Real art from nature's treasures
Souvenirs are found in any tourist destination and New Zealand is no exception. Australia has its boomerangs, France its Eiffel Tower replicas, England its Union Jack T-shirts, and the US its eagle mementoes. Set foot in a New Zealand souvenir shop and you'll see stuffed kiwis, paua shell trinkets, carved tikis and pendants. Look more closely, however, and you might find they aren't made in New Zealand. Sure they look OK, but are you really taking a piece of New Zealand culture home with you?
Bone carver Ian Thorne, who lives in the Coromandel seaside town of Whitianga (two and a half hours from Auckland), thinks not. 'People go to souvenir shops and you wouldn't know there was any good quality craft in the country from what you see there,' he says. 'A lot is imported or low quality.'
But Thorne says art, jewellery or even souvenir aficionados don't actually need to look far to find the real thing, with a wealth of artist studios and galleries all over the country. As well, New Zealand has a wealth of natural resources available for use by artists in creating stunning and unique works.
His Carving Unlimited: Bone Studio and Gallery is an old house converted to a shop, with two thirds as the gallery and one third as the workshop. Thorne carves mainly in bone - including beefbone and whalebone - but also in teeth, ebony, shell and horns. As a chef living in Wellington, Thorne became tired of working for 'bad pay and lousy bosses'. He was flatting with a carver who taught him the basics and Thorne soon showed artistic ability. Later, he moved to the Coromandel and lived in the bush for a few years.
'I did most of my carving by hand there and trained myself,' says Thorne. 'I got better and better.'
He moved temporarily back to Auckland where he was deemed good enough to teach carving - instructing young men in a youth detention centre. These days he enjoys being back at a popular tourist spot, Coromandel, his students include tourists and overseas language students who drop in and have a few lessons.
'A lot of people from overseas who have never touched tools in their lives make something by hand better than they can by machine,' says Thorne. 'It does a lot for how they feel about themselves.'
Thorne's work was initially quite untraditional, and he carved all manner of strange creatures and shapes. These days he's more mainstream, creating what the market wants. He is often commissioned to do specific works by people, a process he enjoys. He carves six days a week, with whale tooth being his favourite material. He has worked in walrus and mammoth ivory, but - not wanting to encourage the trade - wouldn't work in elephant ivory. Mother of Pearl, pig tusks, dugong bones and deer antlers are all fair game.
Thorne is beginning to attract some business through his Internet site www.carving.co.nz where he also profiles many other New Zealand artists working from the resources supplied by Mother Nature. The website features works for sale, and also serves the purpose of informing visitors to New Zealand that genuine hand-carved works are available even in little towns.
'It's hard to get the name of Carving Unlimited out there from Whitianga,' says Thorne. 'But the Net is doing a good job for us.'
JADE CARVER
Thorne's website also features Alan Hobbs, an artist who specialises in jade carving. Nephrite jade is known both as greenstone and pounamu in New Zealand and is treasured by Maori, the indigenous people of the land as well as Pakeha (Europeans).
Hobbs lives about 20 kilometres (12 miles) out of New Zealand's most famous tourist destination, the thermal city of Rotorua. He and his wife Heather, who is also a full-time carver (jewellery of shell, bone and some silver), live on the edge of the Ohau channel surrounded by 150 gum trees (for firewood), fruit trees, a huge vegetable garden, pigs and other animals. Hobbs is a hunter and the freezer is crammed with his quarry.
The community which Alan and Heather live, Mourea, is predominantly Maori. Although Alan and Heather are Pakeha, their children attended the local Maori pre-school known as a Te Kohanga Reo. At kohanga around New Zealand, children are fully immersed in the Maori language. Hobbs says it fills his heart with pride to hear his seven-year-old daughter and six-year-old son singing and talking in Maori. The family doesn't own a TV (Hobbs has never had one). Hobbs dedicates any spare time to perfecting his craft and the children are way ahead of their peers in art too.
