Arts and Framing

Among some of the art venues I took in this past month was the National Portrait show. Below are three examples of New Zealand's impressive realism portraiture. 

Detail from "The Other Sister" by Sofia Minson

Detail from "Tom" by Andre Bronnimann 

Detail of "I Live, I Die" by Peter Miller

 Below is an example of the many creative treatments to the sidewalks here.

 I worked with Gregg and his crew of two other men getting all the prebuilt wall frames into place for Cathy Tracy's new home.

 Cuba street is always a fun space to visit, with its  wide open space, colorful mall and street performances.

 I was able to replace a cable on the bike derailed and then get enough gears to make it reasonable to tackle the sometimes steep grade up into the Otaki Gorge. With its steep drop offs I had to be very attentive, as most places do not have any significant barrier for anyone loosing control and leaving the edge of the road. In some places the drop off is nearly straight down and more than a hundred feet down to the river.

 The giant fern tree is common in this area along the gorge, and these fronds are not even fully grown.

Lots of mountainous terrain here, which makes for a very active watershed into the Otaki River.

 The neighbors have a few doves that frequent the yard here to forage for bugs. As long as I moved slowly they were cool with my presence.

 There are lots of creative garden spaces here in New Zealand, and they really like to find good second uses to everything they have.

 Above is the "tunnel" through the plentiful growth here on the Otaki Gorge Road.

Saba, from the Canadian Maritimes, the Ice Breaker sales woman who convinced me to buy a pure merino wool pullover for my next trip here into the high country. 

 Squash continues to bloom here while several pumpkins and squash are already quite large.

Closing with a caption of connection. Reminders and lessons for reaching out for personal growth.

Taking time to smell the ice plants

 Here are a couple of 'nosey' neighbors. Only the first caption reveals a neighbor who is also often noisy. I have taken their lead as of late to remain mindful of what is on the ground about my feet. Partly so that I can keep the floors in the house cleaner! Which is why Gregg and Carla always wear um boots, "Welly's", or crocs so that the fertilizers stay outside helping the apples to grow.

 It had been a rainy few days, with the result that once the weather broke there were a lot of rainbows, for me I set a personal record of seeing seven in two days, mostly while traveling along the coast by train. This one was just when I got off the train in Waikanae. You may be able to see the second bow that did not quite make it into fullness before the rainbow was gone.

 Gregg finished the last coat of urethane on the marae, it is a big room, 1250square feet, the largest I have ever sanded. It was also in the worst shape with decades of chemical spills, hard wear with very significant gouging and cupping. Gregg did a great job of repairing the many holes in the floor, mostly from the pipe chases that supplied the various fluids and gases needed when it was a school chemistry lab. Now Gregg and Carla will decide what goes back in.
The garden continues to go strong, especially with all the rain lately. Everey night I get to pick the freshest salad greens, and always include several nasturtium blossoms.

This is the flower of the ice plant, prevalent along the seashore here. below is the floor frame Gregg and Tony put together last week for Cathy Tracy's new home. Occasionally I get to pitch in, and I will probably get to do a lot with gluing and screwing the plywood deck in place today (Sunday). We are hoping for some sunshine to dry out the framing a bit.

More seashore and weather related weather thrills

 I biked down to the seashore to harvest some pipis (clams) but I missed the best low tide. So I took a long walk along the beach collecting seashells and encountered these young women training their horses in the sea surf for a variety of dressage skills. They eventually got the horses comfortable with being chest deep in the water. While they were in the surf this fishing boat was launched from its trailer by a tractor.

For me, a new personal record of siting seven rainbows in two days, mostly while I was on the train going and coming back along the seacoast. This one was just when I got off the train in Waikanae.
The next morning I found out that my mother had a heart attack and had spent the last two days in the hospital where they found the problem in an artery next to her heart and put a long stint in to open it up again. I got lucky and caught my mom and dad on the computer this morning and was able to Skype them for about a half hour. She is really doing much better and they both sound good at this point.

