A treasure-trove of artistic inspiration

In a Coastal Taranaki studio Christina McLean builds beauty from a lifetime of collected objects and memories.

‘‘As a 10-year-old I saved all my apple and pear pips and made a necklace.’’

C hristina McLean is playing with patterns.

She sits at her art desk arranging seeds and pods, bird skulls and ram’s horn shells, sardine tins and fish bones.

Her studio is a compact and orderly space where the shelves are loaded with natural and human-made treasures in boxes, bowls, buckets and baskets.

‘‘I have collected all this stuff and one day they will turn into something.’’

The ‘‘something’’ are assemblages in bold and natural hues made from objects found in the outdoors, junk shops or arrived as gifts.

‘‘I take a photo of the first one, then I rearrange, rearrange, rearrange until the right one comes up.’’

By the end of this process, she has shot 40 to 50 photos to capture the different designs.

‘‘It never happens the first time.’’

Strong-patterned works hang on the walls of her art-making space at Pukearuhe, where husband John has a separate painting studio.

Visitors will be able to visit their gallery and meet the creative couple during the Taranaki Arts Trail on from October 29 to 31, and November 5 to 7.

Many of the artists, including the McLeans, are opening from the start date to the finish.

The arts event is running alongside the 10-day Taranaki Garden Festival, starring 43 properties, and the Taranaki Sustainable Backyards Trail, featuring 27 places to visit.

Christina’s studio is a peaceful space, which looks out on a grapevine and beyond towards the coast.

Patsy, a nearly 13-year-old fox terrier lies on a soft cushion in the corner.

‘‘She either sleeps in the corner of my studio or John’s.’’

CDs of many genres sit beside a bag showing Christina’s childhood stitching efforts.

Next to this is a psychedelic design embroidered on a top for eldest daughter Kirsty, when she was about seven, back in the 1970s. The other two McLean children are daughter Juliet and son Gregor.

‘‘Embroidery for me was colouring in with cotton and now the assemblages are like embroidery, but with bits and pieces and paint.’’

The objects are attached to a range of backgrounds, which Christina calls ‘‘canvases’’.

An ancient flute case from her early playing days in Aotearoa, cake storage tins, patty pans, old 78 record sleeves made of tarred paper… the foundation ideas are endless.

Christina’s gathering ways began from a young age.

‘‘Ever since I was a child in Switzerland, I have always loved leaves and seeds and collected them and pressed them. I think they are beautiful,’’ she says.

In 1952, when Christina was nine, her family moved from Schaffhausen in Switzerland to Tauranga.

‘‘My dad wanted to live in a tropical paradise like the Pacific islands.

‘‘They were wanting to get away from Europe after the war (WWII) and (to provide) a brighter future for my brother and I,’’ she says.

In her new home, Christina continued collecting.

‘‘As a 10-year-old I saved all my apple and pear pips and made a necklace.’’

Repeating designs have threaded their way from childhood to adulthood, and she’s shared the rhythm of shape and colour on the way.

In the early 1960s, she was in the second intake at teachers college in Waikato and John was in the third.

When she started teaching, patterning was part of the maths curriculum, so she got the new entrants to make designs with seeds and leaves. ‘‘I also got the kids to do embroidery and sewing – they loved it.’’

Before we go any further, let’s find out how Christina and John got stitched together.

He was in her brother’s class at school in Tauranga, and her artinterested parents would go to exhibitions, where John, even as a young man, was already showing paintings.

‘‘I have always thought of him as an artist.’’

In the mid-1960s, a week before Christina was going overseas, he asked her on a date to the pictures and was smitten.

When she sailed away, he followed her with sentiments.

‘‘There were flowers in the cabin in every port,’’ she smiles. ‘‘Then we had this aerogram romance.’’

Meanwhile, she did some teaching in Switzerland, hitchhiked around Europe and then taught in London.

In 1967, John asked from afar: ‘‘What are we going to do?’’

She smiles broadly: ‘‘I came back and here we are.’’

On October 28, they will have been married 54 years.

‘‘When we first came here in 1985, for 10 to 15 years when the sand dunes were still here, we used to catch flounder every day and I couldn’t bear to throw the skeletons out.’’

In a box on a bottom shelf, flounder spines are tumbled together like fallen scaffolding. ‘‘They are really ancient.’’

In a new work, called Desert Ghost Stories, she has trimmed the spines and, with intricacy, painted the columns pink-orange and the spikes green to represent cacti.

The ‘‘canvas’’ for this assemblage is an antique paint case that belonged to her father.

Before she began these artworks, Christina made collagelike works on paper.

About 25 years ago, she had a successful exhibition with fabric and textile artist Mary Donald in a New Plymouth gallery.

Leading the way upstairs in the house that John built over five years using found and swapped materials, she stands before a framed work from that early show.

The collage-style work is patterned using camellia leaf skeletons, which look as gossamer as ghosts. ‘‘I found them all.’’

Other works included pine needles, which complemented Mary’s work because she used them for weaving.

Back in the studio, the shelves hold boxes filled with leaves of ginkgo, maple and kowhai, and petals of camellia and bougainvillea, which she has pressed in books.

‘‘You have to put your hand in that,’’ she holds out a bucket of shimmering black flax seeds collected about 20 years ago. ‘‘Wouldn’t you like to lie in that?’’

She had a fanciful thought to decorate the outside of a bath, fill it with flax seeds and place it on the coast as an installation called Seed Bed and Foreshore.

‘‘Has she been telling you seedy stories,’’ John laughs later.

More resources include harakeke pods, magnolia seed heads, pistachio shells, camellia seeds, sparkling Easter egg papers, wooden Cuisenaire rods, silver teaspoons with decorative handles, the head often severed from handle.

These resources have been gathered, given or salvaged.

Many of Christina’s findings are painted with acrylics and always held in place by resin, creating exotic, festive and tropical assemblages in colours that work well or hold memories of visiting Morocco or Kirsty and her family in Brunei.

Her design process is instinctive. ‘‘I just know when it’s done and I can’t do any more, and that’s that, it’s finished.’’

Local treasure

Cafe´ 487 is a place the locals recommend for friendly service, excellent coffee and great food. It offers breakfast and lunch, six days a week, and dinner on the weekends. Open Tuesday to Thursday, 9am to 2.30pm, and Friday to Sunday, 9.30am to 8.30pm at 487 Mokau Rd, Mimi, Urenui 4377.

If you’re keen for a round in a rural setting, head to the Urenui Golf Course. The nine-hole course also allows for an 18-hole game. Players can learn a bit of history while taking in views of the beach, river and Taranaki Maunga. For bookings, go to www.taranakigolf. co.nz or sign in at the carpark booth.

For golfers, water lovers and adventurers, the Urenui Beach Camp provides accommodation options. There are cabins, caravans, along with powered and non-powered sites. There’s wi-fi, an on-site shop, and a beach and river to explore. Visit www. urenuibeachcamp.co.nz – This story is published as a partnership between the Taranaki Daily News and the arts festival charitable trust TAFT.