Welcome to episode 155, the final episode of 2024. Ngā mihi nui Thank you so much for listening and for your support this year. I hope the podcast has cheered you up, motivated you, inspired you, affirmed what you do or educated you in some small way.

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Now for episode 155. Alex Wilkinson is a ceramic artist and entrepreneur living in Te Awamutu in the Waikato. She founded Mystery Creek Ceramics out of a love for Nerikomi and functional, beautiful ceramic tableware.

Alex talks about her journey to art school in her twenties via 3 years of studying engineering for 3 years and business for 2 years and how discovering and nurturing her creative side has helped with her well being, mental health and managing depression. Alex credits pottery for helping her out of a severe period of depression and putting her back on the path of valuing herself and her contribution to the world. Alex says "I simply would not be here if it were not for me trying a night class in pottery and my incredible support network." 

Alex shares the more conceptual part of her art practice and explains how this sits comfortably alongside her Nerikomi tableware production, allowing her to push her thinking and self expression, and how an art competition led to her losing confidence in her conceptual art practice. We explore Nerikomi, a Japanese pottery term describing the artistic technique where multiple colours of clay are marbled or combined to create various designs,.and what Alex loves about this process.

Passing her passion for ceramics on to others is Alex's favourite part of her practice. Alex talks about the different ways she does this through teaching, supplying, mentoring and building her audience and networks through social media. We have great chats about using Tik Tok and Pinterest, the highs and lows of small business, the commercial and conceptual sides of Alex's art practice, mentors, being the face of the business, branding, suppliers and so much more. This episode is a fascinating insight into business life alongside the life of an artist and a lovely peep into the world of Mystery Creek Ceramics.

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Established in 1974 by a group of young jewellery makers to promote their work, Fingers has become synonymous with innovation and originality and the development of an indigenous style of contemporary New Zealand jewellery. 

Fingers has been at the forefront of treating and displaying the craft object as art, and has constantly challenged the notion of what is precious. As the oldest contemporary jewellery gallery in New Zealand, Fingers has become an institution recognised locally and internationally, providing a platform for many artist's careers. 

In this episode I speak with jeweller Roy Mason who is one of the founding partners of Fingers. We explore Roy's experiences at Ilam Art School in Christchurch in the early seventies, his early artistic practice, insights into his creative thinking and how nature inspires his work.

Roy reflects on how and why this group of like minded craft makers came together, the early days of Fingers and the move to Kitchener Street opposite the Auckland Art Gallery Toi ō Tāmaki in 1987. 

He talks about the Fingers early group exhibitions - a pivotal part of the establishment of Fingers - each one focusing on a chosen concept such as a material. We discuss how the partners worked together and supported each others' practices, the use of diverse and less often seen materials such as Paua and Mother of Pearl (mela mela), how the group shows allow for the team to experiment and push boundaries and how other artists have come on board with 72 artists now exhibiting in the gallery.

This is a fascinating look into an iconic New Zealand contemporary jewellery collective who this year celebrate 50 glorious years of intelligent art making.

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Bailee Lobb is a queer, disabled artist born in Whanganui, Aotearoa, 1989 and now based in Wellington. She is a multi-disciplinary artist who works with textiles, colour, and movement to create sculpture, installation, and performance artworks that explore art as disability access and care.

In this enlightening episode Bailee talks about how she felt as a teenager, as a person who was dealing with undiagnosed autism and how her artwork now responds to and nurtures her disability. She shares how she started her studies in architecture at uni in Aotearoa, why she changed degrees and went on to study fine arts in Sydney and how architectural ideas continue to inform her art practice. 

Bailee speaks about how her work has always connected with mental health in some way and how her art practice has helped her discover and acknowledge her own health and disability issues such as chronic pain, sleep problems, depression and autism. For Bailee, art is a way of communicating personal things that are hard to put into words.

