Adventures In New Zealand - Week #6

Hello! This week has been exciting and full of pottery but not as full-on as the weeks prior.

We even had a great time eating fush~n~chups at Long Bay with a great potter and her wonderful partner and good old buddy Mat and Caitlin.   We ate a lot of chips and their cute little dog Rigley came with us as well and Nate the Blacksmith. We ate and watched the sunset.

And we also spent a day and a bit making Barry a nice little treat: Bricks.

BIG, lots of grog, terra-cotta, gutsy, did I mention BIG.  Wow, these are BIG, and that is what Barry wanted.  He loves his bricks and he is hoping to fill and fire the brick kiln during this coming winter.  It takes five or six days to fire and it is a BEAST!  Ive rented rooms smaller than this kiln.

Maya is a brick making beast.  The pug mill / extruding device that is usually used when making bricks is down.  So these bricks were made by mixing the clay with our feet, then wedged into a big ball, oiled down with used veggie oil, stomped into a brick mold made from 2/4 nailed together, and then tapped out of the mold, and placed on the drying rack to be stamped with a DCR, dried, and then later placed into the kiln.

This made us exhausted and extremely hungry but luckily that night there was a ten dollar all you can eat Steamed Mussels event at the Mussel Kitchen in Coromandel.  It was freaking awesome!!!  Nate reckons he ate sixty, Im not going to dispute that.  Maya ate about ten, I ate a lot and had a Lion Red.  And the best part was my cousin and his wife came and joined in the gluttony!  This was a bit of a big deal because the restaurant is operated by the same people who farm the mussels in area.  So Imagine those super fancy NZ mussels that make their way all across the globe; but they were harvested that day; and you can eat as many as you can; AND ten bucks won't buy 2 beers at the pub and this was a deal of a lifetime.

No photos were taken but it was like one of those weird scenes in a nature documentary where everything is in slow motion and set to classical music, but its just a bunch of carnage and lip smacking.

And the next morning was Saturday so of course we all cooked up another EPIC BREAKFAST !!!

And then went out to New Chums Beach, which is a big BEAUTIFUL beach on the west coast of the peninsula.

And as promised I am now going to show you all around the D.C.R. so you can see what the other artists are making.

First there is Paul Larimer.  One of the very few career potters of his generation and one fine fellow to have the patience to handle all of our questions and poking around.  He is a bit illusive but here is a nice shot of his good side.

I will ask him to pose for a photo later.

But look at these mad skills!  This dude is an all natural pottery killer!

He can usually be found in Okinawa Japan where he has been potting for the last forty years, and also on the web at: paul-lorimer.com.

Barry has been making "DOGS" as well but I didn't take any photos of them.  I did take some pictures of a bunch of his pots that are all glazed up and ready for a firing.

Next I want to show you Nate the Blacksmiths masterpiece.  It is a freaking chandler!  How cool is that!?!  This think is going to be outfitted with so many led lights, its going to be amazing.

Here is also a super fantastic personalized forged steel bottle opener that he makes.

These things are the raddist.

Auntie Bev Thatcher has also been hard at it with this stunning series of New Zealand native bird tiles.  I swear she makes close to a hundred and twenty of these a day.  They are fantastic and quirky and wonderful !!!

And we are now off like a herd of turtles into this great country to spread cheer, fear, and mayhem.

We might have even landed a nice mural job in Cambridge.

And if you see this shining star on the side of the road please pick her up but don't leave me behind, Im probably using the bush-loo.

Adventures in New Zealand - Week# 3,4,5

We have been very busy as we have not been making our weekly posts.  But in our lack of updates we have been rich in the potting. Our caravan with a lean to has been a very nice studio.  And with a bit of cleaning the caravan might be very useful as well but we have only been using it for pots and sculptures waiting to be fired.

Coromandel is rich in different clays and it is very interesting working in an experimental environment designed to utilize and re-use whatever possible.  The Driving Creek Railway is a giant work of Kiwi ingenuity orchestrated by Barry Brickell.

We have been having a great time here with Nate the Blacksmith and Paul Lorimer Kiwi potter that has spent the last forty years working in Okinawa.  These two guys make some very nice work and are keeping old man Barry Brickell  hard at work to keep up with them (us too).

And of course there are the hobbit eating sheep.

It is very tricky trying to run a country with nasty little Hobbitses running around so sheep like these are posted on every hill side to make sure to take care of those nasty little buggers.

