee create their masterpieces with a mix of traditional and contemporary design in their garden studio high in the Henderson hills.

The couple's pottery studio gives a glimpse of three of their gigantic urns drying bearing the incised decoration that has become the hallmark of their award winning work.

Again I clambered back to the bus, down their precipitous driveway, with a lucky find 
- a magnificent example of Sang's mastery of an old Korean engraving technique called sanggam.  My good fortune was to find this pot with a small flaw among the Seconds .

I was delighted to meet Award winning designer Sandra Tupu who shares studio spaces in a rambling old house in Oratia with affable painter Jim Ellis. Her Tatau range is part of her Flying Fox Designs Menswear and the gracious mix of samoan dress and bushwear works - winning the Supreme Award and Runnerup at Westfield's Pasifika Fashion Awards in 2010.

Sea Lady by Monique Endt. Monique's studio in Oratia is set in a beautiful garden

The garden and aboretum is the masterpiece of Monique's sister and is known as Landsendt

Sunday afternoon music at the studio and gallery of  Kiwi Valley, Henderson Valley

At the Kiwi Valley Studio, I was delighted by this Bird Boat birdbath in the garden. 

The historic old church on the Corban Estate is an art gallery nowadays.

An exclamation to rest one's laurels on. The tour ended in front of Corban Estate Art Centre.

Arty Taranaki

The historic old post office Clock Tower in New Plymouth surprises with its contemporary art work pullover by Taranaki born artist Shannon Novak. Installed for last year's Lantern Festival the art  intended to disappear last month but was still in place to delight the WOMAD crowd. 

Something strangely French about this mural in the city centre transforming this house entirely
into its subject matter - a very large fat man on his bicycle - shades of the Triplets of Belleville 

A striking example of the public art blending with architecture in New Plymouth 

Pavlova Radio a finalist in Radio New Zealand's 2011 design competition Sounds Like Us

Caravan Radio another exhibit in Sounds Like Us currently on show at Puke Ariki - the New Plymouth museum attached to the central City Library.

                                                                                                                                                                Atom Radio - salute to New Zealander Lord Rutherford  was another runner up.

Taranaki from Rahotu by Lawrence Aberhart from his current show at Govett-Brewster 

Art Gallery new Plymouth. The gallery opened in 1970 with grants from local benefactor Monica Brewster and has grown into  the major voice in the country for international and national contemporary art. The current director Rhana Devenport was for 10 years Senior Project Officer Asia Pacific Triennial of Contempoary Art at the Queensland Art Gallery.

The most important Art Work remains Mount Taranaki itself  -  dominating every vista and everyone's consciousness. Creator of the very land mass for miles around including the site of  New Plymouth and a dozen towns. Master of the fate of every rock, plant, animal and human for 300,000 years, only taking a temporary rest from his labours 250 yrs ago.

Welcome to New Zealand Desika

Prabhash waits expectantly for Desika - arrivals hall Auckland airport 7/3/12

Prabhash meets Desika at Auckland International Airport

   Prabhash and Desika on the deck of their new home in Beach Haven Auckland NZ

Desika, your love of flowers is already transforming the home.

And speaking of transformation, who is this sporting beauty in the New Zealand bush?

                                                                                                                                                                     And transformation is only just beginning.

                                                                                                                                                                       and a husband who can barely keep up

                                                                                                                                                                       in the race to the top

                                                                                                                                                         Fortunately Jeffrey Uncle is not in the race

or is that looking like an attempt?

Looks like a New Zealand couple to me. And getting their priorities right - the motorcar

WOMAD in New Zealand

WOMAD - A Music Festival for all the family

Music is a universal language. It draws people together and proves as 

well as anything, the stupidity of racism.       co-founder - Peter Gabriel

Womad creates festivals in 27 countries and before Adelaide has its turn, New Plymouth 

in the North Island of New Zealand hosts three days of Music from international and local musicians. Again this year from 16-18 March several stages in beautiful Brooklands Park presented two days and three nights of entertainment and soul to soul communion.

