Category: Art

  • Yto Barrada

    Yto Barrada is a Moroccan artist who lives between Tangier and New York. The artist uses, in her work, natural dyes and has created a garden estate, “The Mothership“, near Tangier, to explore dyeing with these materials. In a recent exhibition at the Pace Gallery in London, entitled “How to Plan a Garden”, Barrada made…

  • All about poi

    You might be familiar with the Māori art of “poi“, the dextrous dance movements that use balls on cord. According to some, poi was once used by men to strengthen their wrists for battle but nowadays it is used to demonstrate skill. These poi are made from plastic covering an inner core of foam or…

  • Elizabeth Talford Scott

    The craft of creating quilts became an art in the hands of Elizabeth Talford Scott. Born into a family of sharecroppers in South Carolina, Scott was the sixth of fourteen children who lived on the plantation. With so many people to feed and clothe it was imperative that any resources were reused and she was…

  • Playlist for the Week – 21st July 2024

    Each week a curation of audio from Spotify goes alongside the blog. Each of the pieces is chosen to reflect something in the blog, sometimes obviously and sometimes less so. Paying subscribers to Spotify will hear all the tracks, those with a free subscription will hear them with advertising breaks. Anyone else will hear extracts…

  • Maija Kolsi-Mäkelä

    Maija Kolsi-Mäkelä was a Finnish textile designer who caught the imagination of an artist, researcher and writer, Mandy Pedigo. In an article published in 2020 in Surface Design Journal from the Surface Design Association, the writer explains her search for information about the designer after coming across a mention in a small booklet. The article…

  • Thandiwe Muriu

    The Kenyan artist, Thandiwe Muriu, started out in commercial photography but quickly found herself questioning what it means to be a woman through images of strength and beauty. Having struggled in making a way through a male-dominated industry, the artist began to explore portraiture through the use of everyday objects and cloth. In her latest…

  • Wellington Cathedral of St Paul

    In Central Wellington/ Pōneke stands the Cathedral of St Paul. The Cathedral is the result of decades of lobbying, land purchases, interruptions and changes in materials, as well as delays between the architectural plans and the completion of the building. The first stage was finally opened in 1964 (the architect, Cecil Wood, was appointed in…

  • Jeremy Frey

    “Jeremy Frey (b. 1978, Passamaquoddy Indian Township Reservation, Maine) is one of the foremost Passamaquoddy craftspeople of his generation. “

  • From a Garden in the Antipodes

    Evelyn Hayes, the pseudonym of Mary Ursula Bethell, published a book of poems about her love of plants and gardens in 1929. These poems cemented the reputation of this New Zealand poet, who had an unusual and somewhat unorthodox life. In the verses she describes the life of gardens, those who inhabit them (including a…

  • Reminiscence and memory

    This week I am in Pōneke Wellington where Festival for the Future, an event to bring young people together, is taking place. While the group I am with is at the Festival I am researching in the National Library for a project to do with oral histories on the Coast. The Library is home to…