arts, culture, and lifestyle of dunedin and otago, in the south island, new zealand issue five: dec/15 - mar 2016

e d i n Maga z i n eDown

in

Dame gillian karawe whitehead jane woodham toitū museumJenna packer jordan mcinally glenfalloch gardens

Kirsten wenborn waikouaiti gardens vogel st kitchen

Welcome to Issue Five

Down In Edin Magazine

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In !" IssueLifestyle

Glenfalloch Gardens ~ PhotographsMeandering Through the Hidden Valley

Page 88

Kirsten Wenborn ~ Harmony With HorsesThe Power of a Gentle Touch

Page 104

Waikouaiti Gardens ~ Organics in OtagoPage 118

Vogel St Kitchen Heart and art from the kitchen

in Dunedin’s Warehouse PrecintPage 124

Arts and Culture

Dame Gillian Karawe Whitehead ~ A World of MusicPage 8

Jane Woodham ~ Twister ~ A new novel set in DunedinPage 22

Toitū Otago Settlers Musuem ~ Peter Read and ‘Life on the Edge’

Page 40

Jenna Packer ~ The Heart and Mind of Jenna PackerPage 54

Jordan McInally ~ Shooting for the StarsPage 76

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Acknowled$ment and !anks To

Penelope Todd

Claire Beynon

Daniel Buchanan

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A Note From % E&tor

21 ' December, 2015

!e Sol'ice " upon us, and so will Ch)'mas and 2016 be in a few days!

A hea* filled +ank y, to all who have cont)buted, pa*icipated, read and

-ared Do. In E&n Magazin/ We are well and truly into ,r second year

and deeply a0reciate % en+usia'ic response received from all ar,nd % world.

W"hing y, all whenever it " and wherever y, are, % best of all +ings -

heal+, abundance, ha0iness, peace!

Caroline Davies ~ E&tor for Do. In E&n Magazine

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015The view from Harwood ~ Full moon set over Otago Harbour

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015The view from Harwood

O n D a m e G i l l i a n K a r a w e W h i t e h e a d :“Her outstanding musical architecture is just one of the many qualities that make her one of our greatest living New Zealand composers... She has the ability to take a universal topic and bring it to us in a very personal way that moves and touches us deeply.” By Elizabeth Kerr, Music Commentator, former Chief Executive of Creative New Zealand.

Quote from inside cover: “Moon Tides & Shoreline:

Gillian Karawe Whitehead - A Life in Music” - A Biography by Noel Sanders

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World renowned for her moving compositions, Gillian’s brilliant career spans almost six decades. After graduating with Honours through the University of Auckland, Victoria University of Wellington, Sydney University and continuing studies thereafter, Gillian then spent fourteen years in Britain and Europe which established her international reputation.

Gillian returned to the southern hemisphere in 1981 to teach at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in Australia and was subsequently appointed Alternating Head of Composition. A prolific composer, during that fifteen year period at the Conservatorium, Gillian would take extended leave as much as possible to continue composing.

Reconnecting with her Māori roots in New Zealand during the mid 1990s, with intermittent visits to Sydney, regular travel

to many other countries, and prominent artist residencies throughout Aotearoa, Gillian found and bought her home on the shoreline in Harwood a few short years after her Mozart Fellowship in 1992 at the University of Otago. Gillian devotes herself entirely to composing.

Gillian has received multiple accolades and honours throughout her career. Amongst the recognition for her contributions to New Zealand and international contemporary classical art music, Gillian was awarded the Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2008 and granted the title ‘Dame’ in 2009.

Acclaimed as one of the most important composers in Australasia, Gillian’s works encompass operas, orchestral works, choral pieces, vocal and instrumental chamber compositions, solo works, collaborations with artists from all disciplines including taonga pūoro as well as works inspired from improvisations.

Along the shoreline from my previous home in Harwood on the Otago Peninsula and a short meander across tide pools and rippled sands during low tide, I would pass a classic Kiwi villa on my daily walks to and from the ever changing water’s edge in the spectacular harbour. There was something about the warm old villa set back from the narrow road dividing homes from the harbour’s brim that quietly caught my attention and stirred my imagination. I envisioned that whoever lived there must be interesting and that I would like to know them.

Many months after I had moved from the dynamic shoreline of Harwood I met Gillian at a mutual friend’s dinner party, but it wasn’t until this story that I discovered the century old and neatly kept bungalow I was so intrigued by is the home of New Zealand’s eminent contemporary art and classical composer, Dame Gillian Karawe Whitehead.

Dame Gillian Karawe WhiteheadA World of Music

Story and Photography by Caroline Davies

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I read omnivorously; we had many books in the house and Whangarei had (and has) a very good library.

Looking back, the things I remember (other than spending the holidays and weekends exploring our large garden and later the creeks, paddocks and hills beyond the railway line, away all day except for mealtimes) were all creative - writing stories, 'choreographing' ballet using flowers to block positions, dancing to the music on the old 78s we possessed, playing piano and violin. Later, I began writing short pieces, usually based on poems, and listening to a wide range of music on radio and LPs after we got a record player when I was 14.”

During her school years, Gillian played the violin, piano and sang in choirs - all beautifully. Reflecting societal norms of the time, she thought she would become a teacher.“Like many school leavers at the time, I said I was going to teach (the alternatives were nursing or secretarial work). I think if I wasn't a composer, I would have been some other kind of artist - not a performer - but a writer, a choreographer or been involved in film perhaps. Who knows?”

I n f l u e n c e s B e y o n d H o m e a n d F a m i l y

“There were four people who had a strong influence on me as a student. In my last year at school we had an inspirational French teacher, who galvanised our class, challenging us and forcing us to think outside the square (often enough in French) and glimpse worlds far beyond those of the conventional Whangarei schoolgirl.

I'll always remember the encouragement and enthusiasm of Ronald Tremain, at Auckland University, who gave us such an imaginative journey through the basics as young composers. The pianist Tessa Birnie showed me that it was possible for music to truly be a driving force, and through studying with Peter Maxwell Davies I developed the techniques I needed.”

A C r e a t i v e L i f e Music Dance Art Literature Culture

Gillian grew up in Whangarei enveloped and nurtured with nature, music, art and culture from the day she was born. “We moved to Whangarei from Auckland after the war when I was six. My parents were both musicians and music teachers. My mother was a good pianist, my father conducted choirs, such as the Waipu Choral Society, taught piano and violin and imported contemporary scores such as Boulez and Stockhausen as well as good editions of the classics. A number of my parents' friends in Whangarei were 'foreign' - from Holland, France, Britain, Denmark - and our house was full of books.

I grew up with the sounds of live music in my ears. In wartime Auckland, with my father serving in Egypt and Italy, my mother and I had a very peaceful existence together, and I would fall asleep every night with her playing the piano. In Whangarei I was often ill with asthma and bronchitis, and enjoyed being at home hearing my father's pupils, a number of whom were Maori, singing while I lay in bed reading.

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something of a technical nature or a change of genre, maybe something else - such as directed improvisation or working with taonga pūoro, for instance.”

Dr. Richard Nunns, renowned for his knowledge and playing of traditional Māori instruments, along with Hirini Melbourne and Brian Flintoff, is responsible for the revival of ngā taonga pūoro in contemporary New Zealand music. “I met Richard at a ‘Sing Aotearoa’ festival where I heard the voices of the taonga pūoro for the first time and, in the nineties, involved him in my opera Outrageous Fortune. After that he asked me to write a piece for him and Alexa Still to play at the Atlanta Flute Convention - that turned out to be Hineraukatauri. After that we worked together on many occasions.

A n c e s t o r a l I n f l u e n c e s T h e P e n i n s u l a B e c k o n s

Although Gillian Karawe Whitehead had grown up outside of an iwi tradition, she was always drawn to the culture.“After my father died, we found that his birth certificate was in the name of Hopa Ward Karawe, and, as a young man, he changed that name by deed poll to Ivan Whitehead, to be the same as his mother and siblings. His mother, we believe, must have left her second husband, and didn't want her youngest son to have contact with him. So she gave him the first name of his Māori grandfather and the Māori form of her maiden name, Callaway/Karawe - the two names were used interchangeably at that time.”

Besides the prestigious opportunity in Sydney, it was also family illness that pulled Gillian back to the southern hemisphere and in time, to the Otago Peninsula.“In the first instance, when I came back from Europe, it was partly because my father was diagnosed with cancer, and I realized that, even though I hadn't grown up within it, I missed the Māori aspects of the people here - the elements of the culture that must shape all New

C o m m u n i c a t i n g W i t h M u s i c T h e C r e a t i v e P r o c e s s

Gillian’s approach to composing has shifted considerably - the flexibility given in approach and style, I feel, are key contributors to the expansion of all artists creating new and fresh works over periods of time and keep most artists from stagnating. This may or may not include radical shifts in style and expression outwardly, but allowing the creative rivers inside of us to flow as they will, with new perspectives enabling us to grow and expand - that will give an artist an endless supply of inspiration.“I began writing intuitively, and then studied music at university (composition as a subject came late in the course). Like most young composers then, I was working in a non-tonal, serial manner; we all had to find our individual ways out of that world. For a long time, I used structures that spanned each piece, creating a framework that was then elaborated and decorated, then later, after a brush with cancer, I threw away those processes and my writing became much more intuitive again.

I think every seven or so years, some new element comes into focus, maybe

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015The View from Harwood

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015Low tide at Harwood ~ Otago Harbour

for over twenty years, although maybe for half that time I’ve been working elsewhere, and well over half the music I've written during those twenty years has been written in this house. But I don't know to what extent I'm influenced by the place, or whether my music would be the same if I lived elsewhere. I've only drawn consciously on the environment here in a couple of ways.

The pianist Stephen De Pledge asked me to contribute to a series of Landscape preludes, so I wrote a piece called Arapātiki, which is the old name of the sand flats outside my house. So I looked out the window and devised a series of chords that would always be restless and unsettled, to me at least suggesting the inexorable advance and retreat of the tides.

Often when I'm writing, the korimako are singing vociferously (and their song changes subtly from year to year as well as seasonally), and they've found their way into a few pieces, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. And in a couple of pieces I've drawn on haiku where the words refer to the peninsula.

Nothing I've written in 2014 or 15 refers to the peninsula at all. There was a piece for a string quartet, piano and oboe written for a performance in Prague, work on an opera whose premiere has been postponed and two pieces for China, one involving a transcription of taonga pūoro and one combining NZTrio with Sumatran rabab (a two string fiddle). But nothing remotely peninsula related, even though they were all written there.”

