Close up of Tui Mine

View from the Tui Mine site, looking out over the town of Te Aroha and the Hauraki Plains

 As part of the research I'm doing for my next mining project I visited the site of the Tui Mine with some friends this week.  As it is the most toxic site in New Zealand and currently being remediated, there is no vehicle access, and many dire warnings about accessing it on foot.  So we didn't know how close we could get until we got there.  The walk up Te Aroha mountain was very steep, through some very beautiful native bush. There were a few birds about, but not many- which is not unusual for the middle of the day.  

Tunakohia  Stream, fed with water from inside the mines

We crossed several sparkling clear streams and rills, but despite the temptations of the beautiful water we tried to avoid contact with it, sharing our water bottles with Tara the dog so she wouldn't drink from the streams.  After heavy rains, or when the mine site is disturbed (as it must be during the remediation work), these streams can be full of toxic heavy metals (lead, cadium, mercury).   

Some rusty old mining rubbish lying around in the bush

 As we got higher up the mountainside and closer to the mine site, we started to hear the roar of heavy machinery and even a muffled explosion. The lower level of the large area of the mine is the tailings dam which is the current focus of remediation work.   I managed to get a peep at it through the trees, but could only see a small section of new tailings dam under construction. It will replace the crumbling old concrete dam left by the mining company when they flitted off leaving 90,000 tonnes of toxic tailings perched precariously on the steep mountainside above the little town of Te Aroha.

Constructing the new tailings dam

Higher and higher we climbed, and eventually came to one of the entrances to the underground mines of Tui. I thought recognised it from an old home video I watched at Te Aroha museum last months where a group of ex-miners revisit their old work place. This meant I could visualise the inside of the mine (dark, wet, dangerous, deep), even though the entrance is decisively blocked (not that I would venture inside a Tui Mine casually anyway).

Entrance to underground mine (top right).  Tunakohoia stream flows right past (see it coming out of the bush just above the dog?)

The mine was abandoned 30 years ago and although the lush bush crowds up the edges of the site, nothing can grow on the cleared ground, so toxic is the earth.  Looking at it, it feels very raw and new, but after thirty years, anywhere else would have overgrown the stream with vegetation.

Mine entrance, with water flowing out with bright orange sediment 

The mine's water runs straight down the blasted cliff face to join the Tunakohoia Stream

Looking down from the mine entrance

I was very excited to be able to be right there, on the mine site, seeing with my own eyes the details and the context.  I was particularly looking at the colours, because that is the decision making I'm immersed in at the moment with my mining project.   I didn't see anything that looked like cinnabar, though the dark red lichen growing on many rocks is a similar colour. 

The only life in the mine clearing are a few kinds of unfamiliiar lichens, presumably the kind that flourish on a diet of heavy metals.

We did find this piece of quartz stained with the same bright orange that flows out of the mine. I don't know exactly what the orange stuff is, but everything I've read about Tui suggests its a highly toxic mineral. 

Tui Quartz

When NORPAC abandoned Tui so abruptly after the market for their dangerous product disappeared, they left a lot behind.  A hundred tonnes or so of ore apparently, and the tailings of course.  But the most visible/accessible stuff these days are all the bits of rusting kit and a few concrete foundations. 

After we walked back down the steep mountainside, we drove to the otherside of Te Aroha town, to the charming historic Domain with its multitude of mineral spas. A luxurious soak in a warm outdoor pool was just what our sore feet and tired legs needed.  When my fingers and toes were pale and wrinkled I finally felt cleansed of any contact with Tui's toxic legacy.

A weakness for colour

 I'm doing lots of thinking about what colours to use for the Tui Mine piece I'm designing.  Although I am confident and enthusiastic about wearing and decorating with lots of colour, I think its a weak spot in my artistic practice.

In an attempt to generally improve the use of colour in my art and specifically work out what a palette for Tui Mine I'm trying to get more aware of colour combinations in nature and other people's art.  These fallen gum leaves caught my eye, under a big old tree I was walking past.  The leaves looked much more vibrant there, either the warm evening light or lying on verdant green grass.  By the time I got them home they all seemed much more subdued. But I still like them, and am drawn to the soft crimson as a shade I could try to replicate for the cinnabar of Tui Mine together with the bright greens of the forest, and the ochre and silvers of the bare earth.

