Alan Wehipeihana never looked back after becoming a professional artist in his early 40s

Alan Wehipeihana creating another masterpiece.

On the first floor of the Holtom's Buildings, in Beach Rd, Paekākāriki, Alan Wehipeihana is deep in concentration as he puts the finishing touches on another artwork.

His environment is an artist's paradise with heaps of space to work in, a regular flow of customers to have a yarn with, and close to cafes for that caffeine fix or bite to eat.

The floor, with various rooms, has also become a collective art space for a dozen artists called the Paekākāriki Art Studios.

People can wander through the studios and see the artists at work as well as view the many artworks that are exhibited.

The collective formed recently after the building had a lot of earthquake strengthening and other improvements.

Alan has been working in the building long before the collective came to fruition though.

The 71-year-old has come a long way since he decided to become a fulltime artist at the age of 42.

Born in Taihape, it wasn't long before his family moved to Kāpiti and settled in Raumati Beach.

Alan attended Raumati Beach School, then Kāpiti College, where art wasn't on his radar, before going to Victoria University because it seemed to be the thing to do at the time.

Artwork by Alan Wehipeihana.

"I had no idea what I wanted to do so just followed the crowd to uni but that didn't really suit me at all so I pulled out halfway through the year and got a job as a rubbish man.

"In those days you weren't able to put a bin out in Wellington so we had to carry bags from people's backyards.

"There was me and two Jehovah's Witnesses in the back while the driver was an ex-Commonwealth Games boxer for New Zealand."

He married Janet Mclean, who he knew since college, and they bought a place in Tasman St, Wellington.

Alan would have a wide variety of jobs before art came calling many years later including postman, landscape gardener, house painter, lawnmower, haymaker, pea harvester, and biscuit maker.

While working in Wellington, Alan was introduced to stained glass by Chris Maclean who was working in Willis St.

"I was interested so he imported some tools for me including soldering irons.

"I used to pull a lot of old glass out of windows and create a lot of designs."

When Janet became pregnant they decided to leave city life for the peaceful haven of Paekākāriki.

They bought a house in Ames St where they would raise their three children, Hannah, Kate and Ben.

One day Alan found some fine grain limestones on the beach in the Wairarapa and took them around to his carver friend Daryl Gray in Pingau St.

"I did a couple of scribbles on the stones and came back to see him a few weeks later and he had carved them.

"I really wanted to learn to carve stone so every day after work from my postie run, for about two years, I went to his studio and we carved stones.

"We took a few along to museum shops, and things like that, to see if anyone would be interested in buying them, and they were, so at the age of 42 I gave up my postie run much to people's horror."

More artwork by Alan Wehipeihana.

He set up an art studio in the basement of his Ames St home and then moved into a downstairs studio in the Holtom's Buildings after his marriage ended.

Stonework led to wood carving, which led to painting and mixed media, and more.

He moved from his studio into the first floor of the Holtom's Buildings which offered a very expansive space to work from.

"In the beginning, I had the whole top floor.

"I took over from Gary Freemantle who used to have a gallery and flat on the first floor.

"It was an artist's dream really."

Throughout the years, Alan has created countless artworks, held numerous exhibitions, and sold artwork around the world.

"In the beginning, I pushed my artwork out everywhere [to galleries] but I've gone off the boil a little bit now and pretty much sell most of my stuff from here now."

Alan remembers creating anchor stones for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

Various politicians such as Jenny Shipley, Helen Clark, and Don McKinnon took anchor stones overseas as gifts.

And Jim Bolger "put one of my stones into a time capsule in the Philippines".

One of the more quirky pieces of artwork included using the spines of Reader's Digest books.

"I used to see the books in the second-hand shops.

"They were cheap and no one seemed to want them, and I thought 'how the hell can I use them?'.

Artwork called Potama using spines from law books.

"So I put them onto half-round mouldings, which meant you could saw them, nail them, do whatever you like, and made patterns.

"The books had to be cheap because there were about 343 book spines in the artwork."

The artwork caught the attention of a visitor to the gallery.

"One day a woman was looking at it and said 'do you want a law library?'

"I called Daryl in and we ended up going into judge's chambers, Court of Appeal, and places like that, to source law books.

"We ended up getting a commission by Parliamentary Services when they found out what we were doing, and our artwork, called Poutama, now hangs in Parliament Buildings."

Alan has had a few short stories published, and there's talk of writing a book, though he's not keen on deadlines.

He's just happy focusing on creating more artwork.

"It's a nice feeling to be so engaged with something that you're not aware of anything else going on around you.

"It's almost like a meditative process."

- This article appears in the Celebrating Kāpiti spring/summer 2022 edition.