We explore a number of Bailee's installation and performance works in depth, how audiences react to and interact with her works, how she uses colour to , how she manages creating work that is for people to experience more than for people to purchase, how grants have helped her to push her practice and the ways in which she considers creative access in all of her work.
https://www.creativematters.co.nz/post/bailee-lobb-sculpture-installation-and-performance-artist

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Julie Battisti is a painter who grew up in Melbourne Australia and moved to Aotearoa New Zealand with her husband in 2017, settling first in Rawene in the North Island then going on to make Dunedin her home.

Julie's paintings currently have two significant themes; clouds and flowers. Both are studies of light and texture. 

In this episode Julie shares how she sources and chooses the flowers she paints, how she creates her floral compositions and her floral painting process from underpainting and taking photographs to painting the final details and how she approaches colour.

We discuss her cloud paintings and how they have initially came from feeling homesick, helping her to feel more connected to her friends and family on the other side of the Tasman.

We explore how she manages work for her gallery with regular commissions, how she connected with the 2 NZ galleries who represent her (Gallery de Novo in Dunedin and Parnell Gallery in Auckland), why she is no longer represented in Melbourne and how she manages 2 distinct themes in her practice.

Julie is the host of The Creative Kind podcast, where she explores creative questions with the help of fellow artists & art professionals who share insights and inspiration with listeners who, like Julie, are passionate about creativity in all its forms.​​ 

As fellow podcast hosts we talk about our podcasts, why we started them and our plans for the future of our shows. It was so nice to connect with Julie. We have a fantastic conversation - it was such a treat to hear Julie talking about her beautiful art practice for a change! 
https://www.creativematters.co.nz/post/julie-battisti-painter

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Chris Melville is a photographer, graphic designer and jazz musician living in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland. 

In his latest photographic collection, Chris uses household items and a slow shutter speed to create landscape compositions, suggesting dreamy lakes or mountains appearing from the mist. Chris currently works with linen, denim, smooth cotton and coarse hessian, creating visual layers and textures. The resulting images, while being made entirely of practical human-made objects, speak of the mystical natural New Zealand environment, referencing Colin McCahon paintings through their minimal aesthetic.

Chris shares lovely reflections on life and creativity in this episode. We talk about his experiences showing his abstract photographic work at the last 2 Art in the Park events in Auckland, why he also likes to take photographs of musicians, how his sense of humour comes through his art practice and the other things he likes to capture with his camera. 

We explore his photographic process, how he comes up with the titles of his latest series and how he juggles a full time design job, being a musician, being a Dad and going to gigs with his photographic fine art career.

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Ross Jones is a painter creating works that evoke a heady sense of nostalgia and elevated playfulness, living in Snells Beach on the east coast north of Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland.

Each meticulously devised painting offers hints at various narratives as the artist invites the viewer to engage with his role as storyteller.

I loved meeting Ross and chatting to him. We talk about Ōtaki on the Kapiti Coast of Aotearoa where he grew up and the things he loves about where he now lives at Snells Beach. He shares how he failed his first year studying art and design at Wellington Design School only to return a year later and start the course again, gaining his degree 3 years later.

Ross talks about how he likes to play with time and scale in his work, his love of incorporating toys form his childhood and sourced from around the world into his paintings, how his previous illustration career informs his fine art practice today and his love of using sketchbooks for organising ideas, experimenting and drawing.

We discuss goal setting and how this has evolved into his 100 painting project which started in 2009 and finishes in 2028 and The Final 50 painting project which will start up after that and hopefully take him through to his early 80s. We explore why Ross doesn't like to paint NZ scenes, why he wouldn't enter an art competition, why he likes to paint one painting at a time and only have a solo exhibition every 2 years and why he loves to paint his dog Alice and why he won't paint yours.

https://www.creativematters.co.nz/post/ross-jones-painter

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Cathy Carter is a photographic and multimedia conceptual artist, living in Grey Lynn, Auckland. 

Cathy's art is inspired by concerns about climate change and our evolving relationship with bodies of water as physical, cultural, and unique environmental ‘landscapes’ and investigates our complex psychological relationship to water through different perspectives and geographical locations.

