No-one knows why they've been appearing around Masterton, and now the mystery artist is creating a Wall of Courage.
Normally people use tarpaulins to keep things dry, but someone in Masterton is using blue tarps for a different purpose - to create brightly painted banners.
One of the tarpaulin banners dotted around Masterton
As you drive or walk around Masterton they appear out of nowhere, at a roundabout or on a fence, each one with uplifting words like “I’ve got this” or “Don’t worry be happy”.
Like graffiti but made of very different materials and with very different messages, the banners are the work of Elaine Hurndell, an artist who lives at a place called the Wop Wops.
Here for the past two years, Elaine has been on a mission - sewing, cutting out letters and glueing them to tarps to make what she calls her Goodwill Banners.
Elaine Hurndell at her trusty sewing machine making Goodwill Banners.
An informal survey shows 13 of her banners around the small North Island town, including:
“Don’t let anyone ever dull your sparkle” at Solway Primary School.
“You are more worthy than you have been told” on the fence at the Masterton Courthouse.
“Try a little kindness” opposite the petrol station.
“They’re there to lift people’s spirits up,” Elaine said, although she sometimes doesn’t get the fence owner’s permission. “Sometimes I just put them up and run. And they’ve got no number on them to return them!
“I went to Pak’nSave one day and a woman said to me, ‘people are so rude to us here’. So I wrote “Try a little kindness” on a banner and took it to Pak’nSave but they wouldn’t put it up, which was a shame.”
“I’m actually going to go to a business across the road and see if I can hang it on the fence.”
It’s not just banners dotted all over Masterton’s landscape. Elaine has made a life-size angel statue called Grace situated in Robinson Park.
Elaine Hurndell standing next to her statue Grace.
“Grace is a symbol of strength and self-belief, because at the end of the day, each of us are angels with broken wings and we can only fly by embracing each other.”
The statue even has a letter box at the back for anyone to post a personal message to a loved one they have lost or for when they are going through a hard time.
“People just need a way to release and feel they are being heard in a place that isn’t a cemetery, isn’t a church and where they can just go and reflect.”
Elaine’s latest Goodwill Banner campaign is called the “Wall of Courage” and aims to stop bullying.
Just a stone’s throw from the statue, Elaine has spied the perfect spot for it - a massive fence on the way to the hospital. So she gets started on it.
As the fence is loaded up with banners, Elaine outlines her mission.
“I’d like to strengthen the people who are being bullied so it doesn’t affect them. It’s time we stopped these bullies. It’s in the kindergartens now. Let the child be a child without being called names.”
“This is a really good start and hopefully the ball can roll from here to the people of New Zealand to just have a bit of self-worth about yourself and your family and friends around you, because you never know what anyone’s going through.”
For now, the Masterton Wall of Courage is there for anyone to put up their own contribution. Elaine hopes a further 150 banners will be made by school children and by people from all walks of life.
The Wall of courage
“For the person who is being bullied, standing there reading their banners, they will feel supported and not on their own any more,” she said.
“Here we can show people love as opposed to animosity.”
