Arts Focus: Kids enjoy holiday drop-in sessions

Artist Joe Rowntree is exhibiting at CAN

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CAN general manager Lisa Feyen.

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Maeve and Nyla Smiley get creative at CAN during the school holidays

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Artist Joe Rowntree is exhibiting at CAN

by Lisa Feyen

Thank you to all the parents and caregivers that visited CAN over the last two weeks of the school holidays, bringing with them a throng of excited, creative kids.

Plenty of beautiful creations went home with the participants of the many pencil room art classes, St. Beads workshops and in the second week, CAN art play drop-in sessions.

The drop-in sessions offered children and their caregivers the opportunity to work together on a variety of activities, including drawing on a cityscape graffiti wall, folding origami, constructing and painting a boat, car or plane from recycled materials, or making and decorating a mask.

It was heart-warming to see the encouragement and guidance that the adults so willingly invested into the creations, and how happy this made the children. All of this was made possible with generous funding from Napier Creative Communities funding scheme and is certainly something we will run regularly for school holiday fun for the whole whānau.

This week, you will discover a new and somewhat different sculptural exhibition on display in the small gallery.

The Metamorphosis collaborative project is the brainchild of local artist Biddy Grant, who co-ordinated a group of artists over a period of two years. Eight artists from around New Zealand, working out of their comfort zone using free, discarded or recycled materials, generated or added to part of a sculptural form, and then posted it on to the next person to add more.

Each form was accompanied by a reflective journal created by the first artist and contents added by each artist as they worked on the form.

The result is a collection of twelve weird and wonderful forms and the associated story of their creation and pathways. The forms have not been exhibited before, so it is their first outing.

Carefully stored after being returned to Biddy from the last artist in each round, and subsequently rescued from the Napier floods, they are now on display in all their glory. This exhibition should not be missed if you enjoy an element of the fantastical, weird and wonderful.

This Saturday, May 15 at 5.30pm come along to the double opening of two artistic legends — one established and one in the making. Clare Plug has worked as a textile artist since completing a Craft Design Certificate at EIT in 1990.

In the beginning this was primarily in the quilt medium. She printed and dyed most of her own fabric and these were assembled and quilted by machine. Clare has exhibited widely in New Zealand and internationally, as well as completing further study in art-quilt making in the USA.

Her artworks draw from her lifelong passion for nature and the environment and it follows themes relating to the landscape. A highlight for Clare was being awarded an Antarctic artist residency in 2006, and since then she has been pursuing themes relating to issues of climate change.

View Clare's major exhibition of work Re-View until Thursday, June 3 in the main gallery.

Joe Rowntree is an emerging artist from Hawke's Bay who is fast gaining a reputation for his use of repurposed windows as an alternative canvas.

After winning the 2020 CANdid-50 People's Choice Award, Joseph was presented with a 2021 complimentary two week exhibition in the CAN small gallery.

Joe's resulting exhibition New School Relics, is a collection of studio works, reflecting his exploration of 'post-British empire' life in Aotearoa. This will be accompanied by Joe in a weekend residency, where the public will have the opportunity to watch the artist paint May 21-23.

Come along and meet Joe the opening of New School Relics - Saturday, May 15, at 5.30pm.

Artists, don't forget to enter the 2021 Hawke's Bay Art Review, the biennial selected exhibition and competition for all artists with links to Hawke's Bay which will be exhibited in September at CAN.

Thanks to Brayden Coldicutt and his team at Harcourts, the Premier Award has increased to a generous $2000, plus there will be six highly commended awards of $200 each. The deadline for entry is July 9, so check out the information available on the CAN website www.thecan.co.nz.

■ Lisa Feyen is the general manager for Creative Arts Napier (CAN), 16 Byron St. CAN is open seven days a week from Monday to Saturday, 10am-4pm and Sunday, 10am-2pm. Free entry. Info: 835-9448, thecan.co.nz or Facebook.