The question evoked another thought about contemporary New Zealand composers who create soundscapes that reflect the landscape around them.“If you're living in a city, you're maybe writing to keep the sound out ( or incorporating it); in a rural situation, you hear sound, and especially sounds of nature, from much further afield, and that can affect the way you hear and subsequently write. In Arapātiki, I devised a sequence of chords that could be continued indefinitely, which would always be restless, would never settle, but through tempo and dynamics could be moulded to suggest the inexorable ebb and flow of the tide.

Zealanders (except those whose ears and eyes are adamantly closed), whether they're aware of it or not.

Later, while I was on leave from teaching in Sydney, I was a Mozart Fellow for a time (University of Otago), and was increasingly drawn to the peninsula. I love the house where I live, close to the water, where I can look out as I work at the harbour, ever-changing as it ebbs and flows, with its bird life, the passing ships, and the sky, tranquil and dramatic by turn.”

I was curious if the often wild, edgy and beautiful environment experienced in Harwood influenced Gillian’s music in any particular way. I wasn’t sure if this is something that can really be defined, for artists have a rich tapestry of influences, conscious and unconscious inspirations they draw from. For me, the whole area evokes a feeling of spiritual influence and Māori overlay. The sound of the wind, the song of the local birds, the in and out breath of the ever changing tides and constant transformation of the clouds are powerful triggers.“I find it very hard to know what informs my writing. I've owned my house

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015The view from Harwood ~ A Flock of birds

“I really enjoy working with performers, but usually make any adjustments before the first performance, rarely after. Once it's performed, it's on it's own. Occasionally now, though, when I'm putting an older handwritten piece on the computer, I might make minor adjustments.”

Thoughts for students studying composition and music...“Every student is different, of course; some people thrive and some don't in an academic world. But the main things would be be to keep an open mind, listen and explore all sorts of sound worlds, experiment, try and keep a balance between compositional technique and content, and, when things don't go well, as inevitably sometimes they won't, be able to pick yourself up, laugh, and start again.”

A Pa t r o n o f T h e A r t sT h e Ca s e l b e r g Tr u s t

Gillian is also Patron for The Caselberg Trust. An organization that offers short and longer term residencies supporting writers, composers, visual and performing artists to work on their creative projects in an inspirational environment on the shores of the Otago Peninsula in Broad Bay.“I was lucky to be included in the first of the 'residencies' run by the Trust, when ten artists spent six days on the Breaksea Girl in the Dusky and Doubtful Sounds in Fiordland - which resulted in a flurry of paintings, drawings, poetry, compositions and collaborations. It was a very creative venture, and brought me into contact with a group of visionary people devoted to turning the Caselberg house in Broad Bay into an artist's residence. I was invited to become their patron the following year and am delighted to see how the Trust has developed from its relatively shaky beginnings into a flourishing entity with a wonderfully committed and energetic committee devoted to supporting and enhancing the arts in the region and nationally.”

When I was the Composer in Residence for the Auckland Philharmonia, I wrote ‘The Improbable Ordered Dance’ in 2000 for them. The title comes from a fascinating essay entitled ‘The Music of this Sphere’ in Dr. Lewis Thomas's ‘The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher’. Thomas believes that the urge to make music is as much a characteristic of biology as our other fundamental functions, and wonders what we might hear if we could experience the whole range of sound, most of which is inaudible to us, created by living things. He believes that ‘the rhythmic sounds might be a recapitulation of something else - an earliest memory, a score for the transformation of inanimate random matter in chaos into the improbable ordered dance of living forms’.

‘The Improbable Ordered Dance’ grows from a quiet beginning, introducing first a cor anglais melody, contained in a close range, then a wider-ranging cello melody. A section suggesting birdsong leads into a chorale, and these ideas evolve and develop around the central energetic dance-like section before the piece returns to silence.”

How involved with performers are you whilst developing a new composition?

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C h a l l e n g e s , P r o f o u n d M o m e n t s a n d H i g h l i g h t s

Gillian recalls experiences that have been an illuminating part of her creative journey - the bits n pieces that contribute to the whole masterpiece of an artist’s life. I appreciate the metaphor here of moving through challenges but not holding on to them ...“Challenging experiences... Difficult to answer...can't really think of any! I know there were, but once a challenge moves from present to past it's no longer a challenge. From another viewpoint, every new piece is a challenge!

Some of the most profound experiences have been outside the concert hall. I remember, when the Waitaki River was under threat, the local iwi (Waitaha) devised a low-key protest on Waitangi Day. One lane of the SH1 bridge over the river was closed, groups converged from either end, each with a singer singing a song of mine, with amplifiers wheeled in shopping trolleys, and in the middle they looked out towards the sea and sang a duet I'd written acknowledging the river.

Another time, on midwinter day, recording the same songs, with Richard Nunns and storytellers, for a recording of the local Waitaha iwi. Or the first performance of Hinetekakara in Tamatekapua, the great wharenui at Ohinemutu during a taonga pūoro hui.

And other highlights would have to include the dress rehearsal and first performance of Tristan and Iseult in the 1978 Auckland Festival - a dream operatic debut. And I love collaboration: O Cambodia, devised by the late Jack Body to combine the skills of NZTrio and Trey So (an ensemble playing traditional Cambodian instruments) playing the works of two Khmer and two New Zealand composers. Last year we took the pieces to Phnom Penh and five cities in China. There have been so many highlights, really.”

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015Gillian at home in Harwood

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015Dame Gillian Karawe Whitehead walking in Otago Harbour during low tide.

Dame Gillian Karawe WhiteheadA great web site and a generous sharing of her music

http://www.gillianwhitehead.co.nz

SOUNZ ~ Centre for New Zealand MusicToi te Arapūoru

Dame Gillian Karawe Whiteheadhttp://sounz.org.nz/contributor/composer/1099

Atoll Classical and Contemporary MusicType in “Gillian Whitehead” in the search box near the top of the home page

and Gillian’s listings of recordings you can purchase will come up.http://www.atollcd.com/index.html

Australian Music Centrehttp://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/artist/whitehead-gillian

I highly recommend reading Noel Sanders biography of “Moon Tides & Shoreline - Gillian Karawe Whitehead - A Life in Music”

http://sounz.org.nz/resources/show/727

This link is an extract from the biography. Chapter VI - Tristan and Iseult. One of the many highlights of Gillian’s career.http://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/article/moon-tides-shoreline-extract-from-the-new-whitehead-biography

The Caselberg Trust, Broad Bay, Dunedinhttp://www.caselbergtrust.org

d L i n k s d

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

Photographs woven through this story reflect some of the areas in Dunedin included in Jane Woodham’s new novel ~ TwisterViews from Highcliff Road on a sunny day - looking across the harbour driving towards Harbour Cone, and out to sea on the right.

Bites of text from Jane Woodham’s “Twister” ...”The car wound along Highcliff Road towards Pukehiki Church. Sunlight darted along the harbour like a skimming stone, glancing off the hills and bleaching the top of Harbour Cone. On their right, way out to sea, a fishing trawler, Lego-like with its red, white and blue livery, winked back at them.”...

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

Jane WoodhamT W I S T E RA n e w n o v e l s e t i n D u n e d i n

Twister is an exciting new novel, a mystery set in Dunedin; in fact, Dunedin might be considered one of the characters, so palpably is the city evoked. Author Jane Woodham has followed diverse career paths — from carpentry to financial management to fiction-writing — and sixteen years ago she left her home in the UK to live in New Zealand. She tried Hamilton, but only when she reached Dunedin a year later was she sure that she could make New Zealand her home.

An interview with Down In Edin MagazinePhotography by Caroline Davies

Dunedin scenery ref lecting the setting for “Twister” (not actual scenes), Quotes from Twister courtesy Jane Woodham

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

Jane Woodham, author of “Twister”

flaking skin from my hair, she taught me nursery rhymes. About ten years ago I bumped into Emmy’s daughter who, finally placing me, said, ‘Oh, you’re not that annoying blonde child who came to our house singing songs and reciting nursery rhymes word perfect are you? I hated you.’

Despite my shaky start, I soon developed a love of reading. I still have my first book, The Story of Mr Prettimouse, by Margaret Alleyne. It’s small, glossy and heavily illustrated, rather like the Peter Rabbit series, and would have been relatively expensive to buy. The tale is darkly moral, and warns of the perils of thinking too highly of oneself. Actually the hero isn’t unlike Penelope Todd’s Mr Ratty character (publisher Rosa Mira Books’ mascot) who heralds the publication of her new books. Mr Prettimouse is inscribed by my grandparents. My siblings weren’t great readers, but my enjoyment was obvious and I was (finally) encouraged to read.

There’s a rumour in my father’s family that we are related to the writer H. Rider Haggard; the name Rider has been given to one family member each generation.

It's a bizarre claim, given the humble history of my family, and could only result from some below-stairs hanky-panky — not normally something to crow about, but my love of reading was put down to this possible genetic influence.

When I was young, most of the books in children's libraries were very dated, many written pre-war. I'm envious of the sheer number and variety of books available for children today. Those I loved the most were, The Railway Children, and the C S Lewis's Narnia series, copies of which I still own. I remember the shock I felt when reading The Last Battle and realising firstly that that the children had died in a train crash – children just didn’t die in children’s books back then - and secondly that they were now permanently in Narnia.

Having been brought up wary of religion I was furious to realise I'd been duped into reading books with a religious theme. But my love of reading continued and by the age of twelve I was cycling every Saturday between three different libraries to borrow my week's reading.”

Jane’s PathConnecting Past and Present

Where did you grow up, Jane?    What were the influences on you as a child?  Did you love to read when you were young?“I was born in Kent, and grew up in a safe and green suburb of South London. My education got off to a rocky start. In the UK we start school at four. During my first week it became apparent that all the other children could chant something called the alphabet, and I couldn’t. My mum’s education had ended at fourteen and her recital of the alphabet was never the same twice, so she took me to a neighbour’s house — the Catholics, Mum called them, her father being protestant Irish — where their daughter quickly taught me my alphabet.

I lived in the same street until I left home at twenty-two. People didn’t move house so often back then, and we called our neighbours Uncle and Aunty. I had cradle-cap, and tight curly blond hair. Mum didn’t have the patience to cope so each morning I’d run down to Aunty Emmy’s, two doors away. While Emmy sat me on the washing machine, rubbing oil into my scalp and gently combing the

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The bay at St Clair, on a cloudy still day.

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

...”The flu epidemic came for the young and the old, the frail and the weak … In the unusually muggy heat, windows remained open at night to catch any passing breeze, and the waves at St Clair swelled clean and grey under a cumulus-heavy sky.”...

apprentice, gaining my City and Guilds certificates and qualifying as a carpenter. Genealogy shows I am not the first carpenter in the family. I come from a long line of artisans: tailors, milliners, cooks and gardeners. My great grandfather was the storeman at Reading Gaol, I was the local finance manager at the Dunedin Department of Corrections. Sometimes the apple does not fall far from the tree!”

