Artfest to stun the senses

By ROSALEEN MacBRAYNE

While Papamoa artist Paula Knight exhibits her work at her beachside home and garden this week her husband, hunting and fishing guide Miles Rushmer, will feed visitors wild venison and trout.

Their efforts are a small part of the huge feast for the senses Tauranga is staging this week with its biennial Garden and Artfest.

Two years ago, the event attracted more than 15,000 people. This time organisers say it will be even bigger and better.

Garden and art enthusiasts will be able to enjoy 119 art stops and gardens in the Western Bay of Plenty between Waihi Beach and Paengaroa.

More than 100 individuals and art groups will exhibit, including sculptors, painters, carvers and mosaic artists.

The festival also features a wide variety of gardens, a village fair, a tivaevae exhibition, an ikebana display, a quilting competition, a children's hanging outdoor art contest and a floral art display.

For the tastebuds, there will be an old-fashioned tea party, exquisite cakes and special breakfasts at top locations.

Evening garden parties offer wine, food and musical entertainment.

This is the fourth Garden and Artfest Paula Knight has been part of. Her acrylic and water colour paintings reflect the distinctive New Zealand life around her which, she says, she quickly began to appreciate again after travelling and living overseas, working as a graphic designer.

Settled at Papamoa for 12 years, Knight paints and teaches art from home.

As well as her husband's wild fish and deer delicacies, visitors will be offered handmade cheeses, home baking and homemade lemonade for refreshment.

Adding a splash of colour from the Pacific Islands, the tivaevae exhibition shows Cook Islands textile art at its best. On display at the waterfront Cargo Shed in Dive Cres is a unique collection of bed covers, many never before seen in public.

Most of the colourful appliqued, pieced and hand-embroidered quilts, made by women communally, become family heirlooms.

The ikebana demonstration at the weekend will showcase the skills of visitors from Tauranga's sister city, Hitachi, in Japan.

A quadruple gold medal winner from the Ellerslie Flower Show, Clinton Bowyer, and wife Martine have designed a fantasy beach for the floral "xposay", to be staged in a vast marquee at Tauranga's Mills Reef Winery on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Expect truckloads of sand, sandcastles up to 4m tall, seagulls, pohutukawa and a pier leading to the sea to be part of the illusion, which will be the setting for floral designs also with a beach theme.

Garden and Artfest