Posts

Creating Natural Swimming Pools

Natural swimming pool near Dargaville, Northland, New Zealand - Photo Theresa Sjoquist

Build an environmentally sustainable swimming pool that uses only nature’s plants as a filtering system and requires no chemicals or cleaning. When Neil Hearn was invited to see the natural swimming pool of one of his customers actually in use, he took the opportunity to investigate since he was building a new home in rural […]

Ian Dalzell – New Zealand Ceramic Artist

t Glazed Vase by Ian Dalzell - Photo Stewart Nimmo Photography

Ian Dalzell is the only potter in New Zealand firing with coal. Based near Lake Brunner on the West Coast, his mentors include Yvonne Rust & Barry Brickell. Based at Kotuku, on NZ’s South Island West Coast, Ian uses a high BTU coal with some coking abilities which forms a bed on the fire bars […]

Ian Boustridge – New Zealand Jade Sculptor

Kakapo Survival Prayer by Ian Boustridge - Fiordland Jade - 1991 - Photo Urich Walthert

Among the world’s best contemporary jade sculptors (National Geographic 1987), master sculptor Ian Boustridge works the green stone in his native New Zealand. “I have a series of half-ton and multi-ton boulders from much earlier prospecting days,” says Ian Boustridge, “and it will take the rest of my life to sculpt from them the art […]

Yvonne Rust, QSM – Potter, Painter, Inspirational teacher

Spirits Bay by Yvonne Rust, QSM - Photo Theresa SjoquistTheresa Sjoquist

Yvonne Rust, QSM – An introduction – New Zealand’s influential pioneering potter, artist, arts teacher, with an unmatched gift for inspiring motivation. Yvonne Rust, QSM, was born in 1922 in Whangarei while her parents were living at Awarua in Northland, where her father had a few weeks earlier been posted as the native school headmaster. […]

Michael Browne – NZ Abstractionist Painter

Shag and Wild Water by Michael Browne - 301x401

Michael Browne, a New Zealand abstractionist painter, trained at the Royal College and went on to teach at Hammersmith, and Chelsea School of Art. Michael Browne was conceived in an alpine hut on Franz Josef Glacier in New Zealand, but he was born in Wigan, Lancashire, in the UK. In 1930 his mother, Ruth D […]