So other than eating GIANT breakfasts (once a week).  And going to the beach

We have actually been doing a good amount of pottery.  Here are the progress shots and please don't tell Barry that we have been making a portrait of him.

Maya has taken up pig hunting.  Here she is with her first kill, not bad eh?  

Actually up the 309 Road there are some semi-wild pigs that a farmer has taken to keeping which will come out to you looking for food.  This one settled for a tummy scratch but most of the others just wanted to go back in the shade.  On the same trip we went to see a waterfall, some Kauri trees, and a real grocery store.

And the real kicker of the week was the fact that the Driving Creek Railway Lawn Bowls team placed FOURTH !!! in the clubs tournament !!!  Lawn Bowls is an old English drinking game where both winning and loosing teams drink a fair bit because the price of drinks at the club house is pretty cheap.  They had complimentary sausages, chips (thick cut french fries), and butters slices of bread.

It was most awesome!

Tomorrow is going to be another exciting day.  We just finished firing our first test kiln and we will see how our glazes turned out.  Thanks to Paul we have now been instructed in the ways of making ash glazes by mixing ash and anything … anything … yup, if it can be crushed up … anything.

And Maya has been working on her beard.

Thats actually Nate the Blacksmith!

We promise to make another post soon to show you; how the glazes turned out, works in progress by Paul Lorimer, and Nate the Blacksmith!!!

See you all soon!

Adventures in New Zealand – Week #2

Hello Everyone!!!  Thank you for coming back for more New Zealand adventures.  This is the two and a half week mark in our incredible journey.  We last left you with a couple more days in Auckland with my super Aunt and all my family and cousins.

Maya and I took the bus and had another city day looking for a couple of things that we needed at the Army Surplus Store!  I found the most awesome French military day pack and a pair of Kiwi Jungle Boots, and Maya found a sweater and a nifty grenade pouch… what do you put in a grenade pouch?  I'll let you know later.  These were all found at the most awesome army surplus store on K. Road.  Also on K. Road there is this great vegan restaurant that does Indian style but Harikrishna style with no onion or garlic.  Fantastic!!! but it was a bit strange to have a meal without garlic. We then met up with the cousins and their significant others for some friday drinks.  And we even got to watch the Harikrishna parade go past under the pubs balcony.

We had one more relaxing day of walking about the beach with my Aunt and we even walked by a lake and saw some black swans.

And then it we are off to Coromandel on the morning ferry across to the Coromandel Peninsula!!!  Sadly we did not see any little blue penguins, they are so cute and often illusive.  The ferry ride is really super and you go past all these islands and if your lucky you can see dolphins and the cute little penguins (actually the smallest in the WORLD!), and even the possibility of seeing one of the local families of whales.  But alas, these are all illusive and we saw none of them.  We saw sheep.  I even missed the lighthouse in the harbor but luckily Maya took a picture of it.

It is a nice two hour trip that starts in down town Auckland and finishes in one of my favorite home towns COROMANDEL!!!  I've been gone for five or six years and lo and behold it hasn't changed much.  The same nice ladies work at the local Four-Square.  The neighbor still has goats.  The Driving Creek Railway has only changed in that there are more big sculptures kicking around the place but all the folks that live and or work here have not changed at all.  No one has even aged at all.  It is as if Barry Brickell has created a time warp capsule powered by a railway.

So here we are at the D.C.R. (Driving Creek Railway) with Barry (boy) Brickell, Nate a blacksmith and his partner Louise, and Paul a potter from Okinawa.  So we arrived and cleaned up our hut and working area, did a little clay and BAM!!! IT IS MAYA'S BIRTHDAY !!!  So we had a HUGE BBQ/Potluck and there was a massive spread of dishes and everyone came and we laughed, ate, and laughed.  Barry was in good form and there was more laughing!!!  There was beers, wine, daisy chains, food, and laughs!

And Ms. Vicky S. wasn't aware that it was anyones birthday but with her magic powers of foresight she made the most super pear cake I have ever ate.  Maya got to cut the cake and we all sang happy birthday.

This has been a great start to a great month. It feels great to be back and it is almost as if I haven't left.  I have been so lucky and continue to be lucky.  Thank you everyone for helping us get this far and be here.

Keep posted and keep on checking up on us.

Love,

Maya & Chris