Did you keep journals or enjoy letter writing for example?  What other elements in your life led to the emergence of the writer?   “My favourite subject at school was, unsurprisingly, English. Each week our homework was to write a short story, no more than one page long. In the five minutes between the theme being announced and the bell ringing at the end of the lesson, I'd dash off my page, immediately and without hesitation. I must have been starving to write but it took me another thirty years to recognise this. It wasn’t until I moved to New Zealand in 1998 and began writing letters to my parents, describing the different culture, landscape, etc — basically justifying my

reason for leaving the UK — that I started writing again.   It was themost frequent contact I’d had with my parents in years, and the first indication that time taken to put things in writing could create better communication.”

What drew you to Dunedin, and what do you love about Dunedin, particularly as a writer?“I did not make a conscious decision to be a writer, but I knew without doubt that one day I would write. At first, the idea of producing a novel appeared such a massive task it seemed impossible. Now I know the trick with anything is to break it down into small steps, and keep walking. I wish I'd learned that a lot earlier in life.

In 1998 we moved from the UK to Hamilton, where my partner secured a job. But not until 1999, when we moved to Dunedin, did New Zealand feel like somewhere I could call home. The water and wharf area and the heritage buildings reminded us of Bristol, our regular refuge from London. The recurring theme of my writing is loss, and grief, although it took me a while to see it. I think it is no co-incidence that I only started to write after emigrating.

What did you discover in reading that inspired you eventually to be a writer too?“I was not a discerning reader. I didn't understand the difference between literary and ‘genre’, but occasionally I'd read something that made me think, or affected me emotionally, and I realised that all books were not equal.

By the 1980s, with Ken Livingston leading the Greater London Council, libraries started to change. Suddenly there were individual bookshelves labelled, Black Writers, Lesbian and Gay, Women's Writing, Irish Writing ... As I became more politically aware I searched out the black and white striped spines of the Women's Press, or the dark green Virago covers. Soon I was only reading books by inspiring women writers, among them books by 'women of colour' and working class women.   Favourite authors included Margaret Atwood, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, Doris Lessing, Iris Murdoch.

During this time, at Birkbeck University, I took some random papers around feminism and gender. I also enrolled in woodworking classes for women, which resulted in my becoming an adult

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about being a writer in a city as small as Dunedin. The arts are within touching distance, literally. My neighbours were film makers and jewellers, I was surrounded by painters and print-makers, bead-workers and bakers, book designers and musicians, people happy to share their knowledge, offer encouragement, take you seriously, even work collaboratively.  In Dunedin, art is accessible.

In 2009 I plucked up the courage to apply for Diane Brown's Writing for Publication course at Aoraki Polytechnic. By rights, I should have first attended her full-time one-year course, which covered the more basic aspects of the craft, but I was working full-time and taking a year out seemed impossible. However, this course was only one afternoon a week, and I could change my hours of work to suit. After warning that I'd have some catching up to do, Diane kindly offered me a place.

Each afternoon I'd arrive, hyperventilating and in a clammy state of terror, convinced I'd find myself out of my depth. But I’m a quick learner. I caught up.

By the end of 2009 I was in a writing group, and meeting regularly with other writers who critiqued one another's work and were generally supportive. Around this time I started to enter short stories into writing competitions and enjoyed some success. Recognition and success are important to any artist. When I started to write, my enthusiasm lent my work energy, and my ignorance gave me freedom. The more I write and the more I learn about writing, the tighter, and in some ways more self-censoring, my writing becomes. It is a constant struggle.”

What was the spark for sitting down to write Twister? How did   the plot line and characters come about, and the settings?  “Twister is the third novel I have completed. It originated from an exercise in the back of John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction: to write a paragraph that slowed down the discovery of a dead body; in other words, an exercise in creating suspense. I had to ask myself who and where the victim was, and who was doing the discovering. By the time I had answered those questions I had the start of a short story. By the time I finished the short story I had my main character, Leo Judd, a detective investigating the death

They say writers often feel they’re on the outside, looking in. The experience of living in another country certainly compounded my earlier feelings of isolation arising from being gay, and being working class.

The chance to write came in 2006, when I discovered Kath Beattie’s Creative Writing classes at Kaikorai Valley. Actually, Paddy Richardson took the first couple of classes. Kath’s enthusiasm was infectious, and I’d run home each week, fizzing and buzzing, hardly waiting to take my coat off before sitting down to write.

Enrolling at Otago Polytechnic seemed a huge leap after community education classes, but having met the tutor, Paddy, gave me the confidence to apply the following year for two courses. Those workshops were both exhilarating and gruelling. Writers expose themselves to criticism all the time. You have to toughen up, get on with it. Paddy arranged for local writers to come and share their experience and their stories of becoming writers. Writers turned out to be real flesh and blood people who lived just down the road. That’s the great thing

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

Views from the crematorium and golf course at Andersons Bay, on a dull rainy day.

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

...”They stood for a moment, Kate’s head resting against his shoulder. Beyond the golf course waves broke onto Tomahawk Beach...To the east, where the twister had come from, farmland ran down towards the lagoon.”...

tiny square at a time. When I commented on this he said he could easily polish off the entire tray but dreaded becoming fat. It transpired that as kid he’d never been sporty and, while trying to toughen him up, his father had made his life hell. To compensate, his mother brought cake to him in bed every night. As a consequence he’d become hugely overweight.  This reminded me of a fat boy at school whom none of the girls wanted to date. In time, as the girls relaxed around him, he learned their secrets and how to communicate with them. Later, when he lost his puppy fat, he became the boy all the girls wanted to date.

Lardy Boy, I thought. That’s Judd. That’s my detective. “

So you wrote the story and … then what happened?“I completed Twister with the aid of the NZSA Mentorship Programme; my mentor was Dunedin writer Paddy Richardson. During 2014 Paddy and I focused on the crime aspect of Twister, increasing the tension and creating pace. I blogged that experience at... mentoringlive@wordpress.com

I continued to work on the novel throughout 2014 and by March 2015 had taken it as far as I could. Faced with self-publishing, I approached Penelope Todd of Rosa Mira Books. (Penelope’s husband Raymond, had studied creative writing with me at Aoraki Polytechnic in 2009.) At the time Penelope was coming up with a new model: working collaboratively with writers, sharing both the cost and the risk. According to the Rosa Mira website, Penelope was interested in work that didn’t conform to a prototype. While Twister started as a mystery, its themes had expanded to take in romance, the portrait of a marriage in crisis, and gay politics, and so I approached Rosa Mira Books.”

of a teenage girl, while his own daughter remains missing.  

I never set out deliberately to write crime. Despite having read many ‘crime’ books over the years I am useless at working out who did it or why, but I do like to get to know the detectives.

I originally set Twister in the UK but soon moved it to New Zealand. I had been away from the UK for almost fifteen years. Things change. I’m out of tune with popular culture, even with the language. But when I wanted to explore Judd’s childhood, I stumbled. I knew little about New Zealand culture before 1998. So I made him English. In this way I could write about the UK in the 70s and 80s, and present day New Zealand.

I wanted Judd to be a gentle man, a solid, family man. I was thinking of Ruth Rendall’s Reg Wexford, and PD James’s Adam Dalgleish. But I wanted Judd to be working class. I wondered what makes one man gentler than another. Then I remembered a boy who lodged with us for a while, in London.  He used to make a tray of chocolate brownies at the weekend, yet never eat more than one

“This most impressive first novel has been launched by its publishers, Rosa Mira Books & Makaro Press. I was captivated, reading it in several long sessions over two days. I guess you could call it a cross between crime fiction and family drama.No matter how you define it, it is a superb piece of writing.I hope the author is already at work on her next novel and that she will keep Detective Senior Sergeant Leo Judd as her protagonist in future titles”Graham Beattie

Beattie’s Book Blog

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What have you learned from this process that you’ll bring to your next novel and your creative process?   “All writers are besieged with doubts, but especially the novice writer.  While writing Twister I almost gave up several times. But then I’d ask myself what else I’d do. Nothing gives me as much pleasure, and pain, as writing. I have learned a lot from being edited by Penelope. She can take a badly constructed sentence, re-jiggle a few words and make it sparkle. I’ve taken so many notes, stuffing a whole notebook with do’s and don’ts. It will become my bible.

With my novel-in-progress, I’m trusting the process. I’m a lot more organised, taking time to sort out timelines and characters and environment at the start, with the hope it will allow me to be more creative later. All the energy I put into worrying about word-count or theme, convoluted plots, or writing to please a non-existent publisher,  I’m putting into my craft. Being edited, and then published, by Penelope has been an affirming and positive experience, as has been getting to know all the wonderful writerly people I’ve met on the way.”

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

“When Jane first contacted Rosa Mira Books,   she described Twister as   'a mystery, a love story and a portrait of a marriage in crisis all in one package … a thoughtful hybrid’ with a Dunedin setting. I was intrigued, and asked her to send it two chapters at a time (my publisher’s trick; a whole unread manuscript is daunting when I’m busy; I take small bites until I’m hooked).  

In the small-town way of Dunedin (Unesco City of Literature), I knew of Jane’s reputation as a talented writer. I found her story gripping, psychologically penetrating, and moving (I cried at least twice on first reading).

In it, Dunedin is so palpably evoked I know it will change the way readers see some of its special  places, like the Ross Creek Reservoir, the Hot Salt Water Pool, the Esplanade — and the houses overlooking the latter. (One reader would later call it a   ‘police procedure novel, which describes the main protagonist’s role.) 

I offered to publish, and had only a few structural suggestions to make to Jane, concerning tension here and there, one or

two character traits that wanted to be accentuated or blended in, and the usual: names and details that had to be made absolutely consistent and/or memorable. She dealt deftly with those before we tackled the longer, slower process of line-by-line edits.

Jane’s characters are entirely credible. Detective Senior Sergeant Leo Judd suffers   the grief of losing a daughter, struggles to keep off the fat and not over-drink, and with his huge workload is too preoccupied to see what’s happening between him and wife Kate (too little, too late   …) His tender evening remembering daughter Beth as a child is a stand-out scene: a man’s grief evoked with such restraint the reader experiences it welling up.  

Kate’s own pain and numbness at the loss of Beth are yielding at last to love and longing. Then there’s the police crew, each vividly evoked with their foibles and strengths, and assorted, believable suspects. Dunedin and the unseasonal weather bring their own well-conjured peculiarities to bear on Twister’s events and atmospheres.

