Inspired by Norberto Roldan’s art at the Crosscurrents Exhibition at the Togonon Gallery, New Pacific Studio and Pilipino Youth Coalition present a parallel exhibition that centers on your stories from Vallejo.
For more information, contact details and times, please refer to this flyer.

In February 2010 Berkeley Art Center published a small book, in which six San Francisco Bay area visual artists —Amy Berk, Edith Hillinger, Brooke Holve, Anne Lamborn, Mary Curtis Ratcliff, and CCA Painting/Drawing professor Elizabeth Sher, who have all done residencies at NPS Mt Bruce at different times, talk about the value of their experiences. The book accompanied an exhibition the artists created about their experiences.

In this exhibition, they presented work in a variety of media, demonstrating the ways the experience shaped their individual practices, speaking to the nature of retreat, and the transformative potential of artist residencies, which provide a respite for artists to simply witness and create.

Their book, Process & Place: The Transformative Potential of Artist Residencies, Foreword by Suzanne Tan and NPS Director Kay Flavell, can be purchased for US $12 from www.berkeleyartcenter. org.

Letter from the Director

Dear Friends and Fellows of NPS:

Kia ora, greetings,

“http://www.artopportunitiesmonthly.com“>Art Opportunities Monthly, the
professionals trust it

The art opportunities list the professsionals trust and use. It weeds out the scams others publish. Get your share of the $8.19 million for artists and photographers. Art contests, grants, juried art competitions, fellowships, residencies, public art commissions, art awards, scholarships, teaching assistantships, calls for art, art deadlines, scholarships, art shows, photography contests, RFPs, RFQs, sculpture commissions, percent-for-art, slide registries, university art galleries, non-profit art galleries, or other artist opportunities and venues normally outside the commercial gallery system.

-Kay Flavell,

Director

Letter from the Director

Dear Friends and Fellows of NPS:

Kia ora, greetings,

2009 (our eighth here at Mt Bruce) has been another exciting and challenging year, as we have struggled to keep a presence on two Pacific shores and survive financial storms. Developments in the past month leave me cheered by strong local community support, and hopeful for a positive resolution by March 2010. We hope to be able to continue our New Zealand programs either year-round or from September-May annually. In Vallejo, after offering no residencies in 2008, we opened Pacific Writer’s Cottage as a resource for a solo writer from October. Residencies have been enjoyed there by Patrick Castrenze, Berkeley, and by the current writer in residence, Nicole van Schaijik, the Netherlands. Wishing you all a very happy festive season in north and south.
Kay

2008  The Year of a Book

In 2008, no newsletters appeared. Instead, NPS published a book – Living in Kaiparoro. Stories of a Tararua Community and its Anzac Memorial Bridge. (NZ $25 plus postage, available from NPS).

As a local history  (Kaiparoro Historic House Museum Publication #1) based largely on oral history, family photographs and other documents it tells the story of the vision and the building of NPS, then moves back in time to provide the history of the Burtons, other local families and memories of Kaiparoro schooldays.  The second half recounts the story of the building and recent restoration of the Anzac Memorial Bridge, and provides poignant memories of those commemorated on the bridge.  Viv Walker did a brilliant job with the design and layout, and Kyle Browne allowed us to use two pages from her exquisite artist’s book, To the River, as cover pages.  Our delighted thanks to them, as well as to all the Kaiparoro family members who provided us with their stories and images. We are pleased that NPS is able to contribute in this way to community memory-keeping and to help it flower in new forms.

The following 21 artists and writers did residencies in 2008: Suze van der Beek,Loko Süderdiek, Ellie Muecke, Susan Newbold, Mary Curtis Ratcliff, Elizabeth Sher, Patricia Bulitt, Keith St.Clair Butler,Sheilah Wilson, Zac Tomaszweski, Tina Rahui, Jessie Angwin, Rachel Wilson, David Roderick, Rachel Richardson, Rachel Gaudry, Leigh Anderton, Caroline Carruthers, Gea Casolaro, Holly Jackson, Janet Tracy. Holly Jackson continues to harvest harakeke from NPS for her weaving. Thank you, each of you, for bringing your vision, energy and creativity to NPS. I look forward to including updates from you in future newsletters.

2009

18 residencies have taken place this year: Tim Guthrie, Marina Prüfer, Anne Finger, Lorenzo Bühne, Wild Geese band (Anzac Bridge Fellows- Neil Frances, Brendan Connor, Mike Dew, Paul Turner) Stephen Mulqueen,  Jerome Pouwels,  Catherine Chauvin, Lynley Edmeades,  Ines Hernandez-Avila,  Kari-Elise Mobeck, Johannes Sigurjonsson, Laura Jan Shore, Gerda Geys, and arriving tomorrow, Samira de Smedt.

Our grateful thanks to our donors, including:

Susan Newbold, Jeanette Brunton and Robin Lane, Chris Peterson,  Gareth Winter and the Winter whanau, Fifi Colston, Edith Hillinger, and Margery and Gary Blackman. This year we were delighted to be able to offer a Jeanette and Robin Fellowship (Stephen Mulqueen) and a Lavinia Fellowship (Lynley Edmeades). We are happy to announce they will also be available in 2010.

2009 has also seen the launch of the Friends of Mauriceville Inc to preserve cultural heritage in the area, and planning of an arts and history Whispering Roads project with four historic trails through the former 70 Mile Bush between Wellington and Napier. Launch day will be at the Scandinavian celebration in Norsewood in February 2011.

