Navigating Space

I use this title to illustrate what I am thinking about and artistically challenging recently. Being so far from home in a land that is vastly different from my own, I still have been strangely uncomfortable and I don’t know why. I find myself reading a lot working on art or nothing at all just sitting and thinking. I have my spots around the Wellington area that I go to just to think and meditate for hours on end. The amount of artistic freedom I have here in NZ is fabulous, but can be partially paralyzing. I have racked my brain for new inspirations, or cool new design ideas to work on, but I have been getting nothing. I like living in new possibility, I hunger for context and thrive from discovery. This notion keeps me moving in a forward direction. Now, however, whether by divine intervention or something else I appear to be frozen in my footsteps. For example, in Maori Art: I feel bound by rules, yet free to explore. Constricted by tradition yet able to offer my interpretations. When I, a Pakaha (white person), create I feel as if I am in a no mans land surrounded by cultural booby traps.  This void I feel is uncomfortable. In each creative turn I take I feel as if a traditional land mine is about to explode underneath my very feet, resulting in a negative vibe towards me and more so members of my own country. This unintentional ignorance of the lines of Maori Art tradition keeps my mind and body from finding its place.

             It seems, maybe, that I need to stop mindlessly working and pull my head out of the canvass to look up and observe what is around me. That is what I am doing and what I have found is that, unlike Wheaton, student life is raw especially in the art students. It’s an extreme blessing and a curse to be an artist. We see, feel and understand the world in a very intimate way. This is why I think artists like Van Gogh, Dali, and Goya went nuts. They saw the world in a very special and intense way that they went insane and created out of the only way they knew how to communicate--namely paint. They were artistic geniuses but crazy people. I am not going crazy, just to reassure my parents, but I resonate with how art can attach you to the world in an extremely intimate and yet sometimes dangerously poisonous way. I see Christ as my lifeline that grounds me in my every thought and action. However, the rawness of the students who attend art school is intense. I find sometimes I am not in control, just tumbling endlessly through the routines unable to break free. Art school itself is awesome but the student shows and art that the students produce is VERY raw and “angsty”. Religion itself seems fundamentally unwelcome especially in an artistic form. That is what I find hard, Christ is so important to my art, and if that is unwelcome it leaves me with relatively nothing to grip onto. This has forced me to think of how I can represent Christ in my work more creatively. It is a humbling thing to work in an extremely artistic space. We live, eat, and breathe art. I absolutely love it….and yet sometimes I feel there is much more to creation and living than just painting. So it justifies the effort and experience in leaving the comforts of my studio to live in the world. I find it hard to communicate to you all sometimes because it feels as though I need to prove myself in front of you and have something to show for myself. In fact, the things I have to show are strangely not in visual format. I am yet gaining a basis for my work, broadening my field and experience, and figuring out what inspires me. This is what I got:

• ·      I am fundamentally driven by the unique gift of living in the presence of other human beings. We are so special, and so blessed. Geez. I just finished watching Gravity (great movie) and it really nails home the blessing it is to live with others so that the weight or gravity of loneliness does not crush us completely.

• ·      I am inspired by movement. We are, in fact, made to run. Anatomically, we are beings not built to sit, stand in one place, or even walk. We are made to run….. Our bodies are anatomically built to run! How cool is that! So it seems like a just work to highlight our ability to move ourselves and others, physically, mentally, spiritually, etc. in artistic form. What does this look like?

• ·      At the present moment I am disgusted and uniquely attracted to the concept of liminality. I was discussing my concerns, discomforts, and fears of being apart from everything I know with my parents and they lead me to the word “liminality”. The word literally means threshold. Author and Franciscan friar, Richard Rohr writes, “A liminal space, the place of transition, waiting, and not knowing is…a unique spiritual position where human beings hate to be but where the biblical God is always leading them. It is when you have left the tried and true, but have not yet been able to replace it with anything else. It is when you are finally out of the way. It is when you are between your old comfort zone and any possible new answer. If you are not trained in how to hold anxiety, how to live with ambiguity, how to entrust and wait, you will run…anything to flee this terrible cloud of unknowing. (This is all thanks to my parents for leading me onto this topic because it perfectly describes what I am going though with my final year at Wheaton, Senior Show, financially and the questions that lie in the future. What does this look like?

