On Saturday. The Fulcum Exhibition. The Market.

On Saturday, I cycled over to the Ostend weekly market and to a Kinetic Sculpture exhibition at Cable Bay Vineyards. (Okay, it wasn't exactly direct).

View Larger Map

The Ostend market is a weekly institution, an open air (mostly) market with food, crafts, books, and used items. There are a few stalls with produce, but more prepared food stalls, so it isn't really a farmers market. My friends, Pieter and Russell share a section where Pieter has plants for sale and Russell has garden ornaments. Christiane, with whom I'm currently staying has a stall where she sell cat-oriented items, mostly cards and other gifty things.

Christiane and another acquaintance, Danielle Fillon, an artist, used to have tables inside the local hall next to the market, but decided recently to move outside and share a stall. I wanted to stop by and see it.

After a quick visit as the market was quite crowded, I was off to Oneroa and Cable bay Vineyards. They are having an exhibition of "Kinetic Sculpture", titled "Fulcrum", by a Christchurch artist named Phil Price. The sculptures are relatively small. Evidently, most of his works are large scale. From a size perspective, the ones in the exhibiton wouldn't be out of scale in our yard; esthetically, on the other hand... They are made out of carbon fiber and move in even slight breezes. They seemed to sell in the $25-50K range and about $250K worth were already sold. The exhibit opened last weekend.

The winery building has been open less than a year, quite modern withthe requisite tasting room and and what looked to be a high endrestaurant. You might get by with $100/person if you didn't go overboardwith the wine.

Here are some photos of the sculptures:

On my way back from the exhibition, I stopped in Oneroa and was chatting with Paora, a greenstone sculptor who has a studio/shop there and another American friend of his came in,a fellow who moved to New Zealand in 1985 and lived on Waiheke, but hassince moved back to the US and lives on Nantucket. A relatively smallworld. His wife is a Kiwi, so they were back visiting friends and family. He is involved with the Whaling Museum and Historical Society and is trying some type of arrangement for Paora to visit and do a piece for the museum. It turns out that the character of QueeQueeg from Moby Dick is based on the Maori chief Tupai Cupa. Paora's Maori ancestry stems from Ngāti Porou, the tribe of the Whale Rider. I'll try to take some photos of his work when I come back to Waiheke, meanwhile, here is a link to his website Ikonz, which is a bit out of date.
This afternoon, the adventure begins, I am heading off to visit my friend Peter at his home in Howick and then onward south. The initial goal is to bicycle to Wellington, but that could change at any time. It all depends whether or not I can do the hills of the North Island. I'll continue this when I get to places with Internet access.