Hemi Mellars crafting his pendants during a volunteering shift at the Feilding Art Centre. Photo / Sonya Holm
Hemi Mellars crafting his pendants during a volunteering shift at the Feilding Art Centre. Photo / Sonya Holm
Hemi Mellars is turning a childhood passion for rock collecting into pendants.
The Kimbolton artist finds character and energy in his geological discoveries.
“I just let the stone speak for itself,” Mellars says.
Initially studying geology in Christchurch, Mellars moved to philosophy but at the completion of his degree Covid-19 swept through the country.
“Over Covid, I just took to my childhood passion of collecting rocks and turned it into slowly learning how to do little pieces [of jewellery],” Mellars says.
Self-taught, it’s “trial and error” for Mellars, who will drop into YouTube if he needs to learn something specific.
Serpentine, nephrite and petrified wood are foraged from around the motu. Highlighting specific pieces, he says, “That big chunk of quartz and that little agate, and this piece of calcite all came off the [same] mountain.”
“Just looking at nature and seeing, like the similarities between this rock and that rock and how they might have formed. Like this oxidized rind, like how it might have travelled around the river.”
Mellars mostly works with New Zealand finds, but is also inspired by “odd pieces from around the place” including fire opals and opalised ammonite fossils from Mexico.
“I’m trying to make it look as natural as possible … or trying to make its spirit more visibly present.”
He is Ngāti Porou, part of the Paniora Spanish line.
“In the 1800s a young lad, 18 years old, came over to New Zealand named Manuel José and he ended up courting five of the Ngāti Porou women and ended up having 40-something kids. There’s a lot of us about.”
Mexican fire opals and opalised ammonite in the works and a serpentine pendant sourced from the top of the South Island. Photo / Sonya Holm
His business is called Ki uta ki tai Designs, which means from mountain to sea and “is an aspect of kaitiakitanga which is guardianship”.
“In Māori we say everything has mauri, so has spirit or an energy about it. And so, for me, it’s like I look at a stone and I see the character and what it potentially wants to be.”
Mellars’ influences stem from philosophy, history and numerology as well as geology. “[Numerology] is one way for me to look at how the energy is translated into some way of understanding.” Sometimes he incorporates his “signature” of three dots or lines into designs.
This is Mellars’ fourth year of making jewellery, which he says is important for his mental health. He joined the Feilding and District Art Society a year ago.
With two paid jobs, Mellars spends four days a week at Biophive and most weekends at the Bees for Trees nursery.
But Monday afternoons he volunteers at the Feilding Art Centre, where he works on his craft while surrounded by “beautiful art to get lost in”.
Mellars’ jewellery connects with people, he says, because they’ve been to the place the ancient stone or petrified wood came from or they have some special connection to it.
“It’s really humbling to have that sort of connection and relationship with people that I’ve never even met before.”
Sonya Holm is a freelance journalist based in Palmerston North.
Mexican fire opal and copper wire-wrap pendants. Photo / Sonya Holm
