Leonie Wise, Where the Road Ends

we wonder if there is a place here for us,
if we will tell our stories to island visitors some years down the line,
this island gets under our skin, into our blood
little remnants of it coming home in our memories.

Leonie Wise, extract from where the road ends.

Beautiful people, beautiful photographs, beautiful words.

Here is just one of Leonie's exquisite  images from that particular post.

She has opened a conversation for me ...  we wonder if there is a place here for us.

I know that curiousity.  I have been looking for 'home' since forever.  I'll know it when I find it and in the meanwhile I'll enjoy where I am, like always.  I've spent the last 30 years moving towns, moving countries. 

Perhaps it will always be like this for me but perhaps one day I'll arrive ... and somehow I'll know that I'm home.

Little Bushman, Peaceful Man - with the NZ Symphony Orchestra.

"Though some, in darkness of heart, seeing their land ravished, might wish to take arms and kill the aggressors, I say it must not be. Let not the Pakehas think to succeed by reason of their guns ... I want not war, but they do. The flashes of their guns have singed our eyelashes, and yet they say they do not want war ... The government come not hither to reason, but go to out-of-the-way places. They work secretly, but I speak in public so that all may hear, " Te Whiti-o-Rongomai III told his people in March 1880.

You can read more of the man who was rumoured to have influenced Ghandi in his peaceful resistance.  Tim Finn and the Herbs sang about Te Whiti too.

Regarding the music clip at the end of this post,  Mark Bell asks the question of Little Bushman, regarding the 2009 collaboration between Little Bushman, composer/arranger Psathas and the NZ Symphony Orchestra – did he actually manage to enjoy the experience given the enormity and pressure of such an undertaking?

His reply, over on Mark's interview, made me laugh.

I am loving all this digging around and finding New Zealand music and movies I've missed.

Writing, Football, and Photography

Raf came to dinner last night, asking if he might use my camera flash while he was over.  He was curious about the process of using the master/slave set-up on his camera. Neither of us had attempted it before and it was the best fun I had had in a while.  More to follow as I experiment with that in the months ahead as it turns out the Gert's Metz flash is able to make a wireless connection with my Canon flash. 

The photograph following was taken when Raf put down his beautiful Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III, with its battery pack attached and picked up the smaller Canon EOS 550D, laughing over how to hold it in his big hands.  I liked how it looked and took a series of images with my beloved Canon EOS 5D MkII.

It was a lovely evening.  Thank you, Raf, for opening the door into this new way of working with light.

Pa Boys, a New Zealand Movie by Himiona Grace

There's a new New Zealand movie due out this February and I want to see it.  I found the song below and loved it. The movie is The Pa Boys.

I wandered off and discovered this interview with the man behind it all, Himiona Grace - ‎director, writer, photographer and musician too. 

I desperately want to see it but I guess I'm waiting until it comes out on DVD. 

Listening to Himiona's story unfold brought back memories of a weekend spent at a writing workshop on Stewart Island with Himiona's mother, one of New Zealand's best writers, Patricia Grace.  And then he's married to New Zealand writer Briar Grace-Smith.  Someone I missed the arrival of by virtue of losing track of New Zealand's arts scene.  He loved the anonimity of this ... he was either Patricia Grace's son or Briar Grace-Smith's husband.  Meanwhile, he's quietly got on and created something marvelous.  Or so it seems.

The Daily Photo Challenge ...

The element of 'challenge' continues to dominate as I work at finding a photograph for every day of this year however my lovely friend and I are delighting as our stories and images roll out over days.

Today's image began as a shot of the beautiful dish with the delicate fern leaf imprint inside.  The one that was gifted to me by the truly special New Zealand family I had the pleasure of photographing when I was home.  But as I worked at composition and struggled with light ... because yes, I did leave it until the last moment, it soon became clear that it was more about the bracelets and necklace I wear everyday.  They nestle there in the dish over-night.

The jade necklace was carved by Jayme Anderson, a talented New Zealand artist and jade carver. I was told that the jade is Marsden Jade and that delighted me.  Hokitika and the wild west coast stole my heart way back when I was teenager.

A little from Jayme's business card , 'Jayme's love for jade and carving began in 1996, the first year of his Diploma of Visual Art and Design.  He graduated in 1998.

Later it tells me that, 'From his 10 acre lifestyle block at Marsden, home of the flower jade, he travels internationally and pushes the boundaries in techniques and stone limitations. His innovative work is in the Spiritwrestler Gallery in Canada and private collections in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K...

I feel extraordinarily fortunate to have a piece of his work.  It was well worth the horrific journey through my old nemesis ... the Homer Tunnel.  That story is here.

'Art Has A Function Beyond Beauty' ... Shannon Galpin

I loved this!!

"The fruit of years of collaborative work between Afghan and Western photographers and photojournalists, Streets of Afghanistan chronicles one of the most captivating efforts to connect communities and cultures through our common humanity and the power of art."

You can read the rest of this over on the Youtube page.

Shannon Galpin, the woman who said on the video that 'art has a function beyond beauty', has her own website - Mountain2Mountain.  She is so very inspiring!