Rickard’s lifetime of carving and creating
As master carver James Rickard chips away at the wood beneath him, he balances one leg on a rickety stool and the other on the base of the pou he is carving.
His quiet workshop echoes with the rhythmic beat of each strike before he calls his tauira (students) to take over. ‘‘It’s nearly there so you can take that like that and come up higher, then you can worry about the rest,’’ he tells them.
The tohunga whakairo (master carver) watches on, offering tips and encouragement to the second and third year students at Rotorua’s Te Puia, the New Zealand Māori Arts and Crafts Institute. ‘‘What’s happening here is that they’re gingerly trying to shape this, and they don’t want to make amistake, but if they get their feet in the right place, it’ll work.’’
After 54 years of mahi and teaching young carvers the craft, he still has time on his last day to have a tutu with them, before he returns home to Raglan to give back to his people.
Rickard has dedicated his life to teaching the traditional Māori art form, and has been instrumental in creating hundreds of pieces around the world.
But when his journey first began, carving them here to try and straighten them up.
‘‘[But] at some point in time you realise that you can create. At some point in time you realise, I can retain a person’s history, you realise you can help.
‘‘You suddenly realise, ‘Oh gee,’ you have one of those kinds of moments, but it takes about 20 years.’’ .
Rickard’s life has taken him on a journey of learning the history of hapū and iwi and telling their pūrākau (stories) through each stroke of his chisel as he carves.
Whakairo can take many forms, but Rickard prefers to use wood so when the pieces begin to weather over time, other carvers can continue the practice and learn its history during the restoration process.
‘‘The penny drops one day and you think, ‘Oh it’s not about me, it’s about the iwi, it’s about the maraes, it’s about everyone around you.’ It’s how do you make your culture and the art of whakairo survive, how do you do that?
‘‘I try to use wood because wood usually breaks down after about 40 years, but that’s nearly two generations by the time the knowledge is handed down for a particular meeting house.
‘‘For the culture to survive, it has to break down so it can bemade again – so all the history and all the skill is retained.’’