Mahi Toi-Making Art

Listening to the Land

It takes time to get to know the land in which you live.

In fact, that is incorrect.

It takes time for the land to get to know you—sometimes weeks, sometimes months, and perhaps even years.

It is, in many ways, like forming a relationship with another human being. In the beginning, you see the surface and perhaps form impressions based on that surface. A wise person will move past initial impressions, persevere, and look for what lies beneath the surface. As each participant gets to know the other, a conversation forms in the space between them. That is where the document lies, the concrete record of an encounter.

Great landscape photography (or rather great photographs of the land because there is no such thing as landscape photography) requires forming and developing a relationship with a place to the point where you absorb and identify with it. It is as if each of you swaps your coat of many colours, one with the other, and then grows into it so that the one coat becomes part of the other.

When I began to live up here in Te Tai Tokerau last year, I would spend a couple of days a week taking Sarah to and from her work at the hospital in Kawakawa. For her to arrive there on time to begin her day, we would usually leave home in the dark for the 30-minute drive there. The road meanders along the plateau as far as Turntable Hill, just above Moerewa, then swirls abruptly down into the valley. At this time in winter, the cold air draining off the sides of the hills has partially coalesced into lines of thick, dense fog. After sunrise, the mist dissipates and surrenders to the power of Te Raa, the sun. There is, however, a magic time, perhaps 10 minutes long, where the land sits between night and day, and the glory of the sky with its warm Hughes and promise forms a background to the cold colour temperatures of the foreground in the town and just beneath. At this time, the lines of ridges running north-south towards the east are silhouettes of shape and shadow without the representational clutter of plantations and farmhouses. It is a land that gets up and dons its most mysterious kakahu (cloak) for a short time as if to say:

"so you think you really know me?"

Then, having lured you in, it allows the sun to show us what we think we see.

Sunrise and sunset. Two short periods of truth separate the illusion of day and night.

All art is a response to a question. Sometimes, the question takes time to appear and declare itself.

Time and time again, as we crested Maunga Hautapu (Turntable Hill), I would see a question in front of me, a line of artistic enquiry waiting for me to find it.

Two weeks ago, I made a concerted effort to see what it was. We left extra early for three mornings in a row so I could have the 10 to 15 minutes I needed to make pictures as the night rolled away from the day.

On the third morning, I got it. Perhaps it was a realisation; maybe it was just the particular nature of the mist that morning. As I looked across the slowly seething fog in the valley beneath, I realised I was looking towards Te Ruapekapeka (also known as the Bat's Nest), the scene of a significant battle during the New Zealand Wars between Maaori and the British colonialists.

And then I saw it. Layers of stories and layers of history stepping back into the mist. The houses beneath me represented the present; Te Ruapekapeka, in many ways, represented the past. And beyond the line of hills in the distance were stories yet to be unfolded.

Compared to the grandeur of the mountains and lakes of the South Island, the soft flowing forms of the land in the North are often nothing in comparison. The raw, pure energy of the Southern Alps stands above the past and dominates the present.

In the North, however, layers and layers of human history lie like soft, opaque quilts over the land.

And it is here where the question can be found.

Frontispiece

Koorero Timatanga

Atamaarie e te whaanau:

Good morning, everybody,

It has been a long time between drinks and nearly two months since the last issue of Breathing Light.

My bad.

I owe you all an explanation.

For some time now, I have had this strange experience of having one foot in Southland, at the bottom of the country (or the top, if you are Maaori. If you know anything about the legend of Maaui pulling up the fish from the ocean's depths, you will know that the North Island is the fish, the South Island his waka-canoe-and Stewart Island is the punga (anchor)). Thus, the waka is sailing into the current and to the south. My other foot has been here in Te Tai Tokerau, the Far North. I have felt both literally and figuratively split in two. While living up here, I have been maintaining my accommodation down south.

Towards the end of April, I realised it was time for me to put both waewae (feet) in the same place, and so, at the beginning of May, I flew south to Te Anau to close up my life there. For the last three years, my wee home, on a back section off a cul-de-sac, off a cul-de-sac, off a side street, had kept me safe and sheltered, particularly during Covid-19 and The Mandate, when I was persona non grata). One morning, as I stepped outside, it came to me that my view was barely 200 m long and that if I were to stay, that would be the limit of my perception.

It was time to leave and return to the Far North to live among my ancestors again.

After a week of dithering and indecision (I am Libran), I began the process of discarding (yet again), tidying, packing and polishing the small house that had been my refuge for nearly three years.

After a fortnight of careful and methodical packing, which became ever more frenetic and chaotic the closer I got to departure, I packed what remained of my life (clothing, books, computer equipment and treasures) and set off on the 2500 km drive to the supposedly winterless North.