• ·      I am interested but not too knowledgeable of the concepts of balance, place, connection and orientation. These are things you can’t learn or understand from a textbook but rather experience only. What is our place in the world? Why, do we do the things we do? By the things I do, how am I influencing others? What does this look like in artistic form? It’s the job of the artist to notice things that normally go unnoticed.

• ·      Of course this all comes from the Creator himself, who is the light of the world and heart of my work. I would be nothing without Him.

 I am sorry for going on and on about these things. I hope some of you understand this, if not don’t worry, its me just trying to process some things in writing. 

Here are some pictures for you all, for fun:

Cool Swing Lucian and I found:

At the Sunday Market

Hobbit Day Out

The Men Go South

Hi friends,

Its been a while since my last post due to my two week mid-semester break. My friend Lucian and I traveled down to the South Island. We visited several big cities and smaller towns. Let see, to start of the break on the 25^th we left to attend an All Blacks game vs. Australia! (All Blacks won). It was an incredible atmosphere, full of people in black clothing chanting for the All Blacks. Seeing the Haka live was insane! The next morning we left to catch the Interislander Ferry across to the South Island. It was a three-hour trip across the bay and we could not have caught it on a more beautiful day. The sun was shining; the ocean was calm and clear, and best of all it was hot out for the first time in a long time. It’s just turning into spring here in NZ. Once we arrived in Picton, we immediately took a bus down to Christchurch where we stayed at one of my flat mates houses for the night. We were well looked after, had a great meal and a good nights rest. Then early the next morning we caught another 8 hour bus to Queenstown. The scenery as we passed was crazy. We made several stops along the way. Lake Tekapo, Lake Pukaki, Mt. Cook were absolutely stunning. God blessed us with perfect weather throughout the trip. We stayed in Queenstown for seven days. Queenstown is your typical ski-town of NZ it actually reminded me a lot of Vail. Snowboarders and skiers would come back into town at night and walk about as the sun set over Lake Wakatipu and the stunning Remarkables Mtns. just on the other end of the lake. During the seven days we wandered around town, ate world famous Fergburger twice (3^th best burger joint in the world), took the gondola up the mountain and took some pictures, Luged down the mountain, traveled to Wanaka for a night and visited Puzzling world and Kayaking in the lake, and last but not least, visited Milford Sound. I honestly think that Milford sound, whether in good weather or not, is possibly one of the most beautiful places on earth. The drive took 5 hours to get there, but certainly was not boring. We would be travelling down massive valleys carved out by a prehistoric glacier long gone. As we drove to our left and our right were massive and very steep mountains sticking up like razor sharp teeth into the clouds above. You could not see the top due to cloud cover, but what was more amazing was that as we drove gigantic waterfalls were pouring out of what seemed to be the clouds but actually the tip tops of the covered mountainside. It was truly the most realistic picture I have for Rivendell if it were real. At the end of the bus ride my neck hurt from looking up so much and we had not even gone to the cruse in the fjord yet. It was also stunning being out on the water next to all the waterfalls, and massive mtns. …..What a day. When we got back we had a couple more days to hike and wander about town. Then we left on the 31^st of Aug. to visit Dunedin. We visited the Cadbury chocolate factory and several old cathedrals around town. I ate so much chocolate I got a little sick hahaha. But after one full day we flew back to Wellington.

Here is our route:

A. Wellington, B. Picton, C. Christchurch, D- F- H. Queenstown (3 times left and returned), E. Wanaka, G. Milford Sound,   I. Dunedin

            I think we did it right. We took busses down and saw NZ for what it was, and flew back up to rest and relax back in our flats for a couple more days before school. I can now say that I have spent more than a week just backpacking around NZ. It was absolutely awesome. God is good.