Hobbs began working in jade many years ago. He began collecting it in 1985, becoming aware of its spiritual qualities as well as aesthetic beauty. Most of his jade comes from the West Coast of the South Island. Hobbs was in the Navy for four years, then became a bushman in the Kaingaroa Forest, East Cape and Wairarapa where he became interested in sketching. His interest in art grew when he moved to New Zealand's capital city Wellington, where he met a carver who showed him the basics. It wasn't long before he went out on his own, but what followed initially was a series of knockbacks.
'Something I've always done was go to the Craft Council (New Zealand government body - now under the umbrella of Creative New Zealand - that helps support developing artists). I always aimed for that level. They were good because if they didn't accept my work they would tell me why.
'I had a lot of rejection for a long period of time, but I was aiming high so was disciplined and persistent.'
Ultimately he met their standards and began selling work in galleries. Hobbs says it was a financial struggle for many years, so he decided that the best move was to do commissioned works. In the end, however, he realised fulfilling commission was the same as having a job - having to deliver on time.
'It was a real drag,' says Hobbs. 'So I recreated myself into a place where I would do whatever I wanted to do and people would buy it and sell it or I would put it in the galleries on consignment. That is where I am today and it is perfect.'
His bread and butter now comes from the elegant jade disk pendants he creates, but his large sculptures are where his passion lies. Most days he works 8-10 hours on his pieces. For a 100-120lb piece of jade, he would work solidly on it for four weeks.
'I'm a bit of a techno freak in ways. I prefer to do everything by machine but I still do a huge amount by hand,' says Hobbs. 'My forte is fine finishing and that's what cuts it in the big wide world.'
With some pieces, Hobbs will also do a bronze version that involves having a silica mould made of the artwork. This acts as a negative and the mould is filled with wax, and sent to a craftsman who makes a ceramic shell around it. That is painted with ceramic slip and built up layer by layer until it is thick. It is then heated and the wax pours out the sprue. The ceramic shell then has bronze poured into it to make a replica of the original, which is then cleaned up by Hobbs who patinas and polishes it.
'On a bigger piece I'd do a limited edition run of 10. With smaller popular ones, I do them endlessly because the bronze sells very well. I have done a big pig and there is a two tonne version of it in the Wellington square in limestone.'
Hobbs sells most of his work through Kura Gallery in Taupo and Wellington, and Oceanic in Queenstown. Tourists who have seen his work and wanted to buy direct have also called him at home. Recently he did a trip to the West Coast of the United States to set up some markets there.
As well as jade, Hobbs works in anthracite, and still enjoys a bit of bone carving. One of his favourite pieces is a dragon made from whalebone, and a face spoon from a tooth. He and Heather have a special way of keeping favourite pieces in the family - they make sure they give themselves and the children a favourite piece they have made for their birthdays. Hobbs also invests for the children.
'Even though I don't do much work in whale tooth any more, if someone offers them to me I buy them up. You never know whether the kids might want them.'
Hobbs says the commercial necessities of modern art would never compromise his use of jade.
'Everyone I know honours me for the work I do,' he says. 'I honour the stone and love it and treat it well - people can see that and feel it.'
WOOD (SWAMP KAURI) CARVER
Wayne Ross is another artist who has been busy buying up natural materials from which to create his exquisite bowls, tables and sculptures. His source of inspiration is swamp kauri - kauri stumps that have been buried below the earth for anywhere between 2500 and 5000 years.
When Ross came to New Zealand from Outback Australia in 1982, he was amazed people didn't seem to use the natural treasure. Kauri are huge trees second only to Redwood in dimensions, and once dominated the northern regions of New Zealand. Some kauri stumps in Northland are thought to have lain in oxygen-free bogs for 60,000 years, seemingly flattened by some powerful natural event. Ross's stumps are younger and found further south, on a farm in Huntly in the Waikato. Ross gained access to the stumps on the farm when he struck a deal with the farmer, which saw Ross keeping the raised stumps and the farmer any trunks (which can be used for furniture).
