Whānau & feathers in Ōpōtiki

THIS BAY OF PLENTY ARTIST FASTIDIOUSLY CREATES HER FEATHERED ART, PLACING PLUMAGE PERFECTLY — JUST AS IT IS IN NATURE

ŌPŌTIKI ARTIST FIONA KERR GEDSON sweeps a line of opalescent grey around a circular canvas. Next, she blends a pop of electric blue seamlessly into the grey. She doesn’t work with paint but feathers, carefully glued one by one to create a 60-centimetre mandala.

From a distance, Fiona’s mandalas look solid, the plumed details only coming into focus closer up. Featherwork is a technique she’s been fine-tuning for 21 years and is inspired by kahu huruhuru, or traditional Māori cloaks. “Kahu huruhuru hold a lot of mana. I hope my featherwork holds some of that and honours its origin.”

But instead of using the native bird feathers used in traditional craft, Fiona uses ethically sourced feathers from introduced birds. Turkey and pheasant are her neutral bronzes and graphites, while peacock and speckled guinea fowl feathers provide dimension, texture and geometry.

The artist can’t put her finger on the moment her awardwinning creations caught on with local and international artlovers. Her sister Melanie says it happened “slowly, slowly, slowly — overnight”. But Fiona certainly got lucky when Pauline Bianchi (who featured in NZ Life & Leisure, May/June 2017) came across her work. The director of Queenstown’s Artbay Gallery commissioned the artist to make a rectangular piece more than a metre wide, nearly 10 times the size Fiona was used to. “It blew my mind. I’m sure my work would’ve progressed, but that commission helped me leap forward.” Fiona’s works are now sold at Artbay and in several other galleries nationwide.

The mandala is Fiona’s oeuvre, although she sometimes breaks her own rules. She once transformed a greenstone tiki into a feathered piece, and her collection of feathered tartan and Celtic knots would make her Scottish ancestors proud. But while the use of feathers is undeniably rooted in Māori culture, Fiona doesn’t have a drop of Māori blood. “With its large Māori population, Ōpōtiki has strong Māori influences in everyday life. It’s our culture, really. You can’t extract Māori culture from life here,” she says.

She has lived in or around the small, dune-studded coastal town since she was a teen. She married at 18 and Ōpōtiki became home for her and husband Greg Gedson — she raised her four children (of Whakatōhea iwi on their dad’s side) on the Gedson family farm. She wouldn’t change a thing from her past. “I was physically grounded because of the kids. Being at home with my babies allowed me to develop my work from that space,” she says.

The couple’s marriage ended after 17 years, which was painful, but leaving the home in which she had raised her family was particularly so. “I didn’t realize how much of my identity was tied to that place. I lived there for 20 years and thought I was going to be an old lady there. But circumstances change.”

She decided there would be few compromises with her next home. Three years ago, during construction of the 130-squaremetre house, she assembled a small collection of possessions. Each piece had qualities she hoped would add character and warmth to the property’s freshly milled timber and glossy black exterior.

“I didn’t want the house to feel new,” says Fiona. “I wanted it to have character and soul.” She adores just about everything down to the last doorknob. In Fiona’s world, the smallest details convey the most powerful messages.

‘ I didn’t want the house to feel new. I wanted it to have character and soul. Living here is now a big part of who I am’

Today, she balances family, art, a non-negotiable daily walk with her son’s dog Taz, yoga and meditation. The home itself is full. Daughters Fairren (15) and Niamh (19) live with Fiona and sons Rory (23) and Braden (26) visit when they can. Greg’s two-year-old twins, Arlo and Cecilia, are also embraced into the whānau. There are no half-siblings in this family. She feels blessed in this slice of Ōpōtiki and, due to the proximity of a sacred site, possibly even destined to be here. An urupā (cemetery) next to her home is the resting place of two female Māori, discovered (and reburied) long before Fiona moved here. She feels close to them physically and spiritually.

