Jewellery

ERNESTO OVALLE MEDIUM: JEWELLERY BASED: AUCKLAND CITY Ernesto Ovalle is a Master Goldsmith and Sculptor originally from Bogota, Colombia. He moved to New Zealand in the late 90’s and found it quite an ‘environmental’ shock for someone who grew up in the concrete jungle of Bogota. “All the nature moved my mind in a different way”. Ernesto comes from a family of Jewelers and Watch Makers. His grandfather and uncles were all jewelers and the knowledge, experience and expertise of working with different metals that has been passed down through the generations to Ernesto is now being passed onto his son, Sebastian. Ernesto added to his family training with a Master of Fine Arts in Bogota and he has also studied alongside Peter Minturn in New Zealand. Ernesto cleverly integrates nature into his fine jewellery with some pieces created using white Ammonite, Paua shell and grains of black sand cast in resin. He gives a second life to the New Zealand Copper Penny by incorporating it into rings. Ernesto also offers a range of contemporary Greenstone. This versatile Artist can show his love for the West Coast through his creations. “I love to recreate the land in my pieces, the gorgeous simplicity of grains of black sand from Muriwai with Ammonite or Paua”

ROBYN KUNIN MEDIUM: CERAMICS BASED: SWANSON Robyn Kunin was born in Palmerston North, NZ and has a background in teaching. She is a ceramic artist whose unique hand-built work reflects both her awareness of New Zealand’s location in the Pacific as well as the native bush that surrounds her home and studio nestled in the foothills of the Waitakere Ranges. Robyn sculpts every one of her ceramic art works by hand, creating exquisitely contoured artefacts with which to decorate the house and the body. Her works vary in shape, form and finish. From the brightly coloured to the mute toned, each glaze – like each piece- is unique. Whether adorned by delicate clay ponga, or bearing impressions from hand embroidered lace and plants both wild and cultivated from around her home, each of these works is a small tribute to the natural beauty of Aotearoa.

ARTIST: KU BAILEY MEDIUM: MULTI-MEDIA BASED: AUCKLAND Ku Bailey, of Te Aupouri and Irish descent, is a specialist in quilting, fibre art, painting, flax weaving, and jewellery design. Ku’s dyslexia, only diagnosed in her thirties, meant she embraced the visual arts with enthusiasm and relief, rather than academia. Her Irish grandmother taught her needlecraft; embroidering, quilting, knitting and other handcrafts. Experience in the textile world, and as Maori arts educator and specialist, have further informed her approach. Her early designs included an award winning ‘taniko’ style watchstrap and a taniko panel for St Stephen’s Maori Boys College. She later taught weaving at Kakariki Marae, Green Bay High School, Waitakere, and promoted Maori arts for Te Unga Waka Maori Women’s Welfare League. A period working in the wool industry was followed by an exploration of fibre art using wool. Two such works were accepted in the Waipukarau National Art Awards. An award winning quilter, painter and arts and crafts tutor, Ku’s quilt-narrative Te Putake O Te Ao, was a finalist in the ‘Millenium Quilt Exhibition’ in Texas, 2000. Today Ku designs brooches, button necklaces, teaches quilting, doll-making and needlework, and also exhibits with the Titirangi Painter’s group.

KYLEE WACKROW MEDIUM: JEWELLERY BASED: CENTRAL AUCKLAND Kylee Wackrow gained a Bachelor of Arts at Wintec, Hamilton, ten years ago. For the previous five years she has been teaching art, now as the Head of Art at Marist College. Kylee has over a decade of experience in quirky jewellery design. This range, Throwing Feathers, resulted after years of producing fun alternatives to the prevailing trends, both for herself and her friends. These off-beat designs were largely inspired by her travels to Mexico and Japan and their craft markets. In Japan she spent hours poring over and collecting beautiful origami and washi papers. In Mexico she saw the artisans produce highly innovative jewellery using all manner of recycled elements. Their example led her to consider ways in which she could incorporate bottle caps, resin, old magazines and vintage imagery with a cultural twist. Images from sources such as old Mexican ‘loteria’ tickets are extracted and enclosed in resin. They often have a quirky edginess to them; and literally so, when encircled by a bottle top. Kylee’s jewellery pieces appeal with their different individual qualities, from the ‘pretty’, to the cute and off-beat.

JOLIE HUTCHINGS MEDIUM: CERAMICS BASED: AUCKLAND Jolie Hutchings is a self-trained ceramicist who works at Corban Estate Art Centre. Surrounded by passionate practitioners in various fields she became inspired, in 2010, to produce a body of small ceramic wall hangings which explore a 1950s feminine aesthetic. Her nostalgic glazed ceramics of delicately embellished dresses tap into her longstanding interest in modes of femininity and fashion. She later explored these concerns in a range of ceramic cameo brooches. These fuse a cameo tradition which dates from the 18th century, with a range of affectionate silhouettes, including distinguished doggies. Larger hand-painted ceramic works which reference the silhouette portrait, as well as fifties fashion and feminine modes, featured in the CEAC exhibition: The Deep end of the mud hole: Corban Artists work with clay (2011). Pert, playful, wry and a bit cheeky, her stylish female protagonists with idiosyncratic features pay homage to the mysterious and elegant aspect of the ornamental cameo with wit and charm.

SANAE SHIRAI MEDIUM: CERAMIC JEWELLERY BASED: AUCKLAND When Sanae Shirai was five years old she started to shape ceramic cats, based on images she had of her family pet. Then at the age of fifteen she took up Japanese tea-making ceremony lessons. For the next six years her interest in Japanese tea-making grew, she found the ceramic tea-making instruments delightful, their natural quiet colours, asymmetrical shapes and simple textures reawakened her interest in ceramics and influenced her future work. Sanae finds the New Zealand taste which leans towards vibrant colours and freestyle is very different from the Japanese tradition, and she enjoys incorporating both into a unique blend of traditional Japanese and contemporary New Zealand in her work. Trained in Japan, Sanae is gaining a reputation for creating elegant and understated pieces.