Barry Smith's Antarctica

My friend Barry Smith, and his wife Catherine opened an Antarctic exhibition last week in exactly the same gallery  (ArtsPost, Hamilton, NZ) where I held my Antarctic exhibition last August.  Barry is a printmaker and Catherine is a painter and they have both been to Antarctica, most recently in 2006. Barry also spent the summer of 1959-60 working on expeditions down there, which he sometimes writes about on his interesting blog, Pukawaparadise. A couple of years ago, Barry allowed me to share a few of his photos from that period on Bibliophilia here.

Antarctica: Dreams and Discoveries includes five expressionist paintings of icebergs and blizzards on the sea ice by Catherine Smith.  I was particularly enamoured with Barry Smith's seven woodcuts, which reference the events taking place on the ice a century ago as Amundsen and Scott raced to the Pole.  In the photo above Barry is standing next to his print, 18th January 1912, which is very moving for Antarctica history enthusiasts for me, as it suggests we are looking over Scott's shoulder as he arrives at the South Pole and sees the Norwegian flag left by Amundsen who was first to visit, only a month earlier.  All the poignancy of that moment is conveyed in the stark silhouette of the hooded figure and the bleak view in front of him.

My two favourite prints were the simplest.  Cold Way to the Plateau, and embossed woodcut with no ink, no colour, just the relentless white of the paper and snow marked only by light and shadow falling across the texture of the embossing.  Eleven Miles Short is all grey and grim, once again expressing perfectly the tragedy of Scott's expedition. Eleven miles short refers to the distance Scott and his party died from the nearest cache containing the food and fuel they desperately needed.

The story of Scott and Amundsen has been told so many times, in so many ways that you might think it worn threadbare as an explorer's socks at the end of his journey. But Barry's images are not interpretations of well known photographs, nor simply illustrating diaries or histories.  His imagined perspectives are evocative and moving, satisfyingly authoritative and imaginative. I'm sure that even people unfamiliar with the tales of the Heroic Age will be stirred by the stark and simple beauty of Barry Smith's Antarctica.

Lucky number 7

Today is the 7th birthday of this blog, Bibliophilia. Each year the quantity of posts is a little less than the previous year, but I'm proud that I've been keeping it going for so long without resorting to (much) repetition or memes or posts made up entirely of links. I like to think that Bibliophilia offers original content-rich consistency, if not reliable frequency.

There's certainly a small but intensely loyal cadre of readers who occasionally tell me how much they like what I do here.  They tend not to comment much, and as I am an infrequent commenter on other people's blogs, its no more than I deserve. One advantage of not being a comment-heavy blog is I don't have much spam or trolling to deal with!

So thank you, loyal readers, those who let me know they are there; and those I don't know... who appear to me only as encouraging statistics.  Feel free to say hello below if you want to. I do like getting comments here.

So what can you expect to see on Bibliphilia in its eighth year? More of the same as I have no radical changes of direction planned in my work, my life or this blog.  I'm steering a steady course at the moment.  The finishing touches are going onto my long-awaited gallery website and I hope to launch that soon, together with a freshen up of Bibliophilia's look. But that's about as much online excitement as I can handle at one time.

As for posts, I've got four major works in progress with deadlines in the first half of the year and so there will be plenty of incremental progress photos, and some conceptual musing. I'll probably share about some exhibitions that I visit, research that is stirring me, places I explore.   The second half of my year is a bit of an open book at this stage, but I suspect there will be a little travelling on the horizon as I've got itchy feet that can't be scratched until I've completed the current work programme.

I originally intended to celebrate Bibliophilia's birthday with a list of links to my favourite posts of the last 7 years. But I haven't gotten round to pulling that together.  So there's something else for you to look forward to. If you've been following for a while, is there a favourite post/topic from the past 7 years that you would nominate?