It took me a week to travel up the country. My lovely Subaru station wagon, which had been sitting unloved for nearly six months and towing an aerodynamic windbreak, did not pass other cars or petrol stations. Its thirst was prodigious. Eventually, I arrived here in Kerikeri in the early evening.

It has taken time to get my feet under the table and get a sense of the finality of the move. For some time now, I have felt it was time for a change of direction, or at least to move forward in some direction.

I have been pondering what to keep from my past and what to discard. I am not sure I am nearly there yet.

Time will tell.

A couple of you have reached out, wondering when I will produce the next issue of Breathing Light.

I feel you.

So…

What better place to start than here and now?

Waiata Mou Te Ata-Poem For the Day

I love writing poetry.

And while I make poems about …stuff…, it occurred to me that I had never made a poem about making poems.

I love how the Koru (eternal spiral) turns back upon itself and is yet some way out.

So herewith…

A poem about making poems…

Sometimes the words come song

Sometimes, at times, in time, the words will come

as ferocious yellow bright tiger’s eyes

peering through the palmleaved shadows of a windspun darkness.

At other moments, they will emerge slow-pawed

as shards of flickering recognition,

of splintered memories embedded in and glued

to a nightriver flowing downhill.

I will gather up these precious, precocious mind-crumbs

and assemble them lovingly

into a diaphanous moonbleached skeleton,

a string of glowing bone-pearls

that rattle, clatter and clamour for completion.

I will weave in filigreed sinews of tending suggestion

and

pomp out my creation with muscled metaphor and hypodermal circumstance,

carefully layering, lathering, and slathering on highbrowed hair and skin.

Then, I will lift the cobweb of my creation to my lips

And puffballbreathe it on its way

 On a path of its choosing.

Endpapers

Koorero Whakamutunga

Of This and That (and in no particular order)

Print sourcing

Occasionally, someone will ask me if they can buy one of my images as a print.

There is nothing quite as joyous as making a print, working with the client to have it framed in the best possible way, and then imagining it on the wall in their home, hopefully bringing joy to them whenever they pass by. The journey from preconception to completion only ends with that hook on the wall.

I love making prints because then I know I have produced something with substance. However, my own machine, a Canon Pro-1000 12-pigment ink printer, will only print up to A2 in size. Whenever someone asks me for an A1 or above, I cannot help them.

Until now.

The problem with completion and delivery is also that Aotea Roa / New Zealand is at the bottom of the planet, and freight costs to the northern hemisphere are prohibitive.

Until now.

I have recently found someone living nearby who can make large prints for me and is willing to work with my vision to give me what I want. Now, if you live in this country, and want a larger work, I can help.

I have also begun a dialogue with a company in the United States whose software products I absolutely endorse and who have recently set up a printmaking service. I can forward the work to them, and they will do the heavy lifting for me, including delivery. I recently had a Zoom session with them to explore the possibilities. So, if you live offshore, I can help. Please get in touch.

Ideas that can get you thinking

Not long ago, I came across an article in Vox magazine which talks about pan-psychism, which begins with the intriguing title:

"What if absolutely everything is conscious?"

This question encapsulates an idea I have been bumping into for quite some time. The Indian mystic and philosopher Deepak Chopra has been discussing consciousness for quite some time in his LinkedIn articles. Sooo…

What if everything is conscious and everything (and everyone) is connected to everything else, where everything is conscious and an expression of consciousness? (I see you choking over your Sunday morning coffee). What if everything is simply consciousness?

Of course, indigenous wisdom has been saying this for aeons.

How, then, can we, as artists, explore this? And to what extent is our exploration consciousness itself?

Is there a hierarchy of consciousness?

Are these questions themselves consciousness?

Questions like this can mess with your mind.

If I embrace the idea that I am consciousness incarnate, what will I make of concepts like life, religion, thought and mindfulness?

And if, as consciousness, I choose to explore and express this, what paths will the Artist Me decide to follow?

As a small boy, I would often go into the forest where we lived to be with the trees, to feel the energy, and to try to understand the messages they were constantly sending and exchanging with each other.

I still do that. When I go for my walk up the hill first thing in the morning, I will stop beside a particular palm tree, put my hand upon it and feel into it, realising that every tree is talking to every other tree. This is not a new idea in any sense, but one I wish to explore and celebrate, as I have done all my life. This life, at least.

How, as artists, can we take this line of enquiry and turn it back upon itself by conscious artistic expression?

I am watching this space and observing my personal, spiritual, intellectual, and mental reactions to it, both metaphorical and concrete.

I am looking forward (and backward) to observing how it expresses itself.

Consciousness. 

Wherever you are on your own path as an expression of IO Matua Kore, the Master of All, may your days be filled with wonder, joy, and a celebration of life's eternal and infinite cycle.

Much love to you all,

Tony/Te Waenga