The Publisher’s Point of View

With both writer and publisher based in Dunedin, Down In Edin Magazine found it a perfect opportunity to also explore an editor’s perspective when they receive a manuscript and decide to produce a new novel. Penelope Todd, Principal of Rosa Mira Books gives her side of the story:

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Jane is a patient, sound, psychologically astute writer, and these qualities radiate from the novel. She makes no flashy, fantastical moves — everything comes about in its own time and the timing is perfect. I’ve thought all along that Twister will appeal not only to readers of crime and mystery but to all who appreciate good writing applied to a gripping story. 

The process of producing a novel is long and occasionally arduous. When the end is finally in sight, great patience is called for as the screws have to be tightened, Ts crossed, Is dotted, then all details checked again. Jane has been an affable, unflappable companion in what amounts to a writer’s initiation process. She’s earned her badge of authorship with honours.

Rosa Mira Books is proud to be publishing Twister.”

http://www.rosamirabooks.com

- 35 -Cover art for “Twister” Rob West

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

The St. Clair Salt Water Pool.

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

Meanwhile, hidden inside the pool area as we look across… unaware...“Judd stopped, feigning an adjustment to his goggles. She too stopped, at the opposite end of the pool. He squatted so the water came halfway up his chest and glanced down the lane. Between them, hexagonal honeycomb shimmered and wavered on the water’s surface like a dream-catcher.”..

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015Toitū Otago Settlers Museum

LIFE ON THE EDGEOtago Harbour Communities

The Toitū Otago Settlers Museum in Dunedin is currently presenting an intriguing exhibition that takes a good look at the expansion of the relatively small Pākehā (non Māori) communities that grew around the shores of the Otago Harbour during Dunedin’s early European settlement that were the basis for life around the harbour and this city today.

“Life On The Edge” is divided into clear and integrated components that correspond with the settlements and developments around the harbour from Taieri Head to Glenfalloch Gardens then directly across to West Harbour continuing on from Ravensbourne, and including Quarantine Island, through to Aramoana.

The fascinating story is told with about a hundred artifacts on display - from telescopes to diaries, whaling apparatus, tools, diving gear, cameras, furniture, model ships and a canon amongst many other interesting objects that had belonged to the early settlers. Along with 500 reproductions of historic and contemporary photographs the viewer gains a real sense of what life would have been like during those times past - the challenges, hardships and successes experienced by the early settlers that also had a profound effect on long established Māori life as well.

Contemporary communities from around the harbour have contributed photographs of the settlements today giving the visitor an excellent comparison of life now and life then.

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Peter Read, Curator for Life on the Edge Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

particular visual appeal. We ‘found’ these by drawing upon the knowledge of the museum’s staff and reference group members.

Being such a broad topic it was challenging trying to decide what to include and how to include as much as we could without using too many words and ending up with a ‘book on the walls’ type exhibition. Because we chose to borrow some big and impressive objects to tell certain stories, the logistics of getting the larger borrowed items to the gallery floor was also a challenging proposition.”

I imagine there are multiple intentions to gift the visitor with when they visit a museum’s exhibition. I came away with a stronger appreciation of Dunedin's history after seeing “Life On The Edge”.   I was absorbed in learning how the "edge" evolved during that period of time and loved discovering who some of the people were involved in its development.

I live ‘on the edge’ myself in a restored 1890’s cottage and have often pondered who built it, how they made a living, and what the area I live in looked like in those early

days of settlement. A knowledge of history can inspire us to take care of the things that others have painstakingly built with precious materials and hard work in past times and experiencing this exhibition affirmed that. Peter added, “As the exhibition sub-title suggests, the focus is on community and by community we don’t just mean the people resident in a particular geographic locality but also communities within communities like communities of fishermen, boaties, defence personnel, conservationists, and weekenders (crib owners).

The main take away messages are why and how these communities were established, who some of the first settlers were, how the communities evolved and what some of their key characteristics were.

It would also be nice to think that many visitors will come away with a sense of connection to the people and places in the exhibition; especially residents, former residents and descendants of former harbour residents but also non-residents who may have a place on the harbour they identify with.”

Peter Read, the museum’s curator for “Life On The Edge” has been with the Toitū since 2000, and with a keen love for history has shared many a story with the museum’s visitors. “This exhibit was inspired by a suggestion from the History Department at the University of Otago to do an exhibition about the harbour and a suggestion from Toitū staff that we have another ‘suburbs’ exhibition akin to ‘The Birth of Modern Times: Dunedin’s Southern Suburbs 1890-1940’ (2002) and ‘Water Like Wine: A history of the Kaikorai Valley and Stream’ (2004) which were popular pre-museum redevelopment exhibitions.”

It is a complex task to research, organize, gather objects and exhibition materials and design exhibition spaces. The Toitū usually anticipates at least 12 months to bring an exhibition to the community and visitors to Dunedin. Peter explained “The bulk of the objects are from the museum’s collection; about 2/3rds. These are supplemented with pieces we have borrowed from other museums, institutions and individuals. The borrowed ones were selected to fill gaps in the story when we didn’t have the objects to illustrate it ourselves and/or for their

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

Life on the Edge: Otago Harbour communitiesExhibition runs through 28th February 2016

Toitū Otago Settlers Museum31 Queens Gardens

Dunedin 905403 477 5052

http://www.toituosm.com

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From the Exhibition: An introduction to Otago Harbour

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015Angry Skies: Otago Harbour

Crowded harbour ferry Waireka. / Toitū Otago Settlers Museum [Ref: 27_7] Collection of Toitū Otago Settlers Museum Permission of Toitū Otago Settlers Museum must be obtained before any re-use of this image.  

Fishing at Broad Bay. / Toitū Otago Settlers Museum [Ref: 1990.318.35] Collection of Toitū Otago Settlers Museum Permission of Toitū Otago Settlers Museum must be obtained before any re-use of this image.  

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Glenfalloch Gardens 1992.95.6-1 Collection of Toitū Otago Settlers Museum Permission of Toitū Otago Settlers Museum must be obtained before any re-use of this image.  

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Union Steam Ship Company premises, Port Chalmers. / Toitū Otago Settlers Museum [Ref: Album 15_30]Collection of Toitū Otago Settlers Museum Permission of Toitū Otago Settlers Museum must be obtained before any re-use of this image.  

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View of the harbour from Carey’s Bay. / Toitū Otago Settlers Museum [Ref: 83_124] Collection of Toitū Otago Settlers Museum. Permission of Toutū Otago Settlers Museum must be obtained before any re-use of this image

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015Otago Harbour

Life on the Edge: Otago Harbour communitiesExhibition runs through to the 28 February 2016

http://www.toituosm.com/whats-on/exhibitions/life-on-the-edge-otago-harbour-communities

Toitū Otago Settlers Museum31 Queens Gardens

Dunedin 9054

03 477 5052

http://www.toituosm.com

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Photo opposite page 53: A partial view of Otago Harbour today. The photograph taken from above Burkes on the West Harbour is looking across to the outer edge of Macandrew and Company Bay on the Peninsula, and over St. Leonards on the West Harbour down to the entrance of the harbour in the far distance.

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

The Heart and MindOf

Jenna PackerInterview and Photographs of Jenna Packer

by Caroline Davies

All reproductions of Jenna Packer’s paintings photographed by

Glen Frei, courtesy Milford Galleries, Dunedin

“Enchanting yet stirring, representational yet allegorical and observational yet deeply reflective, Jenna Packer’s painting practice is unlike any other artist active in New Zealand. Looking regionally but within a global context, Jenna explores how politics, power and economy, affects contemporary society.” Vanessa Jones, Milford Galleries Dunedin

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Opposite Page (55) : “The Ascension of the Bankers” (States of Emergency)Jenna Packer © 2013-14 Acrylic on canvas. Stretcher: 1204 x 1602 x 45 mm

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Jenna clearly sees humanity’s shadow, but also finds hope and resilience from the human race that is expressed quietly within her complex, multi layered paintings. As we look even more closely at the details, we too can find hope as humanity survives, albeit precariously, embarking upon a renewed, and necessarily, more co-operative way of living.

The Symbolic Power of The Bull

Jenna states: “The series began with thoughts   about New Zealand and   our place in a world in climate and social crisis.   I was looking at John Key's (New Zealand’s current Prime Minister) credentials for leading us. I was thinking about how hollow the structure of the world monetary system now looks, and how its   foundation as an   ideology supporting a privileged few, rather than a natural, scientifically verifiable law of nature is becoming more apparent to many.  Let the market decide, no longer holds the same authority.

Our PMs previous incarnation as head Foreign Exchange trader for Merrill Lynch  led me to the imagery of the bull, the ML logo. A  bull can be  such a rich metaphor for greed, power, aggression, careless trampling causing collateral damage ( bull in a china shop). The phrase 'bull market' may come from   the French term "bulle speculative" which refers to a speculative bubble, and also alludes to charging ahead with excessive confidence. It was natural to use the bull, in almost the exact pose, as the starting point. “

It is a powerful and edgy time for the human race as we experience, express, observe, and if moved or awakened, confront our collective shadow.

Jenna Packer’s fantastical narrative paintings communicate a story of the past, present and possible future through compelling and detailed metaphor that is artfully expressed on the canvas from a mind and heart that, through observation and contemplation, replicates much about our world today on political and societal levels.

These almost surreal chronicles challenge the viewer to pause and ponder on what has skillfully been drawn out and painted. There is an epic reflection of our times that is obvious to many, and yet, when you consider the exquisitely painted details of these works, interwoven stories and worlds of possibilities within the broader statement are to be discovered as well. Jenna draws from history, social documentary, global and national politics, allegory, metaphor, personal insight and with an accomplished artist’s mastery, along with imaginative powers that add dimension and depth, holds up a mirror for us to see ourselves - our civilization.

...”Once the thought process starts to take pictorial form the associations and references start moving laterally and I follow them....” 

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“Sons of Adam Smith” (States of Emergency) Jenna Packer © 2013-14Acrylic on canvas. Stretcher: 1203 x 1604 x 45 mm

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a huge herd of dairy cattle. Refugees are starting to arrive and not entirely welcome although some are accepted into the ranks of the useful and harnessed up like slaves  to the wooden trolley, which looks a bit like the old Hollywood version of the Trojan horse.

The same type of bull is also in 'The Ascension of the Bankers', standing   in front of the temple-like Bank of England, and might be  a deity such as  Baal, the false god of the Hebrew bible which is often represented as a bull.   Or, in the ‘Corporate Box’, as the Hindu vehicle for the god Shiva. The bull in ‘The Ascension’ is also meant to appear greater than the location, or the temple / bank which serves it;   a   sort of supra-national being. The bankers of the title are escaping from the roof of the Bank of England as chaos erupts below, with  echoes of the helicopter evacuation of the US Embassy in Saigon.