Tui Mine

This is as close as its possible to drive to Tui Mine these days, and it was far too rainy a day to get out and walk (especially given what I know about the run-off from the mine entrances and tailings).

Te Aroha is a small town under its eponymous  mountain not far from here. Both the town and the mountain have simultaneously fascinated and repelled me for years, and drawn me to write poetry and make art about them. The imposing physical environment, its social history as a spa, and more recent tragic statistics as the highest suicide rate in NZ have each begged a creative response that I have never yet been able to live up to.

Yet, when I recently read about the remediation of the Tui Mine, perched halfway up the mountain overlooking the town, all the ideas I've that have been floating in the back of my mind for decades began to coalesce with my current focus on extractive industries in general and mining in particular.  Tui, and Te Aroha, sit on the other side of the Kaimai mountain range and a few dozen kilometers northwards of Tauranga, where the MV Rena continues breaking up in a dismal oil spill, already the subject of two large scale works in progress in my studio. I am now also developing a new piece to respond to what I have been learning about Tui Mine and its impact on Te Aroha.

The Tui Mine has nearly 150 years history of relatively unsuccessful mining endeavors. Some 80 different primary and secondary minerals are present in the quartz under the Tui claim. However, gold (which is certainly present) has resisted repeated attempts to extract it using each new technological development in the industry between the 1880s and 1930s.  Finally, between 1967-78 a company, NORPAC, was formed to mine zinc, lead and copper from Tui which was sent to Japan for processing.  The ore was so heavy that the trucks leaving the mine looked empty, even as their axels strained under the weight of the load.  Mining stopped, and NORPAC went bankrupt, in 1978 when it was found that the Japanese workers were getting ill from the high mercury content in the Tui metals and the market disappeared.  More than half of the mined ore remained on site, with nowhere to go.  In those days, before the RMA required mining companies to clean up after themselves, NORPAC was able to take only the most cursory swipe at dealing with the toxic ore, tailings, mines and processing sites before literally disappearing from existence.

Now Tui Mine is acknowledged as the most toxic site in New Zealand, and a disaster of monumental scale that could occur with only a small seismic event or even particularly bad storm.  Millions of taxpayer and ratepayer dollars are being spent to try and stop the surge of heavy metals that fills the streams every time heavy rain or careless visitors disturbs the site. And, more dramatically to prevent the potential of 90,000 tonnes of toxic tailings breaking through the crumbling dam left by NORPAC and sliding down the hillside onto the town below.  The town's water supply was contaminated with heavy metals at up to 150 times safe levels of cadmium and lead from at least 1968-1979 and possibly intermittently since then.

It must be a huge relief to the residents of Te Aroha, and the local iwi with kaitiakitangi over the mountain to know that the Tui Mine debacle is finally being dealt with.  I'm not quite sure yet exactly how my work will interpret these issues and the environment but I know that the red of Cinnabar, the toxic ore that made Japanese workers so sick, will feature.

Some of the toxic ore from Tui Mine, Cinnabar, or Mercury Sulphide. The distinctive red colour stains the water flowing from and past the mine site, and no plant life has grown anywhere near the mine in the 30 years since it closed.

Serendipitous snotty globules

Snotty globules of oil-spill dispersant, hand-crocheted  cotton with wool 

After starching up the first batch of tea-dyed crochet dispersant, I realise I really have to stop describing them as spheres.  They are lumpy, misshapen, blobby globules with little in common with actual sphere shapes. But to me they are beautiful, especially en masse. Each one is unique with its own wabi sabi character.  They are like tiny crayfish pots or loosely woven baskets and obviously handmade. I'm very pleased with my globules of dispersant.

Starched globules stuffed with wool while they dry

I've also been surprised by my globules. How I get them from flat to round is with a homemade starch mix, not dissimilar to the wheat paste glue I use to make books.  To hold their shape while they dry I stuff them with short-staple wool from an old pillow.  It turns out that when I go to pick out the wool from the dried-stiff globules its almost impossible to remove all the wool, and strands of fluff line the insides like ectoplasm.  

