Stitched with love ARTIST’S TRIBUTE TO HIS MUM
How his knitting needles turned pain into beauty
The plastic mesh mask represented so much heartache for Warren Dion Smith. While it was necessary for his mother’s radiation treatment, it was scary and covered her beautiful face while she was pumped with chemicals.
Warren wanted to dispose of it immediately after her cancer treatment was finished, but his mum Josie-Rose Donohue wanted to keep it to mark a step in her journey.
When she passed away last year at 58, the artist decided to make it into a positive keepsake, so he started to embroider the mask with wool, adding the knitting and crochet he and his mother had made during her chemotherapy sessions.
The result is a stunning piece of art, just one in a collection Warren has created as a tribute to his mum, using both of their handiwork.
“I didn’t want the reminder of the pain and suffering she went through, so I handstitched wool all the way through as a tapestry of art – to cover the horror and have something beautiful,” the 42-year-old says.
“Mum didn’t even know how to crochet. I asked her to knit two circles that I could make into earrings and it just started there.
“What we created gave me hope and strength. I’d watched her knit all day and night. It became such a wonderful journey of courage.”
Today, Warren wears as much of the collection as he can. That includes a technicolour robe that he wore to New Zealand Fashion Week.
“I had all of Mum’s stuff draped over me, every stitch represented her fight for life.
“The colours represent all the different emotions we shared. We would stop and have a cry, or even a laugh.”
Josie-Rose was diagnosed with lung cancer four years ago. It travelled to her lymph nodes, then her brain. Seeing her mental deterioration was the hardest part for her son to witness.
“She started to forget what she was doing. She’d admire the crocheting and say, ‘Who did that?’”
Aninspiration
A successful hair and make-up artist for Weta Workshop, who has worked on KingKong, Avatar and TheHobbit, Warren saved his mother’s hair as it fell out from the chemo. It’s only now, a year since she passed, that he has felt strong enough to weave it into a keepsake. He recalls how she would say that having her hair done by her famous son was a blessing.
“My mum was so proud. She saw me travelling the world and doing what I dreamed of as a child, and watched me succeed. She was such a humble and graceful woman.”
But Warren’s success did not come easy. He left high
school at 14 as a second-year third former, with virtually no reading or writing skills. He had been bullied by classmates due to learning difficulties he now thinks were signs of dyslexia.
“I have never read a whole book in my life. But I worked hard. My mum was a hard worker too – she did everything from hay-baling to delivering lambs. In the primary school holidays, I would always sit on the sheep bales and watch my mum working until the end of the day. That still inspires me.”
Fourteen and with no qualifications, Warren worked on his marae, cutting hair for his elders and whanau. Then he saw an advertisement for a hairdressing course for under-achievers.
“That was the beginning of my career – back in 1990. Our salon sponsored Miss Auckland and Miss Universe, and I worked on those. I used to do Annie Crummer and Dalvanius Prime. They were my clients when I first started.”
Twelve years later, Warren did a make-up course, then was hired to work on KingKong with Weta Workshop. He now tours the world, representing Weta at Comic-Con, often alongside Sir Richard Taylor.
In 2016, he went with World of WearableArt (WOW) founder Dame Suzie Moncrieff to Seattle to the opening of the WOW Exhibition in South America. He has also recently been hired as a Hairdressing Industry Training Organisation assessor. “I used to be quite shy, but I have grown to be more confident in public now.”
Being busy has helped him cope with the utter despair of losing his best friend – WOW’s youngest supreme winner Claire Prebble, who was diagnosed with cancer at the same time as his mum.
“Through sharing my mother’s last creation, and talking about her and Claire, I feel stronger,” he says. “These creations have turned out to be so much more than I could have imagined and they mean so much to me.
“My mother passed in my arms and I am so happy her fight is over. Mum was my biggest influence. I am at peace. I miss her, but she is all around me.”