I'm   interested in ideas of social organisation in times of disaster and chaos, so there's a sense of action and reaction, not just destruction. Blue tarpaulins are ubiquitous, as are oil drum braziers. The idea of social grouping,

Beh i n d the Met aphor “Metaphor has become a way for me to explore ideas along a border-line between realism and imagination. Metaphor is something I think about a lot. I feel that when I’m working I’m chasing the metaphor, which begins to have its own life, and brings all sorts of associations with it.

One book I’m reading at present which has me captivated is Naomi Klein’s, ‘This Changes Everything’. I’m captivated because for the first time I feel as if someone is mapping out for me how so many important aspects of our world fit together. Her language is also rich in metaphor; that’s what is making the ideas stick and resonate for me, and it’s giving me a direct way into image making about some of the things which are foremost in my mind. Climate change, social justice, inequality, fears for the future of my boys…how to put these ideas into paint and how to explore them for myself the way I need to is through image making.

The pictures  are essentially my  train of thought made visible, and although I've

tried to explain some of the thoughts behind them, or visual metaphors that occurred to me and set off other images and ideas, there is a lot more which determines how each image grows that has to do with subconscious and instinctive choices, especially where colour and underlying structure and composition are concerned.”

Painting A StoryThere is an integrated cross fertilization of ideas and imagery that naturally occurs between each of Jenna’s paintings - stories within one canvas will stretch as a theme and cross over to another painting. For example: “There are many elements in the painting ‘Corporate Box’ but I wanted the dominant one to be that of the political leadership riding across the country on a blind   beast much greater and more powerful than the fragile, Raj pagoda style 'seat of office' on its back. The chalk lines on the bull could indicate cuts of meat but also  plates of tin and refer to   its man-made   construction (as free market/neo liberal   ideology is a construct).  There are pine plantations, oil rigs in the harbour (loosely Auckland) and

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“Corporate Box” (States of Emergency) Jenna Packer © 2013/14Acrylic on canvas. Stretcher: 1202 x 1604 x 45 mm

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way. There's a sensation of movement but you always return to the same place, and I would really like to be able to climb on and go around without hard decisions or moving on into a harsher future. The repetition of elements such as the ferris wheel chairs act like a visual chant or incantation. 

The stadium/colosseum promises mass entertainment and with the connection to the crowd, looks strong enough, colossal enough, to withstand any external threat. When I put in the dismantling of the cathedral, I was not just thinking of historical precedents, but also thinking about the idea of the   opium   of the people,  which must surely  have shifted from mainstream religion to spectator sport. It was   also thoughts about   the consumption of violence, online and off, that first gave me the connection with the Roman circus which the painting grew from.

'The   Abduction of Zealandia' is an extension   of the political cartoon, with   the fracked and mined   landscape and the coy   complicity of Zealandia (herself a colonial construct ) with the Bull, is also an image within an image.

they're interested, in seems relevant;  the soma holiday of the ‘Brave New World.’

Although the 'Bread and the Circus'  painting showing the colosseum in the Octagon might look like a stadium comment, it is meant to be bigger   than that. The imagery in any of the paintings which refers in some way to the Roman Empire is, like the 18th c era balloon and costume of ‘Zealandia’, making a  connection between the era of ‘disconnect  now’ and at certain   earlier historical moments.   In 'Bread and the Circus'  on either front there are forest fires burning and floods encroaching while in 'Myths in the Ring'   the forces that currently dominate the world must inevitably destroy even the illusions they create:   We can't keep producing the consumable   idyll while consuming our   resources at this rate and in such an inequitable way.

In all the circular paintings ( 'Bread and the Circus', 'The Abduction of Zealandia' and 'The Wheel of Fortune') the big distractions or deceptions are meant to be attractive. The Ferris Wheel, even without a motor, is beautiful in a nostalgic, faded out childhood memory

around essentials such as food storage, cooking, warmth, shelter and protection is in most of the works, and it's something I have to incorporate into the images for myself or they might become simple   prophesies of doom. There are people playing soccer, talking, gathering.

The   Trojan horse   idea most strongly brings to my mind  the idea  of bringing the attack into the heart of the people in the guise of a gift or a trophy. So the construction of the bull, in panels, allows for hidden trapdoors, from which the paratroopers can drop down into the crowds of protesters and occupiers  outside the Bank, or onto the deck of its carriage as it rumbles through the landscape escorting the dairy herds.

The bull ring/circus idea, in   the two paintings 'Bread and the Circus', and 'Myths in the Ring' began with thoughts about   the taste   for violent neo-Roman circus type entertainment at a time when if we looked away from the ring we might see Rome burning/climate catastrophe looming. So the expression 'give them bread and circuses’... 'or keep the rabble fed and distracted and let us proceed with our agenda’, as that is all

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“The Seduction of Zealandia” (States of Emergency, 2014) Jenna Packer © 2013/14Acrylic on canvas. Stretcher: 1203 x 1603 x 45 mm

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The Life of the ArtistJenna Packer has always drawn and painted. The artist emerged at a young age, and it was encouraged. “It was what I most loved to do, and my default pass-time. Both my parents encouraged it. My mother was a primary school teacher, and had wanted to go to art school herself, and my dad was a med student, and used to bring home boxes of bright yellow paper which was used to protect x-ray sheets, so there was always lots of paper to draw on, which is actually incredibly important for kids along with picture books, visible art, and visits to art galleries and museums.”

Although born in Wellington, Jenna’s family moved to Glasgow, Scotland, when she was five where, as a young girl, had her first years of schooling. Later on the family returned to New Zealand living in Christchurch for a short period and finally moved to Dunedin where Jenna attended Otago Girls High School. Jenna then studied at Ilam School of Art at Canterbury University, where she did her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1988 and concurrently an arts degree, graduating with first class Honours in History in 1989.

“I had spent years teaching myself to draw and paint but I nearly failed entrance to art school. My senior art teacher at high school was seldom there, and when he was, basically let us do what we wanted and never referred to the requirements necessary for further education. He told me - ‘you’ll be right, you can draw’ and that was it.

That was probably quite important actually, because I didn’t emulate what was considered the ‘right thing’ at the time. When I arrived at Ilam I’d had no experience of using Artist Models (referencing other artists work, as required in the secondary school art curriculum) and no clue how ‘the system‘ worked.

For some bright, curious and creative individuals, the best kind of education is no formal education at all. Being left to explore and discover for themselves, outside of a structured system and standard doctrines, can sometimes be the greatest lesson for that particular person’s development and style.“I feel I didn’t learn anything in terms of actual painting technique from the tutor,Riduan Tomkins, whose own work was

The 18th century costume, and the balloon itself are reference to the era epitomised by   the court of   Marie Antoinette, whose infamous comment of utter disconnect, ‘let them eat cake’ seems to be echoed   in some   political groups in New Zealand today. 

The series of smaller paintings has grown around the idea of groups clustered around food storage poles based on Māori pātaka, but in these pictures using abandoned power poles. The cars are also being recycled as shelters and storage, and are based on plenty of examples around my neighbourhood.

I also wanted to explore the look of almost wild-west corrals   of cars clustered  for community and protection. I  was thinking about the end of the Holden era, as well as the smash palace-like   desolation of hundreds of wasted vehicles in a wasted landscape which we might   still manage to turn to for our survival, although it looks very precarious.”Paintings referenced that are not here in this story can be found in Jenna’s catalogues at Milford Galleries’ web site, there are links at the end of this story.

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“Anniversary Day” (Provisioning) Jenna Packer © 2010Acrylic on canvas. Stretcher size (v x h): 761 x 1015mm

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The Bullseye: Lessons of Art in Other Places

Life may not always make perfect sense as a young person strives to develop their skills, but clearly, the time spent at Ilam was an essential part of Jenna’s development and what ‘really hit the mark’ for Jenna came along in unexpected ways.“The painting tutor would not discuss subject matter, which fit with his approach to painting, but it also left those few of us trying to make narrative an integral part of the work obliged to find our own mentors in books and outside the art school.

Talking seriously about art with other students was invaluable as was being in an environment where you were entirely focused on art - where it went without saying that art in whatever form, was important.

At Ilam we took a studio minor as well as a major. I studied printmaking with Barry Cleavin which gave me some excellent technical skills and Barry’s own art engaged with current and difficult issues such as disarmament and environmentalism.

He wasn’t directive but did invite printmakers to continue a tradition of social commentary, introducing us to work by artists like Goya. That was the essential difference between the printmaking and painting departments.

A short course in traditional Italian Fresco technique years later at the Slade in London, not only gave me access to another whole way of working but also validation with the way I had already been painting in acrylics - using thin layers of colour and letting the white underpainting do its work in adding life to the subsequent layers of colour.

I remember at art school, Marc Braunius, who always used masses of paint, telling me I should “use more” paint. Part of my resistance to that was economic - I couldn’t afford to use paint the way he did! I was also using acrylics rather than oils, but by that stage had come to realise that high quality paints with really strong pigments were powerful even in small amounts if I could work out how to use them.”

minimalist, but I did learn some very valuable life drawing/ observation skills during the weekly life-drawing class. Without realising it at the time, I was learning to pay attention to composition, formal structure and surface tension.

One exercise in particular which gave me the classic aha moment, was to copy as exactly as we could, an old master painting. I chose a Velasquez, ‘Old Woman Frying Eggs’, which is very dark, with two figures only. It was in trying over and over to work out the exact positions of all the elements, seemingly floating in the dark, that I realised there was an amazing web of connecting angles, directional lines and repeated shapes, all designed to direct your eye around the picture plane, like the most sophisticated abstract work we had looked at, but hidden under the storytelling of the more obvious narrative.

I was blown away. It’s something I would never have really understood without laboriously trying to find a way of replicating the work without using a projector or any of the shortcuts we now have for duplicating images.

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Walking the Right of Way (Anchored) Jenna Packer © 2012Acrylic on canvas. Stretcher: 910 x 1115 x 33 mm

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and understand how an artist arrives at their work - the fine and subtle ingredients that make the creator and artwork one whole creative expression. The people that turn up in our lives, unanticipated events, books, films and social conditions all play an integral part.“My first mentors would have to be my parents who both have artistic talent and notice things around them like cloud formations, the fall of light on a fishing spot or a caddis fly wing, and the perfect combination of embroidery silks.

The family mantra ”it’s better to do things than have things” meant that when we lived in Glasgow my parents made choices such as buying meat only once a week and saving to take us to the Royal Scottish Ballet, because you keep memories like that for ever…I’m grateful to have grown up with those kinds of priorities no matter whether they were sensible or not.

When I returned to Scotland to study at the Glasgow Print Studio many years later, I was happy to find a group of painters, Glasgow Boys, who were working figuratively in printmaking and painting, and engaged in talking about

their social political and personal views.

