“I like beautiful things,” says Andrea Leighton, owner of Pokapu Art Gallery.
Standing in the Bulls gallery showroom, she waves her arms and spins prelehua. The artwork she holds is a laser-engraved piece of wood the size and shape of a leaf, and when she gets it on the right track, it’s unique, as heard in her scene in the opening of Once Upon a Warrior. Makes a growl sound.
Leighton is clearly delighted. This piece is one of her that the former wholesale food salesperson currently sells in her gallery, and is part of a midlife quest to “redesign life towards something more beautiful.” .
That sounds like a lofty goal. I am taking part in this long weekend driving the Coastal Arts Trail from New Plymouth to Wanganui to Palmerston North.
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My mother and I are traveling together. Barring a breakdown, we would have traveled through the Valley, a camper van that doubles as a quirky gallery, with 50 of his works of art by 25 artists incorporated into the interior. .
Valerie is probably out of order, just like when my mom and I rented a campervan some 20 years ago and put it in a Saab outside Polynesian Spa in Rotorua. Ordinary rental cars may be safer.
We started in New Plymouth and were instantly enchanted.
Pukekura Park (why don’t all parks have man-made waterfalls?), coastal boardwalks and 13.2 kilometers of waterfront trails, all topped by snow-capped Mount Taranaki.
But we are here for art. New Plymouth makes it happen. Your first stop is New Zealand’s only single-her artist gallery, the Renly Center/Govett Brewster Art Gallery.
The exterior is crazy enough, with soaring wavy polished stainless steel walls that mirror the 1844 White Hart Hotel, one of the oldest buildings in town.
Staff are also eager to answer questions and ensure you get to see the scheduled shows. Her one of them is Lye’s Sky Snakes Kinetic Sculpture. This consists of a whole room with her chain of balls 4.5 m long, and every 30 minutes she soars in the air for 10 minutes.
We call on ceramic artist Maria Brockhill, known for her brightly colored, often plant-like pieces.
The Bell Block, where Brockhill’s studio is located, is “a little further away,” she says, but has plenty of room for her shopfront, huge workspace and three kilns.
Brockhill says the colors in her work reflect her mood.
A former office worker, she took advantage of the changing circumstances motherhood brought in 1998. “I was always buying other potters’ work,” she says.
She wants people to touch her dotted vases, kawakawa leaf containers, and nikau palm pieces. She takes one recurring theme.
We spent our first night at Hosking House, a magnificent villa restored like a piece of art by its owners. The room has a claw foot bath, and the sheets are white and crisp.
Stop by Paul Massek’s Kingsroy Gallery before departing the next day.
His highly decorated pieces are wood-fired, which he says requires patience. He wakes up at 5am and lights the fire. Wood ash and changing temperatures give variation to his work.
Unbeknownst to me, I’m headed to Whanganui, famous for its glasswork. i am trying to get an education. Your first stop is Te Whare Tūhua o Te Ao, a glass factory in New Zealand.
Sadly we weren’t there on the day the glass artist was working. But I loved seeing the myriad of shiny designs that could somehow be made out of molten sand.
Check into The Avenue Wanganui, a centrally located hotel, and receive a warm welcome in your room, renovated to the highest standards.
Sunday is a good day to be in Whanganui, a place I haven’t been to in 20 years. Since September, the once muted Castlecliff neighborhood has been teeming with people, music and food trucks from 4pm to 7pm.
In his gallery along the road, Ivan Vostinar works on his sculptures. Entering the gallery through a room dedicated to bouldering is novel, but in this room there is a climbing his wall with half-meter-thick mats and multi-colored supporting walls. It seems to be often used by the artist and his children.
Vostiner says he chose Whanganui to live and work in because it has “the best per capita art scene in the country.” He attributes some of that to cheap real estate and the grittiness of the town.
He creates his own organic abstract works, many of them in human form, and combines several pieces of everyday tableware to sell at wholesale prices to make them accessible to all. doing.
Get back on the road and take a short trip to Palmerston North, where the art scene is also vying for attention.
The town’s community art space, Square Edge, has an exhibition space, studio space, café, art therapy room, music suite, and now my kids practice on the grand piano, and my brother sleeps on a nearby bench. .
You can do workshops of just about any genre here, but Artistic Director Karen Seccombe shows us a newly installed ceramic workshop with four wheels and a brand new kiln.
I persuaded her to take me to the city’s public gallery, Te Manawa. In Te Manawa, the group she founded, Women’s Art, her initiative to use art making as a form of resistance to violence, has an exhibition. Seccombe her own work is in glass. She “uses glass because she values light.”
This part of New Zealand is killing it for creativity.
For our final night, we will be staying at the Last Church in Āpiti, an Airbnb. previously introduced – The stunning church renovation is truly a work of art.
* The Coastal Arts Trail is a new art tourism experiencewith more than 50 stops along the lower west coast of the North Island.
The author traveled and stayed courtesy of Venture Taranaki, Whanganui & Partners and Ceda (Central Economic Development Authority).
NINE TO NOON/RNZ
Art commentator Mark Amery talks with Kathryn Ryan about examples of local galleries leading the way in the art world. (Audio She aired in September 2022).