Last snotty bits of wool that can't be removed from inside the globules

Or snot, which is just the effect I want, because the dispersant used in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Corexit, once mixed with oil and floating in the water is colloquially called snot.  Back when I thought I was making spheres, I feared they would look too sweet and bubbly to adequately represent the horrors of dispersant's impact on ecosystems and human health. My globules are still pretty bubbly, especially from a distance, but this unexpected snotty quality, combined with the lumpy shapes is very pleasing.

I'm nearly half way through crocheting my 400 globules, and though the tea dying is quick and easy, the starching, stuffing and unpicking is very laborious. I pick as much of the wool filling out of each globule as I can, using a pair of long, medical tweezers. Its a good thing I'm so pleased with how they are turning out because I'm going to be spending a lot of time picking at snotty globules over the next few months.

Stitch oil, white and black

I've got a couple of large scale oil spill works on the go. Pressing hard at their heels are some mining works I've got planned, just waiting for confirmation on deadlines before I reassess my stitching priorities.  There's nothing to show for those but sketches and notes so far, but they are what occupy my minds eye most compellingly right now.  Occupying my hands however, is "stitch oil, black and white" as the notes in my daybook record day after day.

The first oil spill work is an installation of about 400 crocheted cotton spheres of various sizes. I've finished about 160 so far. Because my policy is to, as far as possible, use second hand or waste materials my selection of crochet cotton is quite variable. Different weights and shades, different types of spinning and possibly different materials- its hard to know if any of my cotton isn't all cotton because almost none of the balls have labels. I'm having to use a lot of white because I keep running out of the ecru.

Anyway, to try and bring some harmony to this motley ensemble of spheres I will spend some time this summer dying them with tea. Here was my first serious tea-dying experiment. After the tea dying comes the much more fiddly work of starching floppy net bladders into shapely spheres.

The intention is to represent oil dispersants such as Corexit which was heavily used on the Deep Water Horizon oil spill in 2010 and briefly used on the Rena oil spill in the Bay of Plenty NZ this year. Dispersants are much more toxic than oil but have the attractive (to oil companies and politicians) ability to make oil spills invisible by breaking the oil down into plankton sized blobs and distributing it through the whole water column. Great for dodging fines based on the amount of oil recovered, not so great for the eco-system and human health and local economies.  

Here I am holding up my big black spill (working title) which is about half of its intended finished size. Its the currently same height as me, 155cm or 5'0", short for an adult, big for a hand stitched piece.   I wrote about starting this one in a blog post about cutting the paper pattern and blanket pieces? So far I have felted and stitched about two thirds of the fabric I cut that day when I ran out of grey blankets.  Since then I have managed to acquire three more which should be enough to see this work spreading down the wall and across the floor of the gallery.

100 years since the first person at the South Pole

The South Pole on My Antarctica (shown here while still WIP) is marked with a small pearly button

"So at last we reached our destination and planted our flag on the geographical South Pole, King Haakon VII's plateau. Thank God! This took place at 3pm. Weather was the best when we set out this morning but at 10am, it clouded overand obscured the entire sun. Fresh breeze from the SE." Roald Amundsen

Today is the centenary of Amundsen's historic achievement, being the first person to visit the South Pole, along with his four companions and 18 dogs. Amundsen is one of my heroes (along with Captain Scott who arrived a month or so later- I don't think we have to choose one or the other to admire).

Roald Amundsen is an inspiring example of single-minded focus on a lifelong dream. He did years of intelligent preparation including learning from the Innuit in the Arctic as well as other polar explorers and he employed the very latest technology available. His success is remarkable not only for reaching the Pole first, but for getting his entire party back alive, a feat that Scott tragically failed.