            School starts today, so pray that I finish my second part of the year strong. I really miss all of you and miss being home with familiar people and close friends. It’s weird that Wheaton has started and I am not there. I am loving it here but am certainly excited to finish Wheaton with all my good friends.

Robs

Here are some pictures from the trip:

we were 7 rows up!!! 

Interislander Trip across the bay

Kaikoura

Twizel

Lake Pukaki 

On our way to Milford Sound

Milford Sound Mitre Peak

Queenstown and the Remarkables 

Dunedin Cathedral 

            

Clash of the ARTs

Hey everyone! Sorry for the delayed blog post. I try to post once every week or so, but recently school has been very busy. I have just completed mid-term week and had a crap ton of hand-ins to do. Art and Industrial Design School is very challenging, especially around mid-term week because the level at which your professors want you to work and present in class is really high. However, most students have been slacking off on things because of the high bar. It has been interesting to see the difference between the type of students that attend an Art School and me, who comes from a Liberal Arts School. For example, I had a 15 min. group presentation this past week on the chemical, mechanical, and design properties of Nylon fabric. I, however, got the short end of the stick and got stuck with some pretty lazy students. Two of the members are legitimately, the Crab and Goyle (Harry Potter reference) of NZ. They bumble around making jokes and doing 0 work. This one particular student had a test after our presentation in which he had not gone to one lecture or tutorial for, for the entire semester. We had two weeks to present and when the day came to compile all our work on a PowerPoint they had 10 lines each, copy-pasted information from Wikipedia. It was frustrating to work with. Not only that, but when we had to present they “forgot” their written notes and, during the presentation fumbled around in their backpacks for several minutes and then proceeded to read the PowerPoint word for word….. Sorry, just thinking about it irritates me.

            But this got me thinking about the differences between our different styles of education. While it is true that not every student is like that here at Massey, the philosophy behind learning is vastly different. Here at art school the techniques and craftsmanship of each individual student, when they work, is far better than I can do. But it is only surface level. When you get behind that, the depth of the research and inspiration is lacking. There is nothing, it seems, that is supporting their work other than raw passion. While the world finds this inspiring, I find it somewhat shallow. I believe that work, whether art or not should have the same level of intensity and passion to it. So when I study astronomy, health, Bible, or philosophy, I believe that the engrained disciplines within these fields should feed my passion for art theory and making. So, I have found that Liberal Arts education vastly more valuable than an education solely in the fine arts. Technical strength will come in due time after much practice, the philosophy behind it is, as I have experienced, much more valuable and rare to find. The lecturers as well, seem different. Here they seem to be artists who teach just to make ends meet, whereas at Wheaton the Art professors seem to find a passion and enjoyment for teaching us. So while, they might be artists to they are equally good at teaching us and communicating critical things for us in life and in art.

 Yet, the things I have been exposed to here have been invaluable. The expectation to dream big and work hard is supported by many state of the art facilities (lazer cutters, wood burners, Styrofoam cutters, welding machines, etc.). I can say now that I have experienced an art school format of education. If you enter into an art school with the right mindset, you will go places.

But now, I am all done and ready to start my 2-week mid-semester break. Tonight is the big clash of the rugby titans All Blacks vs. Australia and I am super excited to be a part of it. Then in the following weeks I will be traveling up and down the South Island. I’ll keep you posted with many pictures to come!

Here is a painting I have done for my Maori Art and Design class. It is a representation on the Maori creation story. It depicts the sorrow that was described from the overturning and separation of Papa-tu-a-Nuku (mother earth) and Rangi (Father Sky). The x's represent Albatross Tears in Maori, and the Koru swirls represent the sinews that were cut that once bound them together.....parallels to the Fall of Man...I think so.

A Visit by Trolls

Well its been a while since my last post…sorry bout that, I was captured by Trolls plz...