Later, when I started working for costumiere Edith Vesperini in Paris, one of the things I learnt was how a costume designer is like the colourist for the huge canvas which is the screen. It sounds obvious, but when you are actually working with creating a mood, era, and a visually dynamic tableau which can then disintegrate or reform from a wide to a close up frame, colour is extremely important, and Edith has a brilliant instinct for that. I’ve always been interested in film, but being on the other side of constructing the image for a little while has fed into the way I particularly think about the large paintings with casts of thousands.

Very small things are also significant. Cobi Bossard, looking at a small etching, commented that the rendering of the bottle was realistic enough to make him ‘believe’ the rest of the largely metaphorical image. That’s been massively important for me.

I need to explore ideas and psychological states in my work beyond what I can get through direct realism. However, I also

“My mother has had the most influence on me as far as understanding colour (that and actually seeing Pierre Bonnard’s paintings). Our home was full of colour as well as the discussion of it. During the 1970s spinning and dying wool trend, my mother sent us kids off to scrape lichen from fences, collect bark and particular flowers from peoples garden borders. My mother constantly experimented with different embroidery threads for colour combinations, proportions, placement and composition - what makes a piece sing or what kills it. I am constantly energised by her work.

A History degree, and gaining insight into history through looking at works of fiction as well as studying the world of ideas, authorship, Marxist and Feminist historiography also contributed to where I was going with my work and how to solve creative challenges along the way. I often gain some insight through thinking about writing, music, film and theatre.”

Jenna’s story is not like a canvas decorated with broad, minimalist strokes at all, as with her own paintings, it is in the details as well as the bigger picture that we can learn

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“Superstructure” (South Seas Idol) Jenna Packer © 2015 Acrylic on canvas. Stretcher: 1525 x 1827 x 33 mm

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continually work on - where on the line between representation and imagination my work exists.

I’ve often had to tie what I’m doing back to writing, film or music to work out for myself where I want to be on that line. So I would look at something like Steinbeck’s ‘The Grapes Of Wrath’ for his incredible attention to detail with a power that reaches way beyond its specific time and place. Or a film by Finnish director Kaurismaki, who uses silence like negative space in a painting, and whose shots of formica tables and dingy car yards look to me like Vermeers.

I also find that listening to an old Tom Waits’ song, with shadow-tunes of tangos and a grumbling, dirty old voice singing poetry might help me find the visual timbre that I’ve been looking for. Cadence and rhythm, such as you find in Hone Tuwhares’ poetry, along with the echoes of something religious/liturgical, also found in Stanley Spencer’s work, remind me that I can create that sense in a painting by repeating forms at regular intervals.

Although I still look to other painters to learn from, I’m more likely to find what I need to help me move through a painting in another genre or place altogether.

A piece of precious advice I value came from Barry Cleavin, who said, “just keep doing the work”. Stephen Higginson from Milford Galleries has also been saying that ever since he saw my few small works after several years of not touching painting, and offered me a show.”

An Artist’s PassionBeyond Glamour

With her knowledge of history and an understanding of global issues, Jenna has not been seduced by the glamour of money and material power, but rather, with perception and wisdom gained by standing firmly outside traditional social influences, is able to weave crucial stories of our times into her artwork. Seeing “the emperor with no clothes” is an apt description from Milford Galleries about her bold body of work.“Although I feel incredibly lucky to now have a home in a great neighbourhood, space to grow things and a studio to work in, memories and experiences from

need to ground the work in close observation of the real, and know that any deviation from that isn’t through lazy drawing or false naivety, but a formal and/or narrative decision.”

The Permission SlipA time comes during an artist’s life adventure when that artist arrives at the place where they give themselves, consciously or unconsciously, the ‘permission slip” to fully embrace their non conformist thoughts and ideas and become comfortable with their intentions, style and expression. It is often that time of coalescence where all the previous studies and life experiences settle and become fully integrated with mind and heart. Once that happens, interestingly enough, the world (or universe as it is often referred to) responds accordingly. “It was really when I spent some time working on a series of prints with a French/Hungarian couple in France, Bruno Chomel and Bea Rosko that I started to feel I was able to combine my need to work from real life, objects, people and places with the freedom to invent and reorganise instinctively. This is probably the most important element in my practice and something I l

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“Outsource” (South Seas Idol) Jenna Packer © 2015Acrylic on canvas. Stretcher: 1001 x 1676 x 35 mm

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As far as “seduction of money and power”, I think I felt from early on at art school, that what I wanted to do was not ‘in’. I loved to draw and wanted to make figurative work. I couldn’t let myself drop that for what was considered ‘cutting edge’ at the time, even though I ‘got it’.

I was often drawn to the work of artists I discovered pretty randomly who were working on the margins of the art world, or the neglected edges of the movements described by modernist art theory.

I was given a ‘World Encyclopedia of Naïve Art’, which is a curious treasure-trove of works by artists from all over the world covering a couple of centuries up until the late 1970s. I still go to it when I’m feeling in despair or in need of seeing work which is made with passion and conviction, whether the work be about deep grievances or the deep joy of losing yourself in the contemplation of a dahlia. The thing that gets me is the artist’s absorption in the subject, the technique which grows unaffectedly out of that absorption and the apparent indifference to the demands of the ‘art world’.

When you look at the abundance of images and the ease of grabbing an image from the internet, it’s almost counter-cultural to paint something over a long period of time which has progressed slowly through drawing and re-drawing.

Painting is perhaps the closest I will get to meditation in the way it takes me to a different state of mind. There is a tactile pleasure in mixing up colours, laying on glazes, choosing the right shaped brush, seeing the energy of certain colours next to each other, the gut-feeling of some shapes and the arrangements of them and the negative shapes that move forward into the space…and the magic of seeing a line at some point turn into a figure or an object – that crossing over point where you suddenly have a narrative.”

early life of travelling around in a clapped out V.W. Combi with my family, and in later years hitch hiking around Europe with my husband, working on farms, living outside in summer, getting film work in Morooco and France and being broke (but happy) were all an incredibly rich time.

I’ve been lucky in that travelling, reading and thinking are things I share with my partner. We still talk out ideas together and share stacks of books, although his are a far more in depth analysis of climate-change science and politics than I can deal with at present. I also appreciate my teenagers input into what I’m doing, the energy and creativity they bring to everything and the questioning about what sort of society they want to create or inherit. I try to explain how Anglo-centric our models and our journalism is here; how, in France for example, political colours were of a wide range: within a few kilometres you could be in a town governed by a Communist or a Front-Nationale, with every shade in between, and that describing the NZ Green Party as ‘radical and extreme left-wing’ wouldn’t get serious air-play there.

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Jenna Packer, Dunedin, 2015

“South Seas Idol” (South Seas Idol) Jenna Packer © 2015Acrylic on canvas. Stretcher: 910 x 1675 x 35 mm

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For more information ~ contact Jenna Packer at:

021 1151 750

scribeandscrim@gmail.com

Links to Jenna’s CataloguesMilford Galleries, Dunedin, New Zealand

South Seas Idol Cataloguehttp://www.milfordgalleries.co.nz/dunedin/exhibition/404-Jenna-Packer-South-Seas-Idol-2015

States of Emergency Catalogoguehttp://www.milfordgalleries.co.nz/dunedin/exhibition/356-Jenna-Packer-States-of-Emergency-2014

Anchored Cataloguehttp://www.milfordgalleries.co.nz/dunedin/exhibition/318-Jenna-Packer-Anchored-2012

Provisioning Cataloguehttp://www.milfordgalleries.co.nz/dunedin/exhibition/161-Jenna-Packer-Provisioning-2010

A History of Flight Cataloguehttp://www.milfordgalleries.co.nz/dunedin/exhibition/297-Jenna-Packer-A-History-of-Flight-2009

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Contemplation in the studio. Jenna Packer 2015

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

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Shooting for the Stars

The Free Spirit of Jordan McInally

Down In Edin Magazine InterviewsJordan McInally

All photographs by Jordan McInally© 2015

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Left: “Tall Selfie Milk” Opposite Page 77: “A Star of a Pancake”

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can best capture the Milky Way in the South on film - it’s not always an easy task to set oneself, but Jordan’s results are absolutely beautiful.

Did you ever think that you would create such gorgeous sky and landscapes as a younger person?“I never thought I would be a photographer. I was always into extreme sports like skateboarding, downhill mountain biking, snowboarding and slack lining so I was always more concerned with being in front of the lens rather than behind it at that time.”

Did you have an affinity with the stars and our universe as a younger person?“The stars always intrigued me and made me wonder what was really out there and question my existence, but I never really felt a connection or anything special until I pointed my camera at them.”

What inspired you to become a photographer?“I had been shooting bungy jumpers for AJ Hackett for a couple of years and enjoyed playing with a nice camera so thought I better get myself one! I was also inspired by Trey Ratcliff, a well known photographer who happened to live here

in Queenstown too! His colourful shots were a huge part of my inspiration!”

Your composition, sense of natural light, and photographic processes are all beautiful. Some people have a natural gift, some learn it from schools and mentors, and for others it is a bit of both. Did you take any specific courses in photography or did you have a mentor?“Four years of shooting bungy jumpers in every kind of weather was some pretty good training to start off with! I also sat on websites like 500px and other photo sharing sites, always looking at the most epic photos coming from the worlds best photographers and learning from them through observation. I’ve also spent a lot of time on youtube watching tutorials if I couldn’t figure things out myself.”

Also known as Undersoul Photography, Jordan is a Queenstown based astro and landscape photographer. He is a ‘free spirit’ who roams Otago’s exquisite landscape during the dead of night and early morning in search of celestial wonders to capture with his Canon D6. No one moment is ever alike with night skies and landscape photography but Jordon does a fine job of bringing these awe inspiring moments of cosmic wonder back to us.

Jordan is one of Queenstown’s young ‘star’ photographers (and the drummer for ‘Rules of Addiction’). He is bold, has a great sense of humour, is incredibly generous in sharing his techniques and beautiful work online, and not surprisingly - has a large following on social media sites.

The night skies in Otago are breathtaking! Nonetheless, it takes a lot of pluck and spirit to venture out in the middle of a cold and unpredictable winter’s night when you

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“Snowy Milky Panny Stuff”Jordan McInally © 2015

J o r d a n M c I n a l l y

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“Blended Moke” Jordan McInally © 2015

As for a favourite image, I can’t choose one as my favourite shot is usually the one I’m working on at any given time.

There was one shot I called ‘Snowy Milky Panny Stuff’ which was a 2 row, 360 degree panorama selfie that took about 35 shots to create! I hiked up behind the Skyline Gondola in the dark on my own in the middle of winter so there was snow everywhere and it was freezing! It took about 20 minutes to shoot and I lost feeling in my toes, then had to hit my 10 second timer and sprint down a sketchy snow covered ridge to stand still for 30 seconds to get myself in the shot.