During the months I spent hand embroidering the continent of Antarctica I read and reread a lot of Antarctic literature and learned much about Amundsen. Pulling my needle in and out across the contour lines of the Axel Heilberg Glacier and across the polar plateau was a way of honouring this extraordinary man and the journey he started out on with seven other men and 86 dogs. Most of the dogs were killed for food along the way, and I wrote a poem for the dogs, because somehow Amundsen (like Scott) has proved too great a subject for me to write about,

Kermadec Expedition Exhibtion

Pohutakawa bursting into bloom at Mount Maunganui

I first heard about the Kermadec artists' voyage on the radio just after the artists returned from their trip. My ears pricked up because I've been thinking for a while of making the Kermadec Trench out of blankets. The nine artists who participated included one of my favourites, Robin White, which made it even more special. Throughout the year I've been looking forward to their show.

The project involved a week's sea voyage in May across one of the least travelled bits of ocean on the planet. The work the artists have made since their voyage is now on exhibition in the beautiful Tauranga Art Gallery and I went to see it on Sunday.

Because I don't have my own car getting to Tauranga is tricky, so I formulated a cunning plan. To celebrate my birthday this week I didn't have a party or a dinner, instead I invited some friends on a day trip to the seaside with some art thrown in. Five girlfriends joined my little expedition and car pooled over the Kaimais to Tauranga. We all loved the exhibition, and went round the show several times, including after a break for lunch.

Robin White produced three enormous tapa cloths (I would guess at least 5m square) that hang in the main foyer of the gallery, filling the two story high walls. My jaw literally dropped when I saw them so big and so beautiful. Two of the tapas marked with Robin's characteristic precise and insightful drawings made using traditional techniques and the involvement of a village craft group in the Islands. They are gorgeous and perfectly sufficient on their own, but my favourite was the tapa with just two blocks of colour, ash black and ochre red, no images at all. In its simplicity, the work's strength is quietly insistent.

The other eight artist's included a couple who's work I'm familiar with and others I haven't come across before. The works by two of the other women on the trip resonated with me the most: Elizabeth Thompson and her extraordinary undulating deeply coloured pieces, very sensual and evocative of Kermadec's environments. Fiona Hall's sculptures and installations were stunning. I particularly liked the tiny screen (iphone?) playing inside a sardine can framed by a perfect tin fish. And her sculptures of bird beaks like icebergs of course.

The exhibition is on until February 2012, so if your NZ summer holiday itinerary includes the Bay of Plenty I strongly recommend going along to the Tauranga Art Gallery to see it.

After we had filled up on art and lunch our little party drove on to Mt Maunganui, where the sea was wild and the air stormy. Dozens of black-wetsuited surfers bobbed off shore and beyond them a flotilla of small yachts raced. It was too windy to sit on the beach and we walked around the base of the Mount, following the track I used to find traces of oil spill in October. There is still some oil on the rocks and evidence that the clean up operation is by no means complete. Next day I found out that the storm had caused the wrecked Rena to spill more oil into the sea, which has probably washed ashore by now.

The rain mostly held off for our walk, but started in earnest as we approached the hot pools. A consensus decision decided we should go for a soak, a truly blissful way to end a wonderful excursion.

Windblown and exhilarated, Stephanie, Meliors, Rachelle, Robin and Anna resting on our walk around the base of Mount Maunganui

Tipping Point in B-Block

The University of Waikato bought my large embroidered appliquéd blanket piece, Tipping Point, from the Imagining Antarctica exhibition. I didn't know what they had decided to do with the work until a Facebook friend mentioned how much she was enjoying seeing it in her work place, B Block at the University. That afternoon I caught a bus to uni and found my way to the top of the hill, near Silverdale Road.

B Block is the Administration block, so more used by staff than by students (in my six years of study at Waikato, I entered the building only a couple times) . As I approached I could already see Tipping Point's strong contrasting geometry through the glass doors. The familiar nervous excitement I feel whenever approaching my work in a public place started fizzing in my tummy. The piece has prime spot in the reception area and looks very nice against the pale blue-grey wall.

This is currently the most easily accessible of my pieces*. Anyone can go into B-Block so if you are in Hamilton swing by Silverdale Road and pay a visit.