 

NPS Mt Bruce: Winter Artists in Residence

J. Pouwels, whose life journey started in Southland, was artist in residence and acting director in June-July.  He writes:

Like most of my artist friends here in Northern California I work hard to support my desire to make art. There never seems to be enough time in a day, so I was thrilled when I was awarded an artist residency at New Pacific Studio in Mount Bruce. I relished the opportunity to spend two uninterrupted months concentrating on my studio work in the pastoral landscape that surrounded the residency.

However what surprised me most about my stay in the Wairarapa region were the solid bonds of friendship I made with the folks I got to know while I was there.  The art experience was fantastic but the affinity I felt with the local people due to their broad support for me and my labors, and their warmth and friendliness, allowed me to reconnect with New Zealand in a way I had not thought possible. I owe them all, and there are too many to name here, a deep debt of gratitude.   jpouwels@jpouwels.com

J. Pouwels, Electric Fences 2009  (sent separately)

Catherine Chauvin, another winter resident, sends these pages from a notebook:

sheep sledges, slumps

forgetting why you came here

sheep in the middle of the road in the dark

jumping fences, the morning cow parade

watching loggers, seeing meteor showers from the middle of SH 2

sheep tracks in your mind as a metaphor (thank you Lynley)

loud clock in the hall

chopping wood and fires with J

Resident pride and knowledge of what is in the valley

and awareness of how rare those things are in our world

well, how did I get here?

plastic clothes pins

Jude the angel

men in socks at the pub

tall poppies

Ros

kiwis that make me think there is a god

getting lost

a harlequin great dane in the back of a cobalt blue vw

line weight and spray painted sheep

and Bridget’s mischief

thank you NPS

Catherine Chauvin, Bee Boxes 2009  (sent separately)

Lynley Edmeades (Holder of Lavinia Fellowship in memory of Lavinia Winter, July-September 2009) writes:

10 September 2009

I have wiped the bench and taken my sheets off the bed, put my belongings in the car, and filled my water bottle for the journey back to Wellington. The sun is streaming in through the front door, and I have opened some windows to let in some spring air.

I have saved the best and most eloquent space for last – I ascend the stairs to the loft library to gather the pages that lay strewn around this comfortable desk, and capture the final moments here.

It has been, without a doubt, a delightful time here at New Pacific Studio. I have relished this space, the solitude, and the opportunity to let my days revolve around words. From a creative perspective, the experience has been quite life-affirming, I came here as a young woman in search of words, whispering my status as a young writer under my breath; I leave as a self-affirmed poet. The validation of this opportunity is substantially more valuable than I can articulate just now. Slowly I feel myself arriving at a place where I am comfortable in the world with this desire and passion for literature –all the parts are coming together in unison and finding a way to coexist.

The day marches on and the city calls me back – my mobile phone has been turned back on and I receive word from the bookshop confirming the schedule for our staff meeting tonight. I go with a swift and confident gait today, grateful that occasions such as this one are possible in our land.       < paperscratch@gmail.com>

Driving

Near Pahiatua

Over here, hills are like knuckles,

hands clamped to terra incognita,

in fear of letting go, should they

pull the roots from the lie

of the land. They are freckles across

their hands, woollen specks of tutored fauna.

White is splashed on a blanket of green,

irridescent in the rain of another anonymous

day. Here the paddocks are

full of daffodils, dancing in the wind

in time with nothing, except spring.

Lynley Edmeades  September 2009

NPS Mt Bruce: Spring Artists in Residence

Four artists completed residencies here in September- November 2009:  Ines Hernandez-Avila, Kari-Elise Mobeck, Johannes Sigurjonsson and Laura Jan Shore. Work by Ines, Kari-Elise and Johannes will feature in the next newsletter.

Laura Jan Shore came to NPS from the intense heat of Northern New South Wales, to work on a new poetry collection. Memories of NPS: “Delightful secret nooks and cosy corners to read and write, sunny garden spots when the weather was good – a warming fire when it was cold. Artist’s residencies are an invaluable gift and privilege. I feel deeply nourished as a poet – to be given this dedicated time and space for my work. I enjoyed the industrious mood that inspired creative expression.”

After Visiting Pukaha, NZ Wildlife Centre

for Breeding Threatened Species

And who will build

a protected habitat

for us? Select a likely breeding

pair placed in a wire cage and netted sky

and feed us simulated treats?

What species will take special care

to pump in the exact mix

of oxygen we need to breathe?

Who will dare to re-propagate

a species so unique,

recording in detail

our flawed attempts at mastery,

our annihilating tendencies?

The sign for curious visitors might read —

Marvel at these rare examples

of human kind (two of the 300 extant).

They are being kept with the recovered

remnants of the late planet once

known as Earth, rocketed

here for our amusement and research

into an experiment gone wrong.

Laura Jan Shore

Belgium-New Zealand Birds in North and South Project

In February 2007 Gerda Geys-Peeters from Mechelen in Belgium was touring New Zealand when she stopped to take a closer look at the Anzac Memorial Bridge. The army were cleaning and painting it at the time, and Kay and Gerda got into conversation. They agreed to link New Zealand and Belgian schoolchildren via a Birds in North and South project, in which children in both places would study their local birds.

In November 2009 Gerda arrived at NPS with 75 drawings and short essays on birds observed in the area of Mechelen. They were done by pupils of the GO Shil school, the largest primary school in the town, situated right in the heart of the city, next to a  beautiful Gothic church. Gerda displayed this work to Year 8 pupils taught by Mr. Matt Boucher at Eketahuna School, and she has gone back to Mechelen carrying drawings of New Zealand birds made by the Eketahuna class. Thank you, Mechelen and Eketahuna

students, for building this new bridge between our countries. Work will be on display at Pukaha on Anzac Day, 2010.

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