Downtown Wellington

Sculpture abounds in Wellington

 The past couple of weeks I have been in Wellington a lot. Mostly for shows put on by The New Zealand International Arts Festival. It made for many long days, not getting home until midnight or later, starting with my 55th birthday on the 5th. This festival wraps up this weekend, after three weeks of great shows that have come from all over, and some local artists as well. A couple of nights ago I was fortunate to see "Raoul", performed by one of Charlie Chaplin's grandsons, James Thierree, he is French, and the most skilled performer I have ever seen on stage. He opens with a stage set that appears to be a shipwreck scene, and in the course of the next 105 minutes he slowly dismantles the entire set as it is transformed into the stage of his dream state in subconscious struggle, where he enacts the dual worlds of his psyche, between his secure outer persona, disgusted with his inner inertia, and his insecure and troubled inner being, very much threatened by his machismo persona. His dance is astoundingly verbal, that is he gives his movement a vibrant voice, that even when whispering reverberates with universally tragic truths, and potent humor. He uses pantomime, with superb grace, and other worldly extensions of dilemmas manifested in physical tension and soliloquy; he uses modern moves to echo the challenges of leaving his familiar territory behind; he uses moonwalks and slapstick to demonstrate being torn in motivation to change from his habitual connection to what is familiar and safe. He plays the violin with superb classical skills while still humoring the muses of his trudging departure from the staid and known. He dreams of sea creatures that come to life on stage with eerie reality:  they are his psychic motivations to escape who he has been and discover who he needs to be. James Thierree is brilliant and incredibly inspired, his is by far the best performer, coupled to an amazing set and theatrical supports. Bravo! (over and over again). I felt really good to be able to share this experience not only with Gregg and Carla, but also with another New Zealander who works within the mental health services here. This was on the same evening after attending the Writer's and Readers last presentation with Thomas Friedman, NY Times Editor in Chief, and three time Pulitzer Prize recipient, who spoke for an hour on the issues covered in his new book: "That Used To Be U.S." , exploring the challenges facing Americans in this very new hyper-connected global economy, exposing how it is that the USA has fallen behind in many areas it used to dominate and what it will take to regain that once prominent and inspired position in the world. He is equally well spoken as he is an accomplished writer. Just before coming to New Zealand I had finished reading his book "Hot, Flat, and Crowded". The nearly 2000 people who came (sold out) to hear him were greatly appreciative of his talk, and I was very lucky once again to enjoy Carla's very generous gift of her ticket that put me in the fourth row from the front, feeling like I was very much a part of a conversation with this incredibly knowledgeable and insightful man.
That was a day that started at 4:30 am for me so I could catch the 7:15 am train into Wellington and then the connector train into Lower Hutt City so I could visit a mental health program called Take 5. It is one of the oldest art/ creative spaces in the mental health services here in the Wellington area. They were putting up art created by their staff and clients for their annual show that day, so I got to tour their studio space and the art gallery show. They have one client's work that shows in NY City regularly and his pieces are typically sold before  the show opens to the public. I was impressed all the way around. My tour of Take 5 left me just enough time to also see an outdoor sculpture show nearby called Shapeshifters sponsored by the New Zealand International Arts Festival. This is a show with over a hundred large sculptures placed in the park. This was a very long day that left me feeling saturated with a vibrancy for colorful and creative expression.
 

Some sculpture is iconic and structural

Lots of old and new architecture

Civic Center innovation and imagination

Student teamwork on the water

flowers overflowing city walls

native color and contrast

Oriental Bay just south of Wellington center

Country rail station

City rail station, with Ghandi statue for poise

Shapeshifter

Shapeshifter

Shapeshifter

Shapeshifters

Wellington reflections

Sails as sculpture

patterns in dynamic tension

patterns in natural contrast

nautical themes abound aground

Yes, that's $2.16/ litre for regular gas!

The price of gas here works out to an approximate equivalent in US dollars to $ 7.10 per US gallon!, with current exchange rate accounted for. So it's no wonder that they have a good train and bus system along the nearby cities and coastal region.

Historic Maori landmarks at harbors edge