New Wero: Rākau Māori - Patu

I thought I'd take on the wero of creating a patu.  I had a cut out piece that my bro had left behind in our hut in Tangiteroria.  To challenge myself, I completely changed the shape.  His original design was a mere pounamu shape, so I thought I'd do a more contemporary design... a cross between a mere pounamu and a wahaika patu. 

I am learning so much about identifying rākau.  I thought this piece wasn't kauri because the grain looked so different from my pūtōrino.  I discovered while shaping this piece that in fact it was similar to the kauri with 'end grains' running throughout it.  Sure enough, it was confirmed as kauri.  

I designed my piece and was going to attempt some more stylised designs.  While working on it my mind changed, firstly because of the nature of the grain while shaping, it was 'all over the place' so I thought if I tried to carve whakarei on this piece, I was going to make a heck of a mess.  As the grain started revealing itself, it was very interesting and thought it will look beautiful without any whakarei, as long as I got the shape right.  There was a tricky knot to get around and it tool me a long time to chip away at it.

Some of the challenges/learnings I have come across during this process are:

*  Don't mark both sides of your design unless they perfectly align, it really threw me when I was shaping the design so after struggling getting confused I figured out to sand off the marks and it was helpful.  Also, don't use a vivid so you can rub them out.

*  Grain direction - ripping.  So inconsistent and you have to be on your toes (and listen) the whole time so you can change direction when you need to.

*  Knot - design around the knots.  It took such a long time to carve out this knot and I had to sharpen my tools.  

After spending all day wānanga working on my patu, it took a LONG time to shape.  I pretty much spent all day shaping.  I started drawing out the tapering and used my chisel to start chipping away.  The next day, I pulled out my angle grinder and orbital sander - OMG what a difference they made.  I appreciate the mahi that goes in to using your whao but I am also mindful of the words of wisdom from Matua Hek Busby around tools to use the best tools for the job, be it a chainsaw etc.  

Once I started sanding, the grain really revealed itself.  I was concerned when I inspected part of the patu and the pathway of the knot.  I messaged my bro in Oz and he said it was probably a 'shake' which happens when the tree is felled.  He told me it will either be weak OR really strong.  I'm hoping it's super strong.  Now I'm just working on getting the balance right in the form and weight.  Lets' see how we go.

I was unhappy with the butt of the patu because I felt that it wasn't thought out properly, which proves the importance of sketching out you idea fully or to at least give yourself options visually.  I also learnt about ripping the rakau while drilling.  So to create a hole in the butt so I could tie in muka and feathers, I drilled a hole using my hand drill. 

I pressed too hard going through and probably should have had a wooden block underneath the handle so the drill wouldn't rip the wood during exit.  So I had to fix up that mistake or 'make and adjustment'.

I am stoked with my first patu.  I spent a lot of time sanding it because the grain was so beautiful.  I quite like a rough finish that shows the whao marks but for this piece, it felt right to give it a smooth finish and to coat it with Danish Oil. 

I adorned the patu with muka and Kūkupa feathers.  The muka was made from harakeke collected from Mangakahia Road between Awarua and Nukutāwhiti.  Sadly the muka flax aren't there anymore because of forestry, but we were lucky enough to have transplanted some to the kaumatua flats in Tangiteroria.  I like to add feathers to my pieces because on both sides of my parents, manu are considered kaitiaki and I use Kūkupa feathers in honour of our tupuna Kūkupa.

Creative work: Taonga pūoro - Pūtōrino

Aromatawai:

Project Brief: Taonga Pūoro - Pūtōrino:

I'm familiar with many taonga pūoro and have made some using uku (clay)  I wanted to learn about a new instrument so I chose a pūtōrino.  I did some rangahau around the story of pūtōrino (Taonga pūoro - Brian Flintoff)  I have based my design around the legend of Hine Raukatauri and the pūrerehua (moth)  I'll attempt the whiriki rua whakarei to adorn the pūtōrinoto to acknowledge the celestial belt.

There will be a small paua inlay at the bottwm of the pūtōrino to represent the beauty of Hine Raukatauri's alluring voice and whare.

Toi Awe (creative process):  Exploration of materials
For my taonga pūoro project, I chose a piece of wood left by my brother-in-law.  I was unsure of what the wood was but when I took it in to class I was told it was Kauri.  I learnt a lot about the challenges of carving kauri.  The main challenge for me was learning to change carving direction so not to rip the wood.  Even though the grain was obvious, I found that in sections of the wood, the grain seemed different, like end grains.  I've always had a great respect for kauri as I have worked on furniture restoration pieces with an uncle many years ago and also the familiarity of visiting Tane Mahuta in Waipoua ngāhere.  Being from the Dargaville area, we are also familiar with the stories of all the kauri logs that were taken along the Wairoa awa by early settlers.

-  Toi Hanga (creating):  An exploration of skills, techniques, processes and methods
-  Toi Raupapa (organisation) Evidence of studio practice, A tauira project brief.
-  Toi Aro (Self-reflection) Evidence of self-reflection,  Resolving and Analysing.
I used my bench saw to start cutting out the pūtōrino and I used my new chisel (Tipene) to shape.  I am s\grateful for the superjaws as I found it easy to get around my work rather that using a vice on my bench.

I had a play around with carving some pine and it was really tricky.  It would often split easily and chip so I had to be super patient when practising whakarei using pine.  I practiced haehae and pākati using the pine block.  After gaining more confidence using the whao, I used the off-cut from the kauri block to practise whakarei (haehae) that was similar to what I wanted to carve onto my toanga pūoro.

Once the shape was sorted, I drew the whakarei onto the pūtōrino and then split it using the band saw at Northtec.  It was tricky to cut but I was grateful for Wilz showing me how to make a jig to stop the pūtōrino from moving.  I noticed that the band saw left cut marks along the split and realised that it will need sanding before joining.  I'm not too sure on how to fix that either.  Do I need to move slower?  Do I need to use a different machine to cut?  I then started hollowing out the centre.  I used a gouge chisel that I bought from George Campbell.  During this process I had to sharpen the chisel.  I took me such a long time to get it right.  An observation I made is that I need a lot more practise sharpening my tools before I get the knack of it.

During the hollowing out process, I would tape the pūtōrino together using electrical tape, to see if it would make a noise.  The first time i taped it up, I couldn't make any sound so I knew that I had to hollow out more of the wood, partly because the trumpet piece was too thick and also the mouth piece on the side opening.  The mouth opening I found tricky to do because i didn't want to snap the half by drilling a hole so I chose a small dremel drill bit to use and slowly made the hole bigger that way rather than use a large drill bit.  It worked but took quite some time to do.

Once I could produce a sound from both openings, I sanded the joins to get rid of the jagged edges that the band saw created.  I flipped my mouse sander upside down and used that, careful not to take too much of the edge off so they wouldn't fit together again.  When I was happy with the join, I applied PVA wood glue to