A day of art, hiking and a late night trek to see glow worms

While in Matakana, Alysn brought us for a studio visit with her friend Helen Carpenter who is a painter, printmaker and collage artist and runs the Takatu studio space where she hosts classes and rents workspace to other artists.

I love seeing artists workspaces and learning about their process. Helen creates beautiful, etherial landscapes using geli plates and other printmaking methods to make patterned papers that she tears and collages, then adds details and textures to the imagery with pens, brushes and other tools.

After our studio visit we went to Brick Bay winery which has a fantastic sculpture trail and restaurant.

It was a gorgeous, warm day to hike over the rolling hills and through shady forested trails while looking at wonderful art.

Aren’t these tree trunks fantastic? Such gorgeous color and pattern, nature is an amazing designer.

Which obviously inspired this artist working with corrugated metal.

This metal comb sculpture was particularly moving

I really appreciated the inscription on this plaque “This stone was laid in commemoration of shattered dreams”.

Such a fun and inspiring day!

Long after the sun had set over this magnificent ridge, we went on a late night trek with lamps strapped to our heads, down this very steep hillside into the bush behind Alysn’s house to see the glow worms that live on the embankment of a stream at the bottom.

On the way, we saw a large green purire moth (about 2” across). The purire moth is the largest moth in New Zealand and is only found on the north island. It is also the main food source of the Morepork owl that you can hear calling “maw pok, maw pok” at night.

When we made it to the bottom of the hill and shut off our head lamps to sit quietly in the dark, a constellation of tiny lights appeared on the embankment across from us. Alysn’s husband Brian was dismayed to see the population of the glow worms so drastically reduced from their normal population. New Zealand has been suffering the worst drought since the 1930’s. Glow worms require a moist dark environment to live and there clearly hasn’t been enough rain for them to thrive.

While we crouched on our heels in the dark, we heard shuffling in the leaves nearby, which could have been a kiwi bird or two. Kiwi’s are nocturnal ground dwelling birds, that are endangered by invasive possums (brought over from Australia for the fur trade) that steal their eggs, which is the other possibility for the shuffling sounds we heard.

We followed the path along a shallow stream and saw a large eel, close to 2 1/2 feet long, resting on the bottom, that quickly swam out of sight as we got closer. It was all very exciting. Then we made the cardiac inducing hike back up the steep hill to the house.

The next morning, our friends Barney and Pat started off on their own New Zealand adventure, and Alysn and I went to a beautiful park to walk the dogs with lots of cool trees to gather inspiration from.

This tree had layers and layers of peeling, soft, papery bark that on closer inspection was covered with the exoskeletons of hundreds of cicadas.

These are the empty shells of the cicadas that had crawled out of the ground and are now left clinging to the tree. The insect splits it’s back and pulls itself out, after it has transformed to the winged creature that flies up into the trees buzzing in the canopy over head.

This is a cicada that was on the deck at Lake Rotoiti.

I’m always fascinated by the spiky shapes of the banksia flower (left), and the dry pod left behind after the petals have dropped (right) and then the altered shape of the pod after the seeds have been released (below).

Seed pods, so many cool shapes!

When we got back to the house, Phil and I packed up the car to drive north to Whangarei where I taught my last workshop.

We had such a wonderful time with Alysn and Brian, they are such kindred spirits. Every time we hang out with them, I wish we weren’t living on the other side of the planet and could get together more often than every couple years.

On a side note Alysn teaches very cool mixed-media metal and fibers workshops and has a full on airbnb at her place in paradise that can accommodate 10 or more people, if you ever want to book the creative vacation of your dreams.

Stay tuned for my next post where we stop at the most artistically, coolest restaurant I’ve ever been to in my life.

Keep creating,

Judy

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ABOUT JUDY
Judy is an artist, explorer, image wrangler, knowledge seeker, instructor, speaker, creative alchemist, and purveyor of inspiration, helping others channel creativity on a daily basis.