Following the threads
Auckland artist Arielle Walker is dedicated to preserving and learning the traditions of storytelling and textiles. On her first visit to Dunedin she tells Rebecca Fox about the importance of family and making.
WHEREVER Auckland artist Arielle Walker goes so does a small pink clear plastic container held together by a hair tie.
In it is a collection of wooden bobbins. Handturned by her uncle and given to her by her Nanna Marie they are as special to her as a piece of heirloom jewellery.
‘‘They’re not something I could ever imagine not having with me.’’
The bobbins are used to make bobbin lace and Walker’s strongest childhood memory of her crafty Nanna is of her making the lace.
‘‘When I was younger I’d get to play with the bobbins a little bit. She always had something on the go.’’
When she was about 12 years old, her Nanna gave her a set of bobbins, including one of her own, suggesting she create her own beaded spangles on their ends.
‘‘The idea was I’d eventually learn bobbin lace making. I was really excited to try but it was super intimidating. You can see my early spangles with the teenage preoccupation with sparkly butterflies.’’
While always a treasured possession, it was not until Walker started on her most recent body of work that she got the bobbins out again.
‘‘It made me think about what my Nanna and Grandmama and mother did.’’
Her latest work focuses on the relationship between storytelling and traditional crafts passed down over generations, referencing her grandmothers’ family lines, and looks towards her ancestral homelands, particularly Taranaki, Scotland, and Ireland.
‘‘It came from this space of being surrounded by textiles and I was thinking about my whakapapa, in particular my Nanna and Grandmama and I realised I really need to finish the bobbins so they’d be ready to work with.’’
She started making new beads for them using Taranaki clay and stones and pearls from her late Grandmama Faith.
‘‘I’m trying to bring some of the places from my whakapapa together in this one piece.’’
They are still a work in progress but she will display them as part of her exhibition ‘‘distance rewoven from the roots to the stem’’ when she is in the gallery.
‘‘I wanted to finish them before starting a piece. All this work is leading up to eventually being brave enough to give the bobbin lace a go.’’
Her Nanna is now no longer able to make bobbin lace and the detailed embroidery she used to.
‘‘I feel like I’m now having to carry on what she fostered in me, that love of making.
‘‘A lot of my practice is about carrying on the story from along my family lines.’’
Walker, who is from Tamaki in East Auckland, grew up with parents and grandparents who surrounded the family with storytelling and textiles particularly.
‘‘I have a wooden castle my father carved for me and my mum used to always make wonderful coloured pictures for me. If I was going to the doctor she’d make this picture for me to find all the different things. The way of getting through things was through art.
‘‘Storytelling art and making have always been connected from the beginning, so that is just something I’ve kept going.’’
There was never a particular decision to make it a career. While Walker says she could have pursued interests in music, she could not imagine leaving art behind.
‘‘Noone was surprised when I went to art school.’’
Walker has looked back at her heritage to find the roots of her family’s creativity.
‘‘The more I’m learning about it seems that thread of storytelling and weaving in different ways comes through in those lines. That and people in direct contact with the land as well. I think place is particularly important.’’
Her father grew up in Taranaki and his family is still based there.
‘‘We’d go down quite regularly, summers were bouncing back and forward between the two.
‘‘It feels weird when I’m away from the west coast for too long.’’
The landscape of those places and family is also closely interwoven into her work.
‘‘I was looking at plants, particularly those used for healing and also for their dye properties, which are from what I think of as my ancestral homelands, Taranaki particularly but also on the pakeha side is Scotland and Ireland.’’
Looking closely at some of the handmade beads in her bobbin spangles, the black sand of the west coast can be seen. Others are made from seaweed and pumice from Oakura in Taranaki or from river stones gathered from Tongaporutu Beach.
Walker foraged as she walked along the coastline picking plants that can be used to make dye, such as gorse, kanuka, harakeke, lichen and tanekaha.
She then used those dyes to colour handeddown silk, cotton muslin and linen and sewed them together into one large patchwork blanket with her Grandmama’s threads to create first soft light of the rising sun.
‘‘I wanted to bring together the plant traditions of those places as a way to, I guess, to sort of bring together those strands in one place. A lot of the dyes are from Taranaki too, like gorse which is an invasive plant from Scotland but it was gathered around Taranaki.’’
When she had completed the blanket she took the piece back to the coast.
‘‘We were really lucky, the wind picked up just as I was bringing it out of the car so it became this beautiful, flowy, fluttering thing and we caught that on film.
‘‘The colour’s completely by chance — they could have come out any colours. You don’t always know when you see a plant what it’s necessarily going to look like — but it looked exactly like the cliffs and the colours of the sand, the greys that look like the rocks and sand and the gold and the oranges of the cliff.
She finds it fascinating how the colours that come from the plants flow right back into the landscape they came from.
‘‘It represented the land immediately, I’m always amazed at how these materials have the ability to do that.
‘‘Sometimes with works it’s just about seeing what the plants have to give. Sometimes the colour is there for only a few weeks, other times for decades.’’
Walker’s making skills have been learned from not only her Nanna and Grandmama but also an ‘‘amazing’’ weaving teacher, whaea Rose Greaves.
She attends group sessions with her on traditional weaving practices.
In 2018 she did residencies in Scotland and Iceland, again learning traditional textiles practices including natural dying from those countries.
In Iceland there has been a movement revitalising practices around plant dyes, she says.
‘‘I’m definitely very much a learner. It showed the importance of learning those traditions.’’
In Ireland and Scotland yarrow is regarded as a healing herb and also creates a yellow dye.
‘‘This is where my love of a story comes in. Yarrow’s Latin name comes from the idea that it was used by Achilles to heal soldiers on the battlefield. Some of these plants have been known for their properties for thousands of years.
‘‘In some places the knowledge has been lost and in others it hasn’t.’’
Goats’ beard lichen is another that surprises with the vibrant orange dye it produces, she says.
‘‘This is where it is amazing. Our ancestors worked this out. I was able to find people who had written about it but someone had to work that out in the beginning.’’
She enjoys that her work takes her into the great outdoors.
‘‘It’s a way to become grounded in a place and learning the plants, introducing yourself to them.’’
Another work features a photograph of the Taranaki harakeke and gorse she was harvesting, printed on to hemp fibre then unravelled by hand.