Tiny coastal town with a big arts scene
A Taranaki town with only 1440 residents – a place that only recently got its first laundromat – has more than seven working artists’ studios and galleries.
punake, 45 minutes south of New Plymouth, is well known for farming, repurposed dairy factories, surfing, beaches, and Olympic runner Peter Snell.
Now a group of creatives is hoping to add art to that list.
Claire Jensen has lived in punake for 17 years and runs The Brown Bach Studio, in Hickey Pl.
She is a member of the seven-strong punake Open Studios & Galleries collective, which was formed to try and give the town more exposure.
Jensen is a sculptor and has built a business making native bird feathers out of recycled timber.
The wall of her at-home gallery is lined with vibrant feathers of huia, kererū, tūı¯, and kea. ‘‘I’ve been able to hone my skills into pieces I want to make for my own signature style and I’ve been able to successfully create a business out of that during the lockdown time, and I have an online shop now.
‘‘During that big lockdown time this bedroom got converted into an art gallery, because we had all the materials here, and I thought why not? And it just blossomed from there.’’
Jensen had been a teacher but found her passion in making art.
She says punake is growing with more and more things popping up to do.
There’s a cinema, a theatre, cafes, the beaches, a loop trail around the town and, of course, art galleries.
Jensen wants punake to havēomore recognition for the quantity and quality of its art scene.
Although the town is included in the recently launched Coastal Arts Trail, a self-driven tour through public art, street art, galleries and museums across the Taranaki, Whanganui, and Manawatū regions, Jensen said it focused mainly on ¯Stateo Highway 3 between New Plymouth and Whanganui, rather around the Taranaki coast. ‘‘The art scene here is developing, and we have exciting venues to visit, surprising venues to visit.’’
When Viv Davy, who runs From Out Of The Blue Studio Gallery, arrived in the town 10 years ago from Auckland, there was no arts scene, she says.
But now there are weavers, sculptors, painters and sketchers.
She specialises in textiles and fibre art and is also a botanical dyer growing plants on her one-acre section to cook and turn into fabric dye. She commonly uses kawakawa, irises, roses, and violets.
Davy and her husband built their home to accommodate the gallery and her upstairs working space was open for the Taranaki Arts Trail in 2019. Not long after the pandemic hit.
Davy has an industrial weaving loom, which she had custom-built in Sweden for around $35,000.
It was one of only two in the country. To the untrained eye it looks like an intricate organ weaved with thread.
But for Davy, it’s been her tool of trade for the past 40 years, so she knows it like the back of her hand.
She tries to use as many organic materials as she can and encourages others to do the same.
‘‘I’m trying to encourage the artists that come into the gallery to exhibit to think about sustainable practises.
‘‘We’re off grid here, we use rainwater, we’re solar-powered, and we do composting.’’