“Whenever I got anxious through the build process, I’d imagine those females were looking after me, that everything was going to be fine. I feel incredibly privileged and honoured to be able to care for this space. Living here is now a big part of who I am.”

Fiona, with whānau and feathers, is exactly where she’s supposed to be.

A compass is used to sketch concentric lines around an empty canvas. “Every feather is measured to ensure the circles are correct.”

Fiona works alone in her home studio, sometimes deep into the evenings. “Feathering is where I’m happiest. It’s like I meditate my way through creating a piece.” A trip to Dunedin inspired the mandala, called Port Chalmers — Homage to Hotere, behind her. She spent a day at Port Chalmers with her sister, Melanie Kerr, jeweller Debra Fallowfield, and artist Mary McFarlane (Ralph Hotere’s widow) before returning home to create it.

The tiny turkey, pheasant and peacock feathers would be impossible to pick up without tweezers. Despite fine-tuning her craft over two decades, Fiona feels there’s still room to grow. “It feels like I’ve completed my apprenticeship with feathers. There’s so much more that I can explore to express myself”; the artist strayed from her usual mandala with her tekoteko-inspired piece Pou Whirinaki (below left), which translates to a pillar of support or dependable post to lean on.

A feathered piece from Fiona’s Kerr Tartan collection, a Scottishinspired pattern that she explored after returning to her maiden name. Daughters Niamh (left) and Fairren sandwich their mum on a platform at Waiotahe Beach, just a brisk walk from their home. “Every morning I walk Taz [her son’s lab/vizsla cross] here. There is nowhere more beautiful than this in the world”.

(Bottom left) The artist first added geometry to her featherwork after hearing a radio interview with property developer Mark Todd. Mark suggested to broadcaster Kim Hill that maths is often dismissed as a boring subject, despite its ability to enhance creativity and problem-solving. Fiona emphasizes maths in this geometrically enhanced [GE] mandala piece with a peacock-blue diameter and single quadrant filled with speckled guinea fowl feathers. “I want my work to be beautiful, appealing and balanced,” she says; (bottom right) The Geometry of Human Connection.

A 30th birthday gift hangs behind Fiona and Niamh in the kitchen. The loose black canvas, made by Felicity Barry, includes words from a poem Felicity’s daughter Sylvia Quant wrote for her. “I used to have it like a blind in the farmhouse and rolled it up and down by hand every day. After moving here, I squealed with delight when I realized I had a wall big enough to hang it on”; (below) the blanket beneath Fairren has the illusion of a korowai, but is a throw Fiona received from her aunt for her 40th birthday.

Fairren peeks over the edge of the mezzanine (also her bedroom) that overlooks the kitchen. The glass lampshades were among many opshop finds Fiona hoped would give her home a vintage touch. “I hung them over my table, but my son Braden would always bang his head on them, and he wasn’t the only one. I came home one weekend and discovered he had used cable ties to shorten them. Since he at least used white cable ties, I left them.”

The Tibetan prayer flags outside Fiona’s home are a nod to Nepal. The flags are a souvenir from her and Fairren’s pilgrimage to Nepal last year, exactly two decades after her first visit in 1998.

The hanging feathered cloak (right) combines Fiona’s weaving and featherwork. This piece, made with ostrich feathers (to emulate kiwi feathers), was a gift for Niamh when she was born. Waikato artist Ron Hall constructed Still Waters (hanging below the cloak) from recycled beehives, and Cheryl Oliver made the figurine on the table. “He’s special because Cheryl is no longer alive. I’ve named him Errol, which is a whole other story. I can tell a story for every piece in my collection. That’s a huge part of what I love about art — pieces become placeholders for times in our lives.”

Fiona’s bedroom looks nothing like the rest of the house. “It’s like a cave. When I pull my curtains, it becomes dark and delicious. I wanted a completely different feel from the rest of the house,” she says. Huia Tondo by Hawke’s Bay artist Rae West (see NZ Life & Leisure, March/April 2019) hangs above the lamp and (below the wooden shelf) Fiona’s various vintage necklaces mimic an unframed piece of art.