Friday, August 31, 2007

speaking of sculpture...

They installed a new steel Tui Sculpture at Paraparaumu Beach recently. The photo is from the rainy grand unveiling. I have yet to go down and see it in person but will when I go to the main library. Creating Tui sculptures is popular lately: the gorgeous, "largest Tui sculpture in the world" was added to the top of the Forest and Bird offices in downtown Wellington this year as well:


Forest and Bird Tui
Originally uploaded to Flickr by TELPortfolio

UPDATE 9/18: Saw both sculptures in person. The Paraparaumu sculpture is almost iridescent and looks great. Bumped into the Forest and Bird Tui while in Wellington yesterday buying art supplies. It was right over the Gordon Harris art store. Darryl stocked up on clay and such, and I got in a trip to the Mediterranean Market. Yum.

Aeotearoa Dreaming has a post about Wellington street art with photos of several sculptures. (Clicking on the thumbnails there will take you to larger images).

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Posted by Jessica at 10:36 AM

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Thursday, August 30, 2007

last sculpture class

Snapped one of my favorite shots of the island at 7am
with the moon still visible above the horizon.

Spring is coming. It's still chilly out and cold at night, but trees and plants are budding, and there are baby lambs showing up in the fields. (They are cute as kittens, and I was sad to discover that 4 months is the end of the line for 24 million of them here. Why did I think they got to live longer than that?)

To be less of a downer, I had my last oamaru sculpture class yesterday. This seashell was our final assigned project; after that we worked on our own designs. I don't think I did such a great job with the shell. It was supposed to be quite rounded on one side and very geometric with facets on the other. The original the teacher had done looked great, but I couldn't copy it with much finesse.

Anyway, I've had a blast for 6 weeks and may go for a more advanced class later. The stone is affordable and the tools are cheap. It's a pretty easy hobby to do, although it creates so much dust, and we don't have a garage, so working on it outside depends on the weather. With temps just hinting that they're warming up, I should be ready to get out there more. Sculpting a gift for someone now, and a project for work.

Darryl is fine, though clearly not much of a blogger lately. He's sculpting away on a project of his own in clay, and eventually silicone.

The tax specialists bill arrived. Although I knew he was expensive it was a mind-blowing invoice, and also said for prep. of the wrong state's taxes, so after crying like I'd seen a Hallmark movie, I wrote to ask if he did indeed send us the correct ginormous (that little bit o' Elf fun actually made it into the Webster's dictionary) bill. Good thing we don't have kids to put through college. Jeesh. We should be able to sort it out ourselves next year with no problem.

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Posted by Jessica at 9:59 AM

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Friday, August 17, 2007

dawn chorus

Here's an mp3 of birdsong from the back yard the other morning. You can hear the Tui throughout, but if you listen to the whole thing (just over a minute) you'll hear their classic gravelly "croak" at the end.

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Posted by Jessica at 11:53 AM

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Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Harakeke Sculpture and Kapiti t-shirts

I liked the koru design better, but the harakeke sculpture was supposed to teach us about sculpting motion and involves twisting lines that are harder to visualize when looking at a block of stone. It was definitely more challenging than the first piece we did.

The harakeke is a native flax plant which provides nectar for Tuis when it blooms and is widely used in traditional Maori flax weaving. The plant is actually pictured behind the statue - it's the tall spiky looking thing on the right. Our is about 7 feet tall. I found that out after the class, so I thought the sculpture I was copying was an entire leaf; in fact it's just the tip of one of those long spikes on the flax.

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Just recently, I've opened an online shop through CafePress, offering t-shirts, baby gear, mousepads, etc sporting photos of the lovely Kapiti Coast, including the view from Paekakariki Hill Rd., sunset over Kapiti Island, our photo of all the sheep from up at Pukerua Bay, etc... The link is now a fixture at right, or you can click here to give it a look.

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Posted by Jessica at 3:10 PM

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