Pou whenua, Victoria Skate Park

A quick capture of one of the carved pou shrouded with ti kouka at Victoria Skate Park while the young fella practices his tail whips.

Paepae & Perepere

Our province continues to yield many treasures from the swamps.  Only this year a farmer friend dug up a ceremonial bowl on a shaft.  Both items below were found similarly, the first one back in 1904.  Unusually both sets have ears.  Otherwise the spiderweb puwerewere decoration, serpentine look, and pointy heads are all distinctively from our region  Paepae typically adorns the front bench of the meeting house where the top dog speakers sit before oration.

This feminine Perepere would have been positioned in front of a storehouse.   Less fierce than many and with an almost a surprised look. The weather drove us into Puke Ariki our local excellent museum.

Paritutu

Paritutu is a 150 metre tall volcanic rock on the coast of New Plymouth at Port Taranaki. It's a pretty weird mix of nature and industry here. You can climb the thing and see Mount Taranaki, the Tasman Sea and the natural coastline of cliffs and black ironsand beaches. Then turn around and you get the start of the port and tank farms. The smokestack that's there is from an old gas power station and is taller at about 200 metres.

[The inaugural] Tamaki Herenga Waka Festival - celebrating Auckland's Maori Heritage

Crowds gathering at Queen's Wharf /The Cloud on a super hot day

Relaxing on bean bags to awesome reggae tunes - a great way to enjoy sketching

Kids playing traditional Maori stick games

Crafts man and their wood carving skills

Pot Pouri

Each of this batch represents different weekend's expedition:

Forty years ago these Motonui Epa (back panels of a storehouse) found in a swamp were spirited out of the country to a Bolivian collector for USD65.000.  The government bought them back for 4.5 million this year, and they were returned to Taranaki.  Distinctively our style with serpentine bodies, the pointed heads and pu-werewere (spider web) decoration.

A challenge to draw as the display was slowly rotating, so we had much exercise over the hour's drawing.

1957 Vauxhall Velox wagon at the Aussie Car Muster - not exactly a 'Muscle Car' as billed on the advertising but still very much admired by passers by.

Westown School is a co-ed primary built in 1925, and probably the most brightly painted school in New Zealand.  Interestingly one of our sketchers walked through the portals of this school in an earlier life, and was excited at the prospect of recording a piece of his history.
Even the motto was branded on his forehead still, 'seek truth and do right'!

The 70ft span bridge was built in 1884, from the winnings of a horse race, where the winning horse was called 'The Poet'.  It was rebuilt in 1938.  The colour is based on the red lacquer of the Japanese Shinkyo bridge in Nikko.

Tragically the donor was drowned under the bridge 7 years later.

It is in located in the heart of Pukekura Park, which in turn is in the heart of New Plymouth City.

The suspended balls are in preparation for the annual Festival of Lights held each summer.  The place is heaving with tourists each night.

Just south of Hamilton at Ohaupu a former farmer has created a tree church.  Growth is trained over framing to create this intriguing spot.

http://treechurch.co.nz/

Maori & Mini Me

The end of a wet week, so indoors - at Puke Ariki museum.  Northern Taranaki Te Atiawa style 1800's prow figurehead.

Previous week surprising sunshine
The first minis were produced in 1959 by the British Motor Corporation as the Morris Mini-Minor, then morphed through Leyland, Rover, British Aerospace till 1994 when BMW took them over.  The new generation began a year before this one was produced.  They were the British contemporary of the Beetle.

Stylish Taranaki

Before I was a sketcher, I was a carver.  Consequently I enjoy studying carvings.  I carved a story into the front door of our home, then we built the house around it. 

In a way, carving involves a kind of sketching to develop the design.

Taranaki where we live is rich in Māori history.  We have a number of well preserved treasured carvings - recovered from swamps where they had been stored, likely during times of trouble.

The with the advent of the European, the steel chisel superseded the stone chisel  (whao)and carvings became more ornate.

I have done a little Māori carving, some under supervision. I've tried panels, mere, waka huia feather boxes, hei tiki and manaia to name a few.

The carvings from our region are characteristically distinctive.  Often with ridged serpentine bodies along the entire length.  The heads tend to be pointed, some suggest reminiscent of our conical volcano mountain.   This contrasts with the North Auckland style which has rounded heads.  Our foreheads are also very broad.  Invariably the arms, legs and bodies are linked, arms may curve under legs to elevate them and limbs echo the body's curve.   An arm often passes through its own mouth, which is distorted slightly to accommodate it.  A leg may even pass through the eye of another figure. 

Simple spirals (which in fact need to be drawn as two interlocked spirals when you come to carve them - a surprise to the beginner) are often placed on shoulders and hips.

Typically there are decorative embellishments outlining eyebrows, mouths and other areas These are usually a kind of curved fan shape (of two to six grooves) called pu-werewere (spider web).

The treatment of hands and feet are also special, the hands are crescent-like pointed fingers, with the feet more like claws.

This particular piece is an Epa, a house panel, on display in our Puke Ariki museum.  I cheated by adding the paua shell eyes, they had already disintegrated once it was removed from the swamp.

See if you can identify some of the above characteristics.

 

 

Paepae - a threshold beam - used by speakers.