*My Antarctica (Ross Island) is also in a public collection, at the Waikato Museum but is not on view right now. Several of my handmade books are held in the Special Collection at the Auckland City Library, and can be viewed on request. And of course you can click the Recent Works link near the top of this page to see photographs of recent work including some held in private or public collections but most available for sale now.

New Home for No Mine

No Mine is an Island, a large embroidered sculptural piece made earlier this year, but never exhibited has sold to a private collector in Christchurch. The collector tells me she first saw it as a tiny thumbnail image on the Meliors Simms- Handmade Art Facebook page, which she had found through her sister who is also a collector of my work. She tells me "I was captivated straight away" and started following this blog. One day she was Skyping with her sister, and mentioned how much she liked No Mine is an Island. Her sister happened to be storing No Mine and some other pieces for me and showed her the work over Skype.

When I found out she was interested in buying No Mine is an Island, I emailed her some high resolution photos and links such as this. Eventually, to my great delight and surprise, she did buy the work, my most significant sale to date (and no gallery commission). She and her sister have sent me photos of No Mine is an Island hanging in its beautiful new home, looking very fine. It must be one of the best feelings for an artist, to see a piece she has poured so much of herself into becoming a treasured part of someone else's life.

Inspired by this over-the-internet sale, and chastened by the collector's comment that it was hard to find decent photos of the work she was interested in, I have been working hard to set up an online gallery. It's an interim measure until I can get a 'proper' website developed (and a few more sales are required to fund that project) but for now at least, it's a point of reference to see the best of my recent work in one place, and find out how to buy it.

Just click the 'Recent Works' link near the top of this blog to see a page of thumbnail images. Clicking on individual images will take you through to a page about each piece, with additional photographs and all the information you should need, including links to old blog posts with the back story. Not all my recent work is up there yet so if there is something you would like me to add, please let me know. I've also added a profile page with a link to my artist's CV and page of information about how to purchase my work directly from me.

Enamel, Pecha Kucha and Nancy Campbell

No Mine is an Island bleeding tailings into the sea

I was relentlessly positive going into the New Zealand's general election yesterday, but despite a great showing for the Green Party, we now have a new government keen on drilling deep sea oil and opening up new coal mines and a myriad of other ruinous policies. I'm trying to console myself with the thought that I will have plenty of local inspiration for making work about human hubris and folly in the environment. Cold comfort.

Rather than spending the evening following election results with increasing anguish, I dragged a bunch of friends over the hill to Raglan, a charming sea side village where I'd been invited to reprise my last Pecha Kucha presentation. It was my first PK outside of Hamilton and I was interested to see how Raglan's unique culture was represented. The emphasis was on environmental-themed creative projects rather than design per se. Rick Thorpe on his experiences bringing the Black Robin back from the brink of extinction (5 birds in the world in the 1970s, now over 250) and Jacqui Forbes on Raglan's hugely successful zero waste project, Xtreme Waste were highlights.

The Old School Art Centre was packed full of locals on a Saturday night. My own presentation which involved reading some of my poems accompanied by slides of my stitching projects, was well received.

"... a shimmering turbulence on the surface" or a lake of tailings

One of the poems was Cake, which has just been published in Enamel 3, a lovely little poetry journal published by Emma Barnes. Its about a dream I had involving cake and androids (the robot-human hybrids, not the gadgets) and I showed slides of work that looked a bit cake-like.

Ponting's Genius, about an early Antarctic photographer, was easier to illustrate with images from my Antarctic work. Miner's Cook of course has its very own illustrative piece No Mine is an Island. If Jellyfish Wrote History has enough linguistic imagery to sit with a variety of stitched pieces, none of which have anything to do with jellyfish really.

Evoking jellyfish with a couple of iceberg-colour test pieces

And speaking of being published, an interview I did with Nancy Campbell back in October is now up on her blog. Nancy is a writer and printmaker who is as into the Arctic as I am the Antarctic. Her blog is a delightful grab bag of Arctic, bookish and printerly topics all of which warm my heart.

I too was secretly taped!

This John Key-John Banks teapot tape scandal* reminds me of a time I was secretly taped. I dined out on this story for years and still find it amusing. If only the PM had a sense of humour, he could be getting hours of fun from the experience instead of feeling harassed and looking ridiculous.