My good friends Logan and Shirley invited me to attend the festival with them, so we drove down the 400 odd kilometres from Auckland and stayed for the full three days.

Across the lake in the parkland, Mount Taranaki dreams of its thousands of years 

of wild thermal activity only resting from his creative labours a mere 260 years ago. 

Things get going on the Friday at dusk at one of the smaller stages with Australian singer    Gurrumul Yunupingu of north east Arnhemland  -  Rolling Stone magazine recently declared him Australia's most important voice. 

Dobet Gnahore from the Ivory Coast presided on stage with an electric presence. We loved her mixture of African rhythms, French melodies and spectacular dance moves.

We walked back to the car each night through the night lighting of historic Pukekura Park

Hollywood lighting and exotic rainforest trees produce an eerie Jurassic Park experience.

   A raptor will surely attack at any moment. As soon as the DNA is ready they will be back.

   Not even the most spectacular stage show can compete with Pukekura Park.

                                                                                                                                                                 Well maybe Bombay Royale - the Melbourne Bollywood Funk band
is spectacular enough with big movie sound and comic movie scripts.

I'd like to say I drew this and the picture below with pastels on velvet  but they're just  poor photos from a cheap camera .........  Alabama 3  vocalist Aurora Dawn glows flamingo pink 

Aurora and her equally unlikely fellow vocalist Larry Love.  Alabama 3  doesn't have three musicians but four and doesn't come from Alabama but from the UK, but its hot country/ gospel/ blues music exudes USA from the 40's pockets on Aurora's mini suit to the big sound. 

Staff Benda Bilili are street musicians from the Congo are who normally confined by polio      to ( no! liberated by) their home made bikes but took to the WOMAD stage in wheelchairs.

                                                                                                                                                               Spanish Flamenco soloist from Diego Guerrero's y El Solar de 

Artistas is wreathed in leaves as passion flames from her soul.

  
Anda Union musicians from China ride their horse head fiddles in a wild gallop 
across the grass plains of  Mongolia. One of the gems of this year's WOMAD

                                                                                                                                                            Pascals is a wild Japanese Orchestra that pumps out gentle insanity on toy 
musical instruments and a metal grinder. Insanity with Nipponese decorum.

                                                                                                                                                                   A Festival is a place to promenade and parade and WOMAD is no exception. 
And that's especially true of the kids who are either walking or dancing all day. 

Prabhash at the Wicket

Prabhash has returned to the crease after a five year gap in play. He's an A Grade player with the Sri Lankan Kumeu Team and one of their favourite bowlers.

If you were the Indian Team player on the left , would you get the feeling the Sri Lankan Team might be talking about you behind your back? 

The City v the Country

Today I went to the city for the first time in a month. Thats what happens to the country recluse. Well anyway, I took some pictures, and walking back from the bus I took some more of our new domestic environs. Different to say the least. But better? .... well thats up to you.


The City

                         The great needle of addiction soars over the Auckland Casino.

On K Road, opposite the entrance to East Street - our old address 

                                                                                                         

       The beautiful old Naval and Family Hotel corner of K Road and Pitt Street. 

Has it improved in status as the home of Calendar Girls?

Talking of status, the grand old art deco merchandiser turns into upmarket units.

The neighbouring building houses backpackers. But don't you love the impressive 

Norman No Building next door with a facade the width of  its front door.

Further up Karangahape Road the Assyrian symbol tops an impressive building

 that seems to have suffered its own September 11th

And a little further up the road another building seems like its ready for anything.

while Barker & Pol wasn't ready to repel the grafittist

but it's not all Deco and Victoriana in K Road. A new contribution in marble and rusty steel.

with a lift well in the courtyard that leaves you spell bound.

The Country

Walking from the bus to our new Beach Haven home the harbour offers calm after the city trip

And our little house - last on the right among the trees - seems lost in the trees of the reserve

  

Close by our house,two guardian trees defy the setting sun - 

Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Dylan Thomas

and then surrender to the peaceful evening. 

And though the last lights off the black West went, Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs— Gerard Manley Hopkins  - next morning  cicadas burst forth with their noisy wings