 Don't worry....I escaped thanks to some dude named Gandalf.....Long grey beard, pointy hat ya thats him

Things here have been absolutely amazing! I am just getting into the routine of classes and learning tons about various new things in the design world. The weather is fantastic and I am meeting new and cool people from here in NZ and from across the world. Lets see, how should I describe the past few weeks…..? Ok lets go through some highlights:

• ·      Tour through the wine vineyards in the rolling green hills of Martinborough
• ·      Learned how to make massive vinyl cut stickers using a professional vinyl cutter!
• ·      Watching the Super Rugby Final with the Van Heldens (NZ team won!!!)
• ·      Planned the South Island trip with Lucian to visit Queenstown, Dunedin (#chocolateforlyfe), Christchurch, Picton and some other places
• ·      Andy Warhol exhibit at Te Papa (my Screen Test)
• ·      Awaiting All Blacks game vs. Australia!
• ·      Did the Massey University Polar Plunge
• ·      Visited Weta Cave and toured through the workshop!!!!

Funny story about that last one, some international students were guided tour through the Weta Workshop facilities which only just begun this year due to its 20^th anniversary since the NZ company's inception. While we were there we saw cast molds, carvings, metal works and props for movies of the past and movies yet to come. Sorry, I have no pictures because we were not allowed to take any in the workshop. But, I can do my best to describe it. At first, walking in, one would not think that all the magic from the Lord of the Rings and other movies was done there. It is a series of smaller shops filled with people hard at work carving, welding, sanding and computing wicked magic graphics on their computers.   Their desks were littered with remnants of face molds, metal scraps, plaster dust, cereal bowls and small models from the Lord of the Rings, Avatar, District 9, the Hobbit, Elysium and new upcoming movies. It was a loud and creative atmosphere. I can’t even believe we were allowed back there, it just seemed like we got in the way. I felt like I was part of the Weta team on a normal day. At one point, when the tour guide was talking the co-founder of Weta and creative director for the Lord of the Rings Richard Taylor walks out a door right next to me unnoticed by everyone but me and two others. He was working on a new film and was checking up on some artists work around us. He then stopped and greeted me. I melted right there on the spot. He was super friendly. After a little while he resumed his work. It was unbelievable that I was able to meet with a five time oscar winning artist. For all those who haven’t already figured out…I am a major Lord of the Rings geek. I tweek out at the smallest Lord of the Rings things. Gosh…I would clean toilets for 2 years just to be able to work there. Definite highlight.

            Other than that, things are going great. Just finished the Polar Plunge fire and ice challenge with Massey. This is where you must eat a piece of a ghost pepper and then jump off the dock (15ft) into the freezing mid-winter Wellington bay. The combination of the fire in my mouth and the ice in my veins was absolutely unbearable…but terribly fun. In my free time, and when the weather is great, I enjoy going for runs and walks up Mt. Victoria. Pictures below:

      Thank goodness none of these punks are around when I am enjoying the scenery. 

Lastly, Lucian and I just bought tickets for our South Island visit. We are planning to ferry across to the South Island to a place called Picton then immediately busing to Christchurch to stay for a night at one of my flatmates houses. Then leaving the next morning for Queenstown for 7 days to visit Milford Sound. Then lastly we will head over to Dunedin and eat Cadbury till our bellies burst at the chocolate factory. Then fly back to Wellington to finish the semester. Until next time. Miss you all! I wish to give a great thanks to my parents, grandparents, extended family and my friends for all your support and prayers. God is good.