After shooting the whole thing, I realised my lens was slightly out of focus! Luckily the shot is so huge that you can’t notice without zooming right in but I loved the irony of it and that image taught me a valuable lesson to double check everything so it has a special place in my heart.”

Can you share what it takes to actually capture the images you do, both in the field and processing?

“Each image comes with its own unique challenges, sometimes I can just snap one quick frame and thats all the information I need to create what I want, other times I need to shoot a panorama with multiple rows and multiple exposures to capture all the information needed, usually if I’m shooting a sunset with a bright sky and dark foreground or astro landscapes with bright lights from town in the shot.

All I usually use in the field is a sturdy tripod, making sure its perfectly level when shooting panoramas, and a good wide angle lens. Sometimes when shooting people I will use wireless flashes too. I always shoot in RAW so I have complete control over how the image will turn out when finished, this allows me to adjust every aspect of the image to my liking in Photoshop & Lightroom.

I also use Photoshop plug-ins from Nik software, the main one being Nik Color Efex Pro 4 which allows me to add filters to my shots, such as special types of contrast, glow effects, colour adjustments and heaps more. This software is essentially my secret weapon when it comes to making my images look nice.”

As Otago winters can be extreme and unpredictable can you share something about the excitement of bringing home fabulous images in challenging conditions and the preparation it takes to stay safe, and do you have a favourite image that took an enormous amount of diligence and patience because of intense weather conditions or other unforeseen issues where another person might have given up?“I love being out at night. I used to be a little afraid of the dark, especially in forests or away from light when I was alone but now it’s my favourite place to be! Its quite exciting hiking to the tops of mountains or standing on cliffs in the middle of the night as there’s always a huge risk hanging in the back of your mind; what if I fall, my torch dies or I get lost? But I’m usually too excited about how awesome the Milky Way looks with the landscape to worry about it!

Over winter I have a set kit that I take on every shoot; mostly warm clothes such as thermals, a couple of big warm hoodies, a puffer jacket, water and hand warmers, as well as making sure my phone is charged which also doubles as my flashlight.

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“Milky Moke Madness Reflections” Jordan McInally © 2015

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“Frosty Pink” Jordan McInally © 2015

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“Middle Earth Sunset” Jordan McInally © 2015

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“Cecils Milk Pan” Jordan McInally © 2015

What do you love about it all?“Photography gives me a brilliant reason to get out into nature and I really enjoy spending time in the wilderness. Especially shooting long exposures at night, you have 30 seconds during each shot to just stand there and be - to just take in the landscape and energy of the place and relax. It’s a nice break from running around and trying to find the best composition before the light disappears!”

What are your short and long term goals with your work?“I am working on setting myself up to go full time with photography so I have more time to go and shoot! I’m also working on a youtube channel, vlogging my adventures & teaching people how to do what I do!

Eventually I would like to have a gallery in the centre of Queenstown, framing and selling prints of my work - but only when I’ve reached a point where I can hire someone to run it with me so I’m not stuck inside all day, shooting is my priority!”

Contact Jordan McInally at

_24_@hotmail.co.nz

www.undersoulphotography.com

www.facebook.com/undersoulphotography

www.instagram.comundersoulphotography

Rules of Addictionhttp://rulesofaddiction.com

Do you have any philosophies you would like to share about taking good photographs, the crafting of the images you take and about photography in general?“Don’t expect anything when you go out, you are leaving yourself open for disappointment! I always just go out and see what I get and try and work with the conditions as best I can.

If you work with your excitement then you keep yourself open to spotting awesome shots you might have missed by chasing a certain shot… All of my best shots were un-planned and just happened.”

Where does your name “Undersoul” come from?“I was studying the spiritual side of life and learned about something called the “over soul” and this made me wonder if there was an under soul? I liked the sound of it and the concept of questioning life and our existence so went with it!

I also incorporated sacred geometry in my logo, using part of a design called The Flower Of Life.” Photograph of Jordan on right by Abi Pinto-Raetz

Courtesy Jordan McInally

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“Dunedin Sunrise” Jordan McInally © 2015

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“Watchful Eye” Jordan McInally © 2015

a Photographs a

G lenfallochWoodland

GardensOtago

Peninsula- 88 -

Meandering through

The hidden glen

A fragment ofenchanted Edin

A Realm of the SensesChimes of fantastic songbirds, a percussion of wind

blown leaves clacking and clinging from the arms of aged trees, all humming and drumming

rhythmically in the background, whilst Russell

Creek chants its own spirited song as it wends its way through gully and garden in the hidden glen.

The pond glistens through dappled light and shade, and cool damp earth perfume infused with the

fragrance of mixed botanicals calls the spirit to its home in nature.

Edging this whimsical forest of exotic and native trees that flank the thousand year old giant Matai - rhododendrons, azaleas, magnolias, flowering

cherries, fuschias, ferns and flowers of all kinds and

colours through all seasons - are open places and

spaces - meadows of soft green grass and benches that beckon one to sit upon, stop and soak in the healing comfort of the sun or simply admire

dramatic cloud forms and spectacular light dashing and flashing through the forest and sky...

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- 90 -Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015The homestead built in 1872

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

Engaging all the senses no matter the season, this beautiful place with garden, woodland and harbour views, is a 15 minute drive from town (buses go by too).

Snow can fall one cold and stormy evening in mid-winter, and yet, the next sun filled day, flowers are blooming, bumble bees are buzzing and the southern winter birds are still calling their songs. Each season in the garden has its own rich beauty.

The air is fresh and infused with uplifting botanical scents. There are trees of all shapes and sizes, - and the mighty Matai - said to be over a thousand years old stands the tallest of them all. It is a vivid place indeed. Glenfalloch (Gaelic for hidden glen) is one of Dunedin’s gems.

It is a romantic place too, one that stirs the soul and spirit, and weddings are frequent.

You can also rent an electric bike and take a tour of the peninsula.

Glenfalloch Woodland Gardens is open to the public seven days a week. The restaurant has changing hours so call first, it is worth the extra few minutes to check and see if they are open for service - it is a wonderful place to have lunch, take in some beauty and restore the soul!

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G lenfallochWoodland

Gardens430 Portobello Rd,

Macandrew Bay, Dunedin

03 476 1006

http://glenfalloch.co.nz

The garden’s history:http://otagopeninsulatrust.co.nz/history/

http://otagopeninsulatrust.co.nz/glenfalloch-gardens/

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

Intensely empathic, horses read us humans before we can read ourselves, and they readily distinguish one person from another. An experienced equestrienne can make riding a horse look effortless, while a casual rider might not be able to make that same horse move or stop.

We ask a lot of horses. When they respond to humans less than co-operatively, they can be branded as difficult, fussy, stubborn, disobedient or useless... In fact an uncooperative horse is communicating: pain, discomfort, fear or simply dislike of a person. Whips and spurs are sometimes used to make the horse concede to human will, but there is another way. A person can develop an extraordinary relationship with a horse by considering how to support the horse and asking what can be done for it, instead of exacting service from the horse, often at a high cost.

If a dog is a man’s best friend, the horse might be humanity’s best friend. Throughout the ages we have used these beautiful and faithful creatures to carry our burdens, save us walking, plough our fields, support us in combat, to play sports and entertain us —but not before we’ve “broken” them in. The horse has a metal bar anchored in its mouth, a belt cinched tight around its girth, shoes nailed to its feet, and is made to do things its body was not built for; it is pulled, pushed, kicked, whipped, raced and sported. And then if a horse is injured thanks to human insistence and direction, it’s too often sent to the slaughterhouse.

Big and powerful though they are, horses are highly sensitive. Their survival in the wild depends upon their awareness and perception of imminent danger and on staying with the herd.

HARMONY WITH HORSES

THE POWER OF A GENTLE TOUCH A n I n t e r v i e w W i t h K i r s t e n W e n b o r n

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Story and photography by Caroline Davies

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Kirsten and Yordon

Yes, a person can have an instantaneous experience on occasion, but with most horses and most people, it simply takes time. It also takes effort, patience, awareness, and the willingness to change yourself much more than the horse. As we heal our horses, we heal ourselves and that’s when we can create a beautiful harmony. Equine Touch is one way of developing a great relationship and support our horses.”

Kirsten’s path to Equine Touch was far from straightforward. The art world was fine for most of her life, but something else called beyond painting a canvas. Things began to change when Kirsten’s horse, Minstrel, showed signs of distress. “Minstrel was very proud and very strong, but there was something wrong. When she was with the farrier, she would bury her head in my chest - I thought she was really telling me something. It turned out she had osteoarthritis, among other things. I

spent a year and a half taking care of her body before I had to put her down. Minstrel was the first horse I had ever owned. I had a real attachment to her, but realizing how much pain she had, I thought after that, I’m not riding anymore...

That’s when I really began to research the anatomy of the horse: the bio-mechanics, weight-bearing, what sports physically do to the horse, nutrition... I went into all of it. Minstrel was also one of my case studies when I started studying Equine Touch. Minstrel would kick and bite - she was very moody - but it was the pain she was enduring that caused this behaviour... I discovered that her ovaries were swollen, amongst other issues, and the saddle going on created a painful pressure. She was responding to the pain; you just don’t ride them when they’re not right. I earned my Equine Touch certificate before Minstrel died.”

Kirsten Wenborn is an Equine Touch practitioner. An artist with a Masters Degree in Fine Arts, she has shifted her gifts to the hands-on art of healing. Equine Touch is a gentle non-invasive form of body work where the practitioner’s hands move over the horse’s soft tissue, resulting in pain relief and relaxation for the horse, and assisting the healing process. Also a certified Reiki practitioner, Kirsten finds that using the two disciplines in combination can have a profoundly healing effect on a horse.

Kirsten is adamant about the diligent work it takes to achieve healing and harmony with horses. “No matter what, no matter how romantic and immediate it may look, you still have to ‘chop the wood and carry the water’. It takes time, effort and patience to reach those beautiful moments of harmony with our horses. And that is what people need to realize.

E Q U I N E T O U C H

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Horses are used from a young age, before their bone structure has fully developed. They don’t physically mature until they are five or six years old, and yet horses are raced at two, and jumped at four — as early as possible ‘broken in’, a term worth considering for the attitude it conveys. When they no longer perform according to our standards, instead of a gracious retirement in a green, safe field, many horses are taken straight to the slaughter house. Given what we ask of them, it is no wonder that horses endure physical pain for much of their lives — and most of it is completely unrecognised. “I know I can’t solve all the world’s problems, or all a horse’s problems or their caretakers’, but I can do a little something to help. Early on, I worked with a horse that had suffered much trauma. The few care options offered to its owners were challenging to them: two years of rehabilitation, perhaps no more riding ever, and regular treatments... I wondered how many humans would be willing to contribute to the reversal of pain and suffering on this level? It’s not an easy path to take. Equine rehabilitation can be a long process. It takes patience, a lot of love, a lot of giving and a lot understanding.”