With the farmer selling his farm, Ross had to dig like crazy to get as much out as he could. That was no mean feat. He borrowed from the bank to exhume 33 stumps from their boggy graves and now has enough to last him his working lifetime.
'We dig them out with a 28-tonne digger and transfer them up the hill. The biggest one I pulled out was close to 12 tonne. That's pretty intense work and they aren't cheap. You have to get them up to the place where you can get a truck and trailer in, then you need transport to take them down to Te Kuiti where we store them.'
All this can only be done during late summer, when the bog areas have dried out enough to get trucks in. Even then it's 'like standing in a big jar of Jell-O'.
Once they're out and stored, they need to be cut into blocks and dried - at an excruciating inch per year. Ross's basic income comes from making bowls out of the swamp kauri, because his large, magnificent carvings may take five months to complete. He kiln-dries some of the kauri used for smaller bowls. It's a delicate process that has been improved greatly over the years, but there are still casualties.
'I rough them out while they are still wet - they are 100% saturated - then I take them to the kiln driers. If they survive that process, which we have been doing for 10 years, we can use them. But a small percentage will still crack. I don't have an inch a year to wait though.'
He then takes the wood back to his Ngaruawahia workshop to create his unique bowls. The point of difference in Wayne Ross's bowls is that he doesn't turn them by machine. They are all carved by hand, and all the natural holes and rough edges are left in them to make up the natural features of the bowl. This initially met with some resistance from retailers, who hadn't seen such 'natural-looking' pieces before.
Sometimes, if there is a hole that is too big in what is otherwise a beautifully coloured bowl, Ross will fill it with resin or kauri gum. He prefers not to though, and customers love the natural look. Ross's average bowl is around 10-15 inches and takes seven to eight hours to make, but some are as big as three to four feet.
Swamp kauri is the oldest workable wood in the world and Ross believes its qualities are unique and to be treasured. While most people want the high-grain kauri for furniture, Ross sees more value in the raw beauty of the stumps he excavates.
'I want the stuff with the fiddleback, the flick, the colour and all the grain,' he says passionately. 'That's why a lot of people have discarded them in the past because they are too hard to work.'
Ross used to create his pieces in a dirt-floor workshop, using a borrowed chainsaw.
'As we've made money, we have put it into buying tools, a workshop, four-wheel-drive Ute, a portable mill and an 80-year-old bandsaw that can handle eight-inch blocks so I can cut out my bowls on a bandsaw.'
He says the size of the stumps presents major challenges not just in extracting it from the bogs, but in cutting it up.
'They are so big. If you can imagine a Falcon station wagon, then put two of them on top of one another! It's not like I can just pick the wood up and bring it to my mill - I actually have to build the mill over top of the stump. Then I get it into slabs. And you really don't know how good it's going to be until you get inside it.
'If I can see the wood has a nice, big, solid, beautiful grain - that's what I earmark for my carvings.'
His swamp kauri sculptures are large, exquisite creations in the richest dark brown, gold and amber hues. Their smooth, sleek forms belie their original existence as a forgotten hunk of stump buried in a bog. Because the form of his sculptures comes from his subconscious and he spends so long on each - living, breathing working it each day - Ross names the finished pieces. It's his way of acknowledging them as a living piece of nature, shaped into another form by hand. '3 Cycles of Life', for example, can be seen on the carving.co.nz website;
Ross's bowls are often seen for sale in some of the luxury lodges around New Zealand, including Matakauri Lodge (Lake Wakatipu, Queenstown) and Blanket Bay (Glenorchy, just out of Queenstown) and the world-famous Huka Lodge (Taupo). He also stocks in selected galleries around the country.
Being a bushman by nature, Ross takes pride in the fact that in his years of creating sculptures he has maintained respect for the environment.
"I have never destroyed a living tree to fulfil my artwork," he declares. Ironically, had he not rescued the swamp kauri stumps he has, they may well have been burned off. To farmers, the stumps are a pest. To Wayne Ross and the admirers of his work, they are simply forgotten natural treasures waiting to be given new life.
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