Creative ID: 24
Any schools within the Whanganui area.
My arts or creative practice (including details about my specific focus within that art form/practice and my strengths)
I am an environmental artist with a diverse interdisciplinary scope of practice in site-specific installation, performance, and video. My strength lies in a sensitive, intuitive and often poetic approach to materials and site. I have an eye for colour and detail. I enjoy collaboration and interactive processes. With a master's in environmental installation and sculptural practice and an undergraduate degree in painting I have a deep love and working knowledge of many different art forms and mediums that I would be delighted to share and inspire young minds with. I have an open, engaging, and experimental approach to working with others.
My track record of experience and success - or the track record of experience and success of the creative or artist that I will partner with
Recently I collaborated with four schools on a planting installation in Whanganui. I was the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship in 2012 to attend an artist fellowship in San Francisco. In 2007 I graduated with a Master's Degree in Fine Arts from Elam, University of Auckland, in environmental installation. I have lived and worked in New Zealand, Germany, India, Indonesia, USA, Japan, Mexico, and the Netherlands; these places and their inherent attitudes and patterns of consumption have greatly influenced my visual practice evidenced by successive site-responsive projects navigating three successive, sodden Monsoon seasons, questioning our human relationship with water, waste, weather, and posing alternative values in a changing environment. In my early career, my work has been selected for exhibition across an international spectrum, framed by environments ranging from urban canals and coastal national parks to desert villages, to the exterior of a working rubbish truck, an artist booth at PULSE Contemporary Art Fair, and the underbellies and back street alleys of Wellington, New York, Melbourne, and Berlin.
Describe the experience you have had working with children or young people, teaching or facilitating creative processes
As part of TEMP 2017, I led a series of art and climate change workshops with school groups, primary to secondary. With Māpura Studios as an Art Tutor I have tutored weekly art studio classes with children and youth with special needs and disabilities in schools and at Māpura Studios. My passion for art shines outwardly so in me you will find an enthusiastic talent for captivating the imaginations of the people I work with. For five years I worked at Starship Children’s Hospital facilitating the Starship Teen Lounge as an Adolescent Play Specialist providing art, craft and creative recreation programmes to teenage patients and at times undertaking large-scale hospital-wide art projects. Six months full time teaching Senior Arts at a college in Auckland in 2004 and three years teaching English overseas in Japan and Mexico in my early 20s contribute to my teaching knowledge and skills, I have also given art classes in holiday programmes while I was a student studying my MFA at Elam, and undertaken art projects with school children in India; a collective mural project in Udaipur 2016 and during an International Artist Camp 2011 – an environmental installation project in India.
Why I want to be part of the Creatives in Schools programme and how my involvement will link to my creative practice
I am passionate about art for wellbeing and mental health; creativity and expression are a vital part of the community. Art is at my core – inspiring local rangatahi to engage with and have fun learning about and exploring contemporary art processes is something I love to be directly involved in. Working with children and youth on collaborative art projects would be both motivating and enjoyable for me. I wish to share the joy of creating and my love and care for the environment with others.