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Fiona Kerr Gedson - Feather Artist
Fiona Kerr Gedson is a fibre artist who has used feathers as her primary medium for more than 25 years. She works from her home near Ōpōtiki, in the Eastern Bay of Plenty, Aotearoa NZ. Fiona’s meticulously crafted, intricately designed feather pieces have a calming and meditative presence. Her work reflects and honours the things most important to her – her family, her spirituality, shared experiences, life stages and a sense of kotahitanga (unity). Her most recent collection, Pilgrimage, is the embodiment of this. Inspired by walking the Camino de Santiago – completing 1500km over 8 1/2 weeks, this series responds to the many stained glass windows found in chapels and cathedrals on Fiona's remarkable life changing hikoi, which she undertook in 2022.In this episode we have a beautiful conversation about walking the Camino and how this has consequently influenced her art practice. Fiona shares a personal experience of losing her precious father 3 weeks in to the pilgrimage and how she managed to process and manage her initial grief and keep walking. We discuss another influence in her practice, her work with Family Constellations (a method of family therapy or systemic therapy), and how this has also informed her practice. Fiona shares how she started working with feathers in her early twenties; how she sources the peacock, turkey, guinea fowl and hen feathers; her positive long term connections with galleries; her meticulous creative process; her framing approach and the meditative aspects of pattern. And so much more.You can see the uncut video of our conversation on our You Tube channel Creative Connections Podcast. I'd love you to subscribe!Support the showNgā mihi, thanks for listening! Follow CREATIVE CONNECTIONS on InstagramLearn more about Creative Connections and see images of each guests work and relevant links on our blog
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1:34:11
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1:34:11
Lucy Eglington - Painter
Lucy Eglington is a painter originally from the UK who immigrated to Aotearoa in 2003. She works from her home studio in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland.Working primarily in oils, Lucy’s paintings explore human states of mind: dreams, successes, losses, grief and love and the narratives we tell ourselves. She often uses animals to represent ideas and feelings and to add individual narratives to each work.With a successful track record of sell-out shows and recognition in prestigious art awards, her works resonate with audiences around the world.In this episode we have a gorgeous chat about the ideology behind Lucy's work, the way she uses animals in her work and what they represent to her, what she is communicating through her work, how she wants the viewer to reflect on through her work, her love of portraiture, her creative process from sketching and note taking to filing her ideas and her painting approach. We have an uncut video of this chat which will be available soon on our You Tube channel, which is currently under development. This will contain images of the work we are talking about and could be a fantastic resource for art teachers, artists and interested creatives, and for people who just love to watch instead of listen. Support the showNgā mihi, thanks for listening! Follow CREATIVE CONNECTIONS on InstagramLearn more about Creative Connections and see images of each guests work and relevant links on our blog
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1:40:24
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1:40:24
Alexandra Tylee - Painter
Alexandra Tylee is a painter living in Poukawa in the Hawkes Bay. From her early twenties until her early forties Alexandra setup and ran 2 successful businesses, Fuel espresso in Wellington and Pipi Cafe in Havelock North. She has also written 3 cookbooks and an award winning children’s fiction book called If I Was A Banana.Alexandra started painting around 5 years ago. Selling Pipi cafe in 2023 allowed her to devote herself more to her painting practice and since then she has had two sell out exhibitions at Muse Galley in Havelock North.In this episode we talk about her passion for cooking and how it intertwines and connects with her love of painting, feelings, memories, stories and the still life paintings she likes to paint. We discuss how she sees running a business as a creative outlet and her approach to working in hospitality, how she feels now she has sold her business and has finally got time to devote to paintings, the painting lessons she had with NZ artist Helen Kerridge and why that felt important for her to do.Alexandra shares how she choose the objects for her still life works, what they mean to her and what they communicate, the way she sets up a composition that reflects the way she sees things, how she combines different elements and objects in her own unique way and how her paintings create stillness. We also talk about the 4 books she has written and her love of writing despite being dyslexic - I've included the video of Alexandra reading her children's book at the bottom of her blogpost.Support the showNgā mihi, thanks for listening! Follow CREATIVE CONNECTIONS on InstagramLearn more about Creative Connections and see images of each guests work and relevant links on our blog
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1:12:44
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1:12:44
Anna Stichbury - Contemporary Artist
Anna Stichbury is a contemporary New Zealand artist from Wellington whose practice spans painting and installation, distinguished by her bold use of colour, layered textures, and dynamic mark-making. It was a pleasure to meet and talk to Anna, an artist I have admired for a long time, and hear all about her fascinating art practice. We discuss how Anna studied design in Wellington after high school, what she gained from this course and a significant moment that lead to her first gallery representation in her early twenties, which marked the beginning of her established full time professional artist career of more than 25 years.Anna works around a number of themes and styles which all connect and talk to each other in different ways. We explore her floral paintings, her installation work and her most recent portraiture work and how she approaches and manages each of these series. Anna shares how her latest focus on portraiture came about and the joys and challenges of exploring a new genre within her practice.We chat about collage, installation, materials, working between styles and media successfully, maintaining personal creative projects alongside her professional work and why this works for her. And so much more.Anna has a solo show Listening To Flowers coming up at Parnell Gallery August 12th - 26th 2025.Read Anna's blogpostSupport the showNgā mihi, thanks for listening! Follow CREATIVE CONNECTIONS on InstagramLearn more about Creative Connections and see images of each guests work and relevant links on our blog
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1:37:56
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1:37:56
Sur Collective - A Latina Artist Collective
Sur Collective is an artist collective founded in 2021 out of a need to create a sense of place and redefine the space Latina artists use as migrant women in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Sur-Collective are 5 wahine from Colombia and Chile who work with different art disciplines such as sculpture, drawing, painting, textiles, ceramics, photography and embroidery.Today I'm speaking with one of the collective artists Cat Guevara, a ceramic artist who migrated to Aotearoa from Colombia 8 years ago.We have a fascinating chat about how Sur Collective came about and why, how it feels to be a Latina practising artist in NZ and how the collective artists use the arts as a tool to connect, relate and communicate, always with a focus on bringing their heritage and a certain flavour to this land.The Collective see the all of the work they do a bit like a portfolio: the work they create as individual artists that reflects on the collective, art activations, workshops, their studio space at Corbans Art Estate, installations, artist talks, community projects as well as group and solo shows.We talk about some of the amazing Sur Collective art activations and community projects they have delivered, the ideas and stories behind the projects, what they hope to achieve from this work and how they engage and communicate with their audience. We discuss their approaches to the funding process and Cat has some great tips for people applying for funding.Cat talks about her own ceramic art practice and how her work connects back to her heritage, her ancestors and her culture. She shares how she finds living in Aotearoa and NZ people as a Latina wahine and what she has learnt from us, which is super interesting! I am so happy to have had this conversation with an artist and collective who have immigrated to Aotearoa and hope to speak to more immigrant artists who are building community and relationships and developing their art practice here in Aotearoa. Sur Collective: Catherine Guevara (Ceramist); Juliana Duran (Visual Artist); Jesu Vasquez (Visual Artist); Lina Castro (Industrial Designer, Embroidery Artist); Romina Ortega (Visual Artist)https://www.instagram.com/sur.collective/Support the showNgā mihi, thanks for listening! Follow CREATIVE CONNECTIONS on InstagramLearn more about Creative Connections and see images of each guests work and relevant links on our blog
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1:16:39
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1:16:39