My home away from home, James, Sue, Cam and Ben were night sky navigators of the southern hemisphere the first evening I arrived.  They assisted and planned and explained and fed.  During our time together the evening table was always filled with delicious food from their farm, but more importantly most days and nights family and guests graced the table with conversation, cultural comparisons and games.

The all important questions from the boys Ben and Cam sparked new ideas, and the everpresent grace of James and Sue reformed the concept of home for me. Always ready to help with process or fastening a corner, the Truebridge family are my collaborators. My most heartfelt thanks.

As individual artists we need to develop our support team. Our business partners that give feedback, encourage when needed in more ways than artistically. Caroline Robinson an artist from New Zealand who builds large outdoor sculpture and urban planning instantly became a part of my inspirational team. Our connection through sense of place helped ground me in this simultaneously familiar and foreign land. Please visit her website and follow her wonderful heart centered work. http://www.carolinerobinson.co.nz/

Cutting bamboo

James Truebridge and Sue Yerex helping with construction

Moving to its site

Literature plays important role in my work. You never know what you are going to read that will spark and subliminally feed an idea.  Brendan's Voyage by Tim Severin is a book I read before travelling to New Zealand that has nothing to do with sheep or art. The author researched ancient materials and built a boat out of flexible, strong wood and hide covered in lanolin which he then sails following the charted course of the 6th century monk Saint Brendan the navigator from Ireland to find the new world.  In this modern day reenactment the sailors rode in the boat like being in the belly of a beast, the flexibility and movement of the hide providing a malleable structure to ride out a storm that would have bashed in any rigid form.  This became a constant vision in the back of my head while I wove Tika Whare. The structure needed to be both flexible and strong enough to ride out the wind waves that blew out of the south and rolled over the contours of the land.  I needed to see the house breathe, to come alive as the wool responded to and exaggerated the flow of the wind. Tika Whare is a form of a land boat that I could live in.

Raising the roof

Getting the roof settled right with Roger

Every morning I was greeted by familiar calls of thousands of sheep that surrounded me while I worked in the paddocks contrasting with foreign (to me) New Zealand bird songs of the morning and the disorienting Southern Hemisphere night sky the evening before. Perhaps, in this foreign land I needed to build a home, a sanctuary that feels familiar. Or perhaps, with both children now gone off to college, I am revisiting the ephemeral concept of home/house/dwelling. The wool sanctuary I had created, will not last forever, the winds of the changing season will have their way with the flexible netting reminding me of the fragility of the idea of home.

taken while sitting inside

The formal structure of Tika Whare speaks of the colonizing of native New Zealand Maori who once lived on the land that I worked on. I started to notice patterns in Maori designs on weavings and paintings that mimicked the light reaching through the lacy leaves of nearby native bush (forest). This was replicated in the patterned effect of the sun coming through the roof and sides of the wool house. 

Dawn

The roof is almost done and we will be raising it tomorrow. The netting sings to me as the wind blows through it, and the wool moves like a breathing animal. This home is alive.

Here is the wool bale they set aside for me.

The form I have chosen is a little woolen home that sits up on an exposed knoll overlooking the magnificent Lake Taupo and with views of the surrounding volcanoes. The sky is big here, and the land vast.

Meet my neighbors!

My first few days here have been about shaking hands with the environment and sussing out materials and design.

And some images from the work at Double Edge Theatre interns.  Look for the hand in the shadow work.

And a warm welcome to my enthusiatic intern Daniel from Hampshire College who works with me in the Amherst studio!

Walling In from Nancy Milliken on Vimeo.

This video is a documentation of a public outdoor installation by Nancy Winship Milliken of a wool pasture fence surrounding sheep. This sensory oriented installation firmly roots the viewer with a sense of place. It intersects the convergence of man, nature the environment and art