I was about 17 and hitchhiking on the West Coast of the South Island with another young woman, both of us done up in full punk regalia. We got picked up by a well dressed man in a tidy car who said he had to make some deliveries and did we mind a few detours on our way? Since our appearance on the side of the road generally attracted much more insalubrious rides, we counted ourselves lucky and enjoyed a bit of sight seeing on back roads in the sunshine.

As our journey continued I noticed first that the man was wearing pantyhose instead of socks under his suit pants, and then that he had a bra on under his business shirt. When he stopped the car to hand deliver a document I mentioned these unusual sartorial details to my friend and we speculated on the implications. Meanwhile she riffled through his box of documents to discover they were a kinky sex newsletter for West Coasters swingers. We muffled our giggles as the driver returned to the car and carried on.

At his next stop I looked down by my own feet, saw a tape recorder and said to my friend, 'hey, here's a tape recorder... and he's left the recording button on...' as I turned it off. We looked at each other in guilt, confusion and amusement and decided as soon as we got back to the main road we'd ask to get out and try our luck with another ride. We feared he might be cross with us for turning off his tape recorder.

I was, and still am, ashamed for sniggering at the cross-dressing driver who'd kindly offered a us lift and feel far worse about him being hurt by hearing our prurient amusement than I do about him secretly taping me. I'd like to say that I learned a lesson about circumspection that I've never forgotten but of course I still sometimes say and do regrettable things like everyone else.

However, when I chose an action (such as mean gossip) I am choosing its consequences. Whether or not anyone records or overhears my ill chosen words I have to live with myself. I could blame or shame myself (or whoever records or overhears me, if they do) but ideally I would apologise, learn from my mistakes and move on with the intention of doing better in the future.

Making a mistake like being indiscreet is an opportunity to demonstrate one's ability to put things right. It's a chance to show you can take criticism, be apologetic, generous and compassionate. Most of all its a chance to show one has a sense of humility and humour. At 17 I failed to express those qualities in the moment when it mattered. By telling the story repeatedly throughout my life I have used it to learn and grow, as well as have some fun.

In the current 'teapot tape' situation I see a powerful public figure demonstrating hubris, defensiveness and arrogance. He looks angry and scared all out of proportion to this event. In an election campaign based on promoting his personal leadership qualities rather than party policies, his response to this event reveals (if you hadn't noticed before) that our current leader lacks resiliance and the ability to laugh at himself.

To my mind there are a myriad of other reasons not to vote this man back into power (asset sales, coal mining, deep sea drilling, beneficiary bashing, anti-arts, ridiculously old-fashioned education etc) but if one were chosing one's votes based on character rather than policy, then surely this is a deal breaker.

*If you are from beyond these shores, it might help to know that New Zealand has a national election on this Saturday and much has been made of the 'secret taping' of a media-staged conversation between the current Prime Minister John Key and a candidate from another political party, John Banks.

Birdspoke

Red Billed Gull

While in Auckland for Art in the Dark last weekend, I stayed with Rachelle Wood who is the artist behind Birdspoke.   She lives in a rambling old villa set on a huge section planted to attract the birds that inspire her work. It is an oasis of birdsong and beauty near the middle of a big city.

Vintage lace 'window treatment'

Rachelle is doing some lovely renovations and her home displays her quirky, vintage and sweet tastes  perfectly. Her style might be called 'shabby chic' and I like it very much.   My mattress was in centre of the living room floor and when I opened my eyes there was almost a sense of vertigo under the extraordinary ceiling rose (complete with bursting pomegranates) set inside a large dome.  Like any proper home, its heart was in the large kitchen/dining/sitting area which opens out onto a deck with views of fireworks at night and trees in the daytime.

One third of the fabric stash

But my favourite room is her studio which is small, perfectly organised and crammed full of potential for creativity.Her huge stash of fabrics is neatly arranged by colour, her tools stored in baskets from Samoa, and her vintage lace in old suitcases.  I arrived feeling very annoyed to have left my crochet workbag* on the bus, but Rachelle quickly sorted me out with a hook and some ecru cotton from her stash so I could keep making throughout the weekend.