Taking a Stand

       
 I am now about 4 weeks in and about half way to getting completely settled in. My mind is still trying to catch up with the foreign school system and the challenging school topics. I have never taken an industrial design class before and it is proving to be quite challenging....but well worth the time. The other classes are great. The Maori class is super interesting. I am learning several things right now. We are learning about the traditional creation story of the Maori people and how it is portrayed in Kowhaiwhai, Whakairo, and Tukutuku. (painting, carving and weaving). Second, we are learning the structural properties of the Marae (Maori meeting house). It is fascinating to learn that the actual structure of the Marae house is made to embody the shape of the Iwi Waka (traditional tribal canoe) flipped over so that all who enter are in a safe place away from the tides of life. The Marae also is constructed to embody the old ancestors specifically named Whare Whakairo. With the building possessing the koruru (head), Mataphihi (eyes), Whakawae (Mouth), Maihi (arms), Amo (legs), Raparapa (hands) , Tuhuhu (backbone), Heke (ribs), and Pou Tokomanawa (heart), all who enter into the house are symbolically entering the bosom of the living ancestor herself=sacred space. Standing at the foot of an actual Marae now knowing this stuff is humbling to say the least. It's a little like the scene in Beasts of the Southern Wild. I stand much like the little girl staring into the face of something much larger than I.

This picture not only summarizes my thoughts about the Marae, but of NZ in general. The country has a massive and evident spirit here. It shakes the mountains, whips through the trees, and comes to rest in my heart. I stand in the face of something much larger than I.... I see God here.

             
          This past week has been great, I have grown closer to my flatmates Todd, Brittany, Amanda and Brendan. They are pretty funny people to hang around, in fact we just finished an ice cream eating challenge where we had to fill up a roof gutter full of ice cream and eat away. It was fun. It was free.....I feel sick. But hey, its over and whenever food is free, I am there.
             I am eating ok on my own. The peanut butter and jelly sandwich is proving to be a dear friend of mine. But recently I have been learning a few Indian style delicacies from my flatmates. All is well.
            I frequently go for walks up to Mt. Victoria. It is a place away from the city. It is a forest full of trees like I have never seen before. Here are some pics that I took:

Here is the face of the Marae house (note: in the mind of the Maori person you are looking at the face of the Maori ancestor)

Interior (note: ancestor insides, ribs, backbone, and heart of the tribe visible)

6.5 Earthquake Shakes Wellington

 So there have been 3 large earthquakes in the past three days. I have never really been confronted with the idea of being in a swaying building, 7 stories up in a 6.5 magnitude earthquake. During the most recent quake, which lasted about 1 minute, my flat mates and I had to take shelter in our doorways. Things were rattling around the dishes were clattering in the kitchen and then eventually we heard the alarm to evacuate the building. The elevator was broken and we had to proceed down the stairs. After a thorough check through of the building, we were cleared to come in and return to our rooms yet several people, mostly witnesses from the massive Christchurch quake 2 years ago, were crying and refused to enter the building at night.

It’s a strange feeling being in an earthquake, especially 7 floors up. At first, there is not a whole lot of noise things just begin to shake. Then immediately after the small shock, things get more violent you can hear the pipes begin to creek and the walls moan under the straining. Then it gets quite strong, plates begin to rattle around and pans bash into each other. If you could look out the window the ground looks like it’s vibrating. If you try to walk it feels like trying to walk on jello. Then it dies down, the building sways and all goes quite like nothing ever happened. Its surreal almost to the extent of having a violent dream. The only thing to see is the cracks in the walls that emerge from the shaking and the splits in the road.

We filled up some emergency water containers and are prepared for anything. Everything is fine, and the place I am staying in is absolutely safe up until a magnitude 7.5, so family…. don’t be concerned, all is well. All I am trying to communicate is, wow….I just was in a 6.5-6.8 earthquake. Here is the link to hear about it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWXeysp9t5Y. Secondly, here is a website that we have been following to get the info of the quakes we have felt. http://www.geonet.org.nz/quakes/felt

School is cancelled today for earthquake checks, which is interesting coming from schools cancelled for snow days. It is quite an interesting time right now.

 

The City Bay

Outside my room

Regardless, things are going well at school. I am being super challenged in most of my classes. I am learning lots. My favorite thing I am learning about now is some Maori contemporary artists. Look on the link on the blog entitled Massey Art, there are photos available of some pretty cool people we are learning about. …… hold on, another small quake is happening right now…….reports say 5.4, 15 km deep between the two islands. So far there have been 64 minor quakes since midnight last night. They are very creepy to be in. More to come later.