Wallance Arts Centre- Discovering the New Zealand Creative Arts

Today we have gallery visit to Wallace Arts Centre, it was an exciting experience that we can look through many New Zealand artists works and support the foundation of New Zealand creative art as a group.

To trace back the history of James Wallace Arts Trust and its collection, James Wallace began collecting New Zealand art in the mid-1960s, with a particular focus on the work of emerging artists. And he continues to add to the collections and provides support for the arts in New Zealand in general. Besides, Wallace’s original aim was to assist emerging artists through both patronage and promotion through exhibitions.

Furthermore, this arts centre hosts a changing programmed of free exhibitions curates from the James Wallace Arts Trust collection as well as regional touring exhibitions. The art centre will also run ongoing community education programmes which targeting around Auckland schools and the broaden public.

There are so many exhibitions and displays around the gallery first and second flours, such as different sizes of paintings, sculptures, jewels, installations, and creations. However my first impression was John Scoot who drew the men’s portrait by using the acrylic and oil paint on the large canvas, the concept which contains the emotion and similar to the three-dimensional picture, when I stood in front image it looks like the real giant pop out in front of me. Therefore, the artist has great drawing skills by using delicate drawing method and remarkable drawing technique to depict the portrait painting.

Overall, there have varieties of art displays and paintings that we can spend time to look through and can use whole day to enjoy the fascinating New Zealand creative arts in the exhibition, however, it’s the worthy of experience to discover the new of the New Zealand arts in this place.

Healling Arts Fair-Arts and Minds

At Wintec (Waikato Institute of Technology) Ngahinapouri Hall has hosted the second Healing Arts Fair last week, everything there was spiritualy inspiring and there were many stalls that you can browse freely.

From encaustic wax art, reeks healing, traditional Chinese jade practitioners, psychis, soy candles, sharman drum healers, hormone dancing and spiritual art, organiser Diane Krippner says “we are a group of multi-talented artists and there’s plenty to open your mind to”.

There were so many activity that everyone can participate, especially the encaustic wax art was specialized art which used the small hot iron and wax crayons to create the images. “It is imaginative art” Diane Said. Therefore, this art fair offered the participants with the variety of experiments provided by exhibitors, so people can enjoy creating art by their unique art skills.

Moreover, another interested healing art was the traditional Chinese jade that offered practitioners healing through jade stones. By rubbing the stone on part of the body, the practitioner can obtained the information about their own health by reading the colour on the stone.

This art fair was really attached our spirit and soul that used different art skills to convey people’s mind and thoughts. By applying many art resources this event is able to finish successfully based on the interaction between participants and exhibitors. However, it was interesting and meaningful healing art fair that will worth people a while to participate and enjoy creating arts.

Reference from September 22,2010,Hamilton Press
Colour:Katie Luck and artist Diane Krippner's impression of her guide
Photo by Supplied

Arts Offer the Challenge- Lynne Sinclair Taylor

The well known Hamilton artists tutor Lynne Sinclair Taylor opened the Affordable Art Exhibition, a show of her new works last weekend. Most of Lynne’s work which represented the acrylics and oils, and come from a background in advertising and fashion design. Also she was doing more abstract and figurative work of female images. Lynne said “I have focused on stylized women in abstract, impressionist and realists styles”.

Furthermore, Lynne teaches children and adults and will launch a school holiday workshop for them, she said “I want to bring more messages into my art and provoke people to think about their life values and self esteem”.

Overall, Lynne wants to use her paintings to challenge those who view her works, and it was a great experience for most viewers whom do not know about the definition of her art, and a great opportunity that can deeply to seek around through her work and learn more from her workshop.

Reference from September 22,2010,Hamilton Press
Photo by Natascha Garland

Make Over the Power Box- Karen Beckett

Sometimes when we walk down through the street, we can see many buildings, walls, huge masterpiece or public displays are painted by using different colours.
Karen Beckett is part-time artists who enjoys paintings on but were pinched from the St Vincent de Paul op-shop in Frankton Hamilton recently. She was also redundant from her casual employment in a Frankton scrap yard last month.

However, Karen cannot stop out and keeps doing to brighten the place up. She never thinks about giving up her interest. She still keeps her enthusiastic in working everywhere and helps out the Frankton Markets by painting murals on electricity boxes and Telecom boxes, and participates the Hamilton City Council’s anti-graffiti adopt a box campaign. No matter how difficult situation is, Karen shows her insistence and persistence her goal. Now she is still doing painting and decorating the public displays around the city, and makes the subjects looks more conspicuous and artistic.

Reference from September 15,2010,Hamilton Press

Making Crafty Cards into Business

Rebecca Mead’s workshop is a small kitchen table and she was festinated by making craft work which she learnt while she was a child and learnt to sew by using paper instead of using cloth.

I am interested in Rebecca used her child-hood sewing skill to generate
“card-making”. Also she utilized the other people’s paintings, drawings, printings,
patterns, and some of graphic into her creation job, and then Rebecca casted and
sewed them to make the beautiful cards. Normally, she using a medium-gauge white
card. Besides, she looked for a variety of interesting papers, such as the textile,
Patterns, sequins and wallpapers to decorate on the top of card.

Overall, it is a great idea that designer combined different medium and skills to design her own craft work, and turned into a small business and settled on making arty, innovative cards. I like the idea that she sold her compositions on the cards and offered some blank space inside so that purchasers can fill them with whatever they like. Rebecca was so proud of her creative job and she said “It has been amazing how easy they are to sell. They seem to be quite accessible. I’m just a small business at the moment, but hope to get bigger.”

Reference from September 8,2010,Hamilton Press

The inspire art from cinema- Sarah Mitchell Munro

Sarah Mitchell Munro is a full-time artist and she trained as a physiotherapist who always loved art. Last week she opened a “Through the Window”, which was an exhibition about the domestic space and was presented from women’s viewpoints. Also the whole idea was inspired by her loves- cinema. In addition to, she collaborated with her friends Wendy Richdale to fulfill the whole display.

In her work, she took a lot of footages around her home in which was at Victoria villa in Hamilton. She represented this theme by using fairy tale, and classical atmosphere. The idea of her work was inspired from the French cinematographer Janusz Kaminski. Sarah said that “I love the way Kaminski frames his shots and his use of lighting and colour, the work he made was elusive quality”.

No matter, Sarah worked very hard now and won an outstanding prize previously. She still wanted to keep studying before she turns fifty years old. I am really impressed with the way which Sarah’s thinking in her arts and her sprite in leaning arts.

Gallery Visit- The Walters Prize

In my point of view, Walters Prize is an exhibition which shows the artist experiment about art and design, also it representing the great skill from artist idea. The exhibition has separated in four spaces which presenting by four artists; it has showing different art skills, such as oil paint, architecture, installations, moving images, and so on.

Each artist has showing the abilities of their own viewpoint about making arts, and the interesting thing is most of the art work is untitled, unless the titled of the subject, the artists just give details of the material which they used. It is hard to understand what aim for is, and what is the point that the artist tried to present their works without the definitions in some of the display. One of finalist artist Dan Arps he displayed a broken table and chairs, and the recycling box with papers inside and some of antique stuffs around the space that called “Explain things”. For me it is hard to make clear the compositions of contest, because the artist only used the simple idea to “explain” everything could be art and can make art.

Overall, it is a good experience to observation the artists’ works, and learning more skills from their displays. Therefore, I more understand that contemporary art is very wide; everything can make as an art and installation art.