It calls for a shift in thinking, consciousness and behaviour for most horse owners as well.

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Nugget and Danny: Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

looking for areas of tension. I’ve learned techniques that let me know if tension or pain is emotional or physical (it’s often both), but I’m gathering information all the time. Then I proceed with the Equine Touch. It’s not unlike physical therapies for humans.

Equine Touch works gently on the fascia (connective tissue) of the horse, also working gently with nerve endings, the nervous system, muscles, meridian lines, acupuncture points and junctures of muscles. It’s about basic body balance. It’s essentially non-invasive and for an extremely sensitive horse with high levels of trauma you can work simply with the energy body itself. It doesn’t take too many sessions before that extra sensitive horse will allow you to come in and use physical touch. You can be as light or firm as the horse will allow - some of the work is very similar to the Bowen Technique.

It can take me up to three sessions to assess how much time and how many sessions the horse might need. Very few

people will decide to go the long haul, as becomes apparent if more than eight sessions are needed. I give as many practical tools as I can so the horse’s owner can continue on, caring for and supporting the horse themselves.”

Although the work is rewarding and sees amazing results, it is challenging to work with horses in pain. “It’s not always an easy job to do. There can be times of inner crisis about where a horse is at physically and emotionally. A horse can be so far down the road and in so much pain, disconnected and ill, that I can do nothing but offer a bit of calming and soothing while the owner makes whatever difficult decisions are needed for themselves and their horse. The long history of the horse’s injuries can be deep and intense. If the situation is so very bad, euthanasia becomes a real thing, and that is a big deal for any owner of a horse to face, and for the one who is assisting in rehabilitation.”

Kirsten came across Equine Touch through the Dunedin Riding Centre where Karen Burrows, an Equine Touch instructor for the South Island of New Zealand worked on some of the horses. “I saw how, during the work, they would relax and drop their heads down. Having been a Reiki practitioner, I was intrigued immediately. So I took the Level One course, which is primarily for horse owners. I loved working on many different horses. After that I just kept going with each level until I became a certified practitioner. “

At the start of a session Kirsten advises her client that the horse may respond in unexpected ways and to give them space for that. “I’ll then take notes about the horse’s history of injuries. I start the work by going over the horse’s body lightly with my hands, along its main meridians. I’m looking for hot or cold reactive spots and anything uneven, such as uneven muscle development. I’m also getting the horse used to me and my touch. I’ll take a look at the feet and do a slight rotation to see how connected muscles are working. Generally, I’m

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9

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

Kirsten Wenborn with her two horses, Yordon (left) a full blooded Norwegian Fjord Horse and Nugget, thought to be a Welsh Pony cross

Type to enter text

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015Kirsten working with Nugget

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Photographs ~ Caroline Davies © 2015Kirsten demonstrating a touch of Equine Touch

of Centered Riding. Also, there is Linda Tellington-Jones and her sister Robyn Hood doing great work with horses with wonderful results. James French and Shelley Slingo with their “Trust Technique” can bring tears to your eyes it is so beautiful. All of these people still ride their horses, but they are just doing it in a different way.”

Indeed the concept of using a gentle hand can be very powerful and profound in working with horses. Robin Gates and Carolyn Resnick are also strong on liberty work, and Ray Hunt might have coined the term ‘Harmony With Horses’ (after his book) in the footsteps of his mentor Tom Dorrance. All of these people and their students, in deepening their relationship with horses take time with these amazing animals simply to ‘be’ with them. There is no work, no expectations, no riding, (maybe sharing a carrot) but simply being with them and hanging out.

d

Contact Kirsten at:

021 266 1947

Kirsten-m@xtra.co.nz

www.coastequine.weebly.com

Facebook

Reference Sites:

Jock Ruddock, Ivana Ruddock Founders of Equine Touch

http://www.theequinetouch.com

Jim Mastertonhttps://www.mastersonmethod.com

Peggy Cummingshttp://www.connectedriding.com

Sally Swifthttp://www.centeredriding.org

Linda Tellington-Joneshttp://www.ttouch.com

James French and Shelley Slingowww.trust-technique.com

There is a dominatory streak in humans, not only towards horses, but also between ourselves and regarding nature. What if we took ‘dominate and use’ out of the picture and chose to mutually benefit each other instead? Dominating and taking have been validated and imprinted in our society but what if we let the horse be our teacher and guide, reminding us to be present and stay present, relaxed, aware and focused. Spending time with a horse can bring about a change in attitude — and a great relationship based on giving, which allows the horse to feel safe, supported and respected.

There are many different ways to engage the horse’s genuine interest in us and develop a profound connection with them. Various approaches have been applied or revived around the world. “Besides Jock Ruddock who developed Equine Touch with veterinarian surgeon Ivana Ruddock, Jim Masterton does great massage work and is all about the horse first. There’s Peggy Cummings with her Connected Riding work - less tension in the human means less tension in the horse - and Sally Swift

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015Yordon overlooking Otago Harbour

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“For Odette” ~ Painting by Kirsten Wenborn

Editor’s note: Malibu, California: I also want to make a special note here and say thank you to a friend of mine from California, Talley Willmont Hutcherson, who taught me riding from the ‘perspective of the horse’. It is because of the very special work and learning the language of the horse with Talley that I could deeply appreciate Kirsten’s work. If you are in the Malibu, California area and interested in learning more about liberty work with horses, you will find Talley at Connecting With Horses:

http://www.horsebackridinglosangeles.org/connecting-with-horses/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2wbvhdaUt8

Facebook:

+1 619-493-4311

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Wa i k o u a i t i G a r d e n sA n o r g a n i c f a r m

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Just north of Dunedin, Waikouaiti Gardens, a fully certified organic two acre farm owned by Mark and Lynley Hunter, produces an abundance of fresh and sweet organic tomatoes, cucumbers, greens, eggs, summer squash & a wonderful variety of organic traditional and more exotic ‘hard to find’ seedlings.

Besides sourcing organic and heritage seeds from Koanga Gardens and Kings Seeds, Lynley also saves seeds herself to ensure a continual supply of the more unusual heritage varieties of vegetables, flowers and herbs. From their large glass and tunnel houses they are able to grow and provide a wide variety

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

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of tomatoes as well.

Shawn and Lauren, Mark and Lynley’s son and daughter, also help when they can with the farm. Shawn has a gift for raising chickens and is taking care of seven different breeds at the moment. The chickens are moved frequently from place to place in a portable home giving them a fresh space to feed and scratch from on a constant basis whilst keeping down the weeds and helping to fertilize and condition the soil at the same time.

Mark and Lynley both have backgrounds in plants and farming. They are concerned by the manufactured “long shelf life” of foods

produced with additives, preservatives and pesticides feeling nothing synthetically created can replace the high value of fresh organic produce.

If you are in the Dunedin area, and looking for high quality seedlings and fresh produce of the season and day, I highly recommend dropping into the Otago Farmers Market on a Saturday morning and meet this beautiful family during the Spring, Summer and Autumn season at the market.

Contact: 027 226 8744

- 121 -Aromatic sweet pea about to bloom from Waikouaiti Gardens , Shawn Hunter (centre) and Lynley Hunter on the right.

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015

Waikouaiti Beach at the end of the day a few blocks from Waikouaiti Gardens

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015Waikouaiti Beach at the end of the day a few blocks from Waikouaiti Gardens

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VOGEL S t KITCHENIn the heart of every good home, and city, is a good kitchen and Dunedin’s popular cafe, Vogel St Kitchen, is the heart and hub of the regenerating Warehouse Precinct. Surrounded by Dunedin’s heritage architecture, this is also a hot spot for some of the city’s fabulous murals and street art.

Riah McLean, creator and owner of Vogel St Kitchen, moved to Dunedin after the Christchurch earthquakes. Dunedin had always been a second home before she finally relocated here and considers this southern city to be one of New Zealand’s best kept secrets. Riah expressed a love for the vibrant and creative culture, the beautiful beaches, inspiring landscape, and of course - the heritage buildings that give the city so much of its character.

Along with the building’s owner, Lawrie Forbes, Riah financed the fabulous mural on the open wall side of the cafe, painted by internationally renowned street artist Phlegm, who also has work on Stafford and

Manse Streets in Dunedin. The Kitchen and the murals are pulling in a lot of interest from both locals and visitors to the city. A great way to spend a few hours is to visit the public artworks around the area and stop in at Vogel St Kitchen for refreshments.

With an upbeat and contemporary atmosphere, Vogel St Kitchen makes just about everything they offer and serve from scratch with real ingredients. The restaurant’s philosophy is simple - locally sourced food (as much as possible) with simple and fresh ingredients. The kitchen does much of their own baking, sourcing breads from local artisan bakeries, and eggs and meat are all free range, primarily from local Otago farmers with the very occasional stretch to Canterbury or Southland.

The interior of Vogel St Kitchen was largely designed by Riah who has a keen interest in design and most of the building work was done by Lawrie Forbes, well known for his contributions to the restoration of other

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Riah McLean photo courtesy VSK

heritage sites in Dunedin. What was not done between them was contracted to other local builders, craftsmen, suppliers and a significant portion of the materials used were recycled, repurposed, and reclaimed.VSK also contributes $500 on a regular basis to local charities and causes. The cafe hosted and supported the successful and lively annual Vogel St Party, and has given support to the Yellow Eyed

Penguin Trust, Hospice Shop, Neo Natal Trust, Physio Pool and Sophie Elliot Trust amongst others.

What a fabulous cafe! The atmosphere, service, integrity, generosity, philosophy and of course the menu offered make this a wonderful place to stop in for a good hearty meal with locally sourced and free range ingredients!

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Photos above ~ Isabella Harrix ~ courtesy Vogel St Kitchen

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Vogel St Kitchen76 Vogel St

Dunedin 901603-477 3623

http://www.vogelstkitchen.co.nz

Current HoursMon, Tues, Wed 7.30am -4.00pm

Thurs, Fri 7.30am - lateSat 8.30am - late Sun 8.30am - 4.00pm

Facebook Link

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H D R s o f t ~ P h o t o m a t i xRealistic, surrealistic and artistic imaging software - from subtle to extreme - for creative High Dynamic Range images.

See details on HDRsoft web site for details on plugins and stand alone applications. There is also a version of Photomatix Essentials that runs as an Elements Plugin.

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015St. Clair Beach, Dunedin

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015St. Clair Beach, Dunedin

I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over.

Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

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Photograph ~ Caroline Davies © 2015Hereweka Rainbow, Dunedin