Philippa Stevenson: Stone-struck by works of old rock at Middle-earth

There's an air of antiquity about modern, bustling Matamata.

We're greeted on aptly named Broadway with a welcome to its alter ego, Hobbiton, which we well know is an ancient land albeit a fictional one.

The nearby tourist office, decked out like a Hobbit hole, is continually besieged by busloads of Lord of the Rings fans or innocent travellers who have just unearthed Middle-earth.

In the past fortnight, the constant stream of tourists have had an extra option - step right to be guided to a story-book ancient world, or left for remnants of a genuine underworld forged in fire and brimstone eons ago.

Not surprisingly, plenty have stepped left, cameras flashing in the cool of an oak tree-shaded park where they take the golden chance to record and chat to the 20 sculptors chiselling and grinding away at Matamata's 16th annual sculpture symposium.

The artworks are being hewn from the local Hinuera stone, donated by the Firth quarry just up the valley from the town and barely a rock's lob from the popular Hobbiton movie set.

The contrast is dramatic. The film set unexpectedly living on past its brief date with videotape, and the prehistoric stone hewn from a primeval river bank where it has lain since deposited in a volcanic eruption more than a million years ago.

Many of the visitors prove more familiar with the lore of fantasy land than the science of their own earth's formation or the creation of sculpture.

Symposium organiser and tutor Jude Dobson and fellow sculptor Diane Scott quickly tick off the bystanders' top five questions - is the stone hard, will it last, what sort of stone is it, is it hard work and how long will the sculpture take to finish?

The sculptors are happy to chat. It is hard work and they usually chip away in isolation, says another artist, Gillian Pratt. "It's a good break away from the backyard and talking to people gives you a chance to rest," she says.

As organiser, Dobson has more distractions than most, but gentle folds slowly emerge from her chunk of golden stone, despite the fact that she has "lost count of the number of pictures I've had taken with foreigners - German, Taiwanese, Japanese".

The symposium is about sharing the art and educating people in what it takes to create it.

Scott, now a full-time sculptor and painter, is an original of the Matamata symposium begun 16 years ago by local sculptor Anne de Silva. She turned out 12 years straight and has now returned after a break.

"This symposium must have encouraged hundreds of sculptors," she says. "It gives people a go and a lot of them have become full-time artists."

Dobson is another graduate. "I was a spectator for the first two years. I was too scared to talk to the sculptors." She's now attended nine of the town's symposiums, works full time as an artist and tutors others.

And visitors are rapt too. A Kiwi Experience tour bus driver had to lure one stone-struck passenger away by pretending to drive off without her.

Tauranga architect Ashley Grant has attended the symposium three times. It's the only time he sculpts. He has a penchant for creating bird forms but soft spots in the stone or embedded pumice have a habit of dictating the finished work.

He won't be ending up with the piece he'd planned. "It's a bit of a relief when it starts to reveal what it is going to be."

Jocelyn Pratt divulges another commonly asked question - will you be finished that today? She leaps at the chance to say it will take days of hard, dusty, meticulous work to create her piece. It gives people an idea of the effort involved.

Scott adds that it is years of knowledge that is the real value in artworks. Her 15 years of experience gives her the confidence to set a price for her pieces and stick to it. But Dobson says the resolve of some of the artists will be tested at Saturday's auction, which closes the symposium.

Help is at hand for the wavering, though. Next to the event site is the open-air Eric Kirkness Millennium Sculpture Gallery, named after a past president of the symposium who was a prime example of the flintiness of the Matamata sculptors. He was still chiselling away in his 80s.

In his gallery the million-year-old Hinuera ignimbrite, rendered into shapes from human form to taniwha, are on show year-round.

And yes, if you buy one it will see you out. And your grandchildren, and theirs.