Cathy and I have a lovely chat which I know you'll enjoy and I just loved our time together. We talk about an influential trip to Europe with her young family that influenced her and informed her early art practice, why she finally went back to uni to study fine arts at AUT University gaining a Master of Art and Design (Hons) in 2013 and why she felt she needed to do this. She shares how she came to make water her muse and how her work became more conceptual, and how she came to be represented by a dealer gallery as soon as she left uni.

We explore her extensive and wonderful series of works from her Oceanids series to her latest Fluid Alchemy series and why she likes to dip in and out of these series. We discuss her creative process, how she makes some of her work, the ideas behind her work and how she likes to also incorporate sculpture, light boxes and collaborative pieces in her shows.

Cathy talks about why she likes to enter art awards and competitions, the success she has had with this and how she approaches submitting her work.

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Jeff Thomson is a sculptor living in the little suburb of Helensville, in the north west of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. He is well known for his corrugated iron animals, birds, cars and people as well as NZ icons like the Taihape gumboot and the Holden in our national Museum Te Papa, and is often referred to as the corrugated iron man of Australasia.

Unconventional, humorous, challenging, iconic and ironic, the sculpture of Jeff Thomson has given a whole new perspective to corrugated iron in the New Zealand landscape and in art.

Jeff'swork is keenly sought after by collectors in New Zealand and internationally. He has had major exhibitions in Australia and Germany as well as New Zealand. His work never stands still, and he continues to be recognised as one of NZ's leading and most original contemporary artists today.

After a successful artistic career of over 40 years Jeff has a lot of great stories - from making an elephant fence for James Wallace's home and sleeping rough in a rotunda in Albert Park for 9 days whilst installing iron elephants, to his early long distance walks and meeting the locals, his first corrugated cow made for a letterbox and his love of finding a 'non art' audience. Jeff shares some of these stories in this episode. 

He talks about some of the domestic craft processes he has explored with iron such as knitting using downpipes for needles, french knitting, screen printing, weaving, lace making and making pompoms. He shares the ideas and techniques behind some of his artist led community projects, public and private commissions and other sculptures and he talks about some of his favourite works.

We discuss one of his career highlights, which he describes as functional art out in real life, roofing in the community and the beautiful connections he's had with other respected NZ artists such as Don Binney, Paul Dibble, Ralph Hotere and Rosalie Gascoigne.

This is a fascinating glimpse into Jeff Thomson's incredible career.

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Emma Hercus is a painter born in Hastings and now living in Plimmerton, just north of Wellington.

The everchanging ocean and its view from her home serve as constant reference points in Emma's narrative abstract figurative paintings.

I loved talking to Emma. We talk about her early influences and inspiration from family as she was growing up, the amazing basketry and weaving practice she developed when she first decided to get back into being creative after having kids - which after a number of years finally led to her painting practice. We discuss her experience studying art for 3 years part time at the Learning Connection in Taita, Wellington, gaining a diploma in creativity. 

Emma shares what she loves about painting, how she incorporates mark making using her favourite scruffy brushes; layering, sanding, scratching to create beautiful marks and glimpses of colour and patterns through the layers. 

We explore interesting topics like using chatGPT or AI for writing artist statements (or not), framing, why she sometimes likes to elongate limbs in her paintings, where her stories come from and the symbols in her work.

We talk about her joint show Wildy, coming up this week at Railway Street Gallery + Studios:
An exhibition by painter Emma Hercus and ceramicist Jenn Leov
Wed 23rd October - Saturday 9th November 2024

And you'll hear from Emma's doggie Ricky at times making a guest appearance.

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Today I'm catching up with painter, printmaker Kylie Rusk to see what she's been up to since I last spoke to her in March 2021.

Listen to Kylie's first chat on the podcast in episode 2:
https://www.creativematters.co.nz/post/creative-matters-on-air-with-kylie-rusk

You can see her work at her upcoming group show ELEMENTS at Turua Gallery
October 18th - 30th 2024
https://turuagallery.co.nz/collections/kylie-rusk

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