Bird embroideries and sewing machines

I've not met anyone besides Rachelle and me who crochets with this old-fashioned cotton that is so fine and fiddly. Rachelle shares my passion for slow making and hand stitching. She spends hours crafting each individual piece by hand to sell at craft fairs and on Etsy, Felt and Toggle.

A Huia plushie.  Huia because extinct over a century ago because their tail feathers were so fashionable.

She also finds time to make pretty things for herself and her home. I love this work in progress (below), to stitch together old lace doilies into a window hanging.  I can't wait to go back and visit again, to see the light shining through the lace.



*Complete with six precious completed spheres, two balls of cotton, crochet hook and second best scissors.   If you find my little blue and green bag, please give it back!

Art in the Dark

Stragagem Bilateral Carousel by Jasmax Grads was a nice spot to lie down and have a rest while gazing up at the lights

I caught the bus up to Auckland on Saturday so I could go to Art in the Dark, the second annual festival of lights in Western Park, Ponsonby. My daughter went last year (she is friends with the organisers and came over from Melbourne to see it) and I was so envious to hear her rave about its wonders that I had to go myself this time.

In the children's playground a long double slide was used as a projection screen to show film of children playing on that very slide, while real people also slide down. It was good fun to try and made me think I should play on slides more often.

It was fabulous, funky, fun to be wandering around an unfamiliar park in the dark with hundreds of other people, their children and dogs. Apparently for many Aucklanders this park (which I'd barely been aware of myself) is little used and perceived as threatening, even in the daytime. Art in the Dark reclaimed the space for two nights with light, sound and activities.

Rainbow Laser by Ben Clegg was best viewed from under an umbrella as the rainbow tunnel was projected through stage smoke and sprinkling water

I'm not very experienced at night photography and so my pictures are very poor compared to those on Art in the Dark's website and Facebook page. I recommend you follow the links to see better images than mine.

Some of the performances were so fleeting, so entrancing and so dynamic that I had no chance of capturing even a bad image. For example, Icarus by Celery Productions was a mysterious and marvelous swooping of enormous white angel wings worn by a man in a suit who flew utterly authentically up and down the gully. I found out later that the rigging is from the Vinter's Luck movie, and up the hill out of my view, a small poignant vignette was enacted between flights. Even without knowing any of that, Icarus was one of the favourite things I saw.

Another outstanding performance was When I Grow Up, in which a group of dancers with LED lights on their suits, danced on a dark hillside. There were no lights on their heads, and their arms were extended with lights to the length of their legs making for a very sci-fi, alien animal kind, yet with human movements.


Many of the pieces were interactive, perhaps none more so than the tree with envelopes by Ella Mizrahi. Envelopes hung from strings of lights draped around a big tree, and when we opened the envelopes we found dozens of different children and adults had contributed a drawing of what could grow on trees (sweeties, money, toys, fruit). We stuffed each drawing back in its envelope and opened another, enjoying the sense of connection with unknown contributors.

Black Gold- Memorial Tree Temple by Brydee Rood referenced my own current inspiration, the grounding of MV Rena on the Astralabe Reef in the Bay of Plenty and the oil spil.

Naturally I was very enthusiastic about the most textile-crafty work in the whole park: Knitting Luminaries. White (machine knit) fabric was stretched and twisted into sculptural forms like giant seashells crossed with fruit, suspended from a big old tree and glowing white white the tree was illuminated with blue. It was serenely beautiful and inspiring.

Knitted Luminaries by Kate Ramsay and Hyungin Yun

Western Park is very large and extends down a steep gully, with many big trees, so that there were surprises illuminating every twist and turn through the dark night. The whole experience was magical and entrancing and I walked around with a smile the whole evening. From high on the hillside, the lights of the Sky Tower and the almost full moon played along, becoming part of the Art in the Dark community, connecting our crowd to the wider city and outer space.