Autumnal Auckland

Auckland city centre from the fort on North head. Devonport in foreground.

Auckland Harbour Bridge from Birkenhead ferry wharf - evening.

Rangitoto volcanic cone from Maungawhau ( Mount Eden ) volcanic cone Auckland.

A plaque on Mount Eden expresses an attitude fading now in human beings everywhere except among the power elite of most corporations and nations. How telling the last phrase.

During the land taming period early 20th century city fathers created this delightful glass house in the Auckland Domain - the Wintergarden - to suspend the seasons for at least some flowers.

                                                                                                                                                              This mini Crystal Palace survived the Great Auckland exhibition of 1913 till today.

                                                                                                                                                               This Neoclassical dame fixes a funereal gaze on the Wintergarden pond. A marked contrast to the lively blooms inside the giant glasshouse that she is so balefully guarding.

The interior of the glasshouse dominated by a myriad of different types of Chrysanthemums.

It is an experience that explains why the Japanese Emperors made it their royal flower.

An indoor pond is graced with water lillies and overhung with carniverous blooms.

                                                                                                                                                                    The image of a white water bloom is reminiscent of a Chinese scroll painting.

Another scroll - Autumn from my bedroom window - the harbour beyond.

April at Home

April in Auckland seems to be a bit confused. As the Aussie bottle brush bursts into flower and bees , birds and butterflies swarm around the sticky blooms one could almost be forgiven for thinking that the Antipodeas is enjoying an English spring. A twenty foot radius around our house is suddenly alight with flowers and airborne life. I think its summer going out with a bang, but maybe its just my birthday celebrations. Thank you Aeotearoa.

                   When that Aprille with his showers sweet  
                   The drought of Marche hath pierced to the root,
                   And bathed every vein in such liquor,
                   Of which virtue engendred is the flower;
                   When the West Wind with his sweet breath         
                   Inspired has in every holt and heath 
                   The tender crops, and the young sun 
                   Has in the Ram his half course run,  
                   And small fowls makin' melody, 
                   That sleep all the night with open eye,        
                   So pricks him nature in her courage:  
                   Then folk long to go on pilgrimage.
                                             
                                                               Geoffrey Chaucer

A sea of Bottlebrush ( Callistemon) confronts our deck

A rocket launch

A star burst

A safe landing

Pink blooms on the driveway

making a bee line for the nectar

....... bathed every vein in such liquor

..... as such engendered is the flower

in the garden

in the house

.... good nature copies art   Oscar Wilde

And animal life appears in the house as a neighbouring cat begins to visit 

An April birthday at home ( note the Daisuke cat - no visitor but belongs here ) 

and abroad misplaced Arian enthusiasm wrecks another venture 

A Classical Interlude

During my most recent visit to the Auckland Art Gallery - Toi O Tamaki - I kept to the older chambers and corridors and found delight in what we once relegated to the shame bin of Victoriana and Neoclassical. I think my approach has a touch of the Surreal, fueled by the current exhibition Degas to Dali from the national galleries of Scotland.

A hint of De Chirico surely in this frozen moment on the wall of the old wing of the gallery.

Pallas Athena was a powerful Aries woman. I assume this from the sheep on her helmet.

While her artistic colleague Apollo would have been comfortable at an Oscar Wilde Soiree.

James Pyne's Genoa from the New Terrace 1862 might well be the poor man's Canaletto 

but I loved the detail, including the mini naval disaster

and the self referential glimpse of the artist at work in the corner.

Married by Walter Sadler 1896 is a lesson in body language that reveals the pathetic incompatability of a couple who should have stayed with their hobbies of reading and rose gardening instead of risking their happiness in what I suspect was an arranged marriage.

This Victorian bronze captures a very real and undernourished nineteenth 
century London street urchin not an Hellenic faun of the fourth century bc. 

This Romatic image of Milford Sound in the South Island was painted by John Perrett in 1895.

I found this 1847 Victorian lithograph by Stephen Ponsonby Peacocke online. It is of Sispara Peak in Kerala - a landmark on an important pass to the British Hillstation of Ootacamund. A copy of the print is nicely framed in our sitting room at 31A SISPARA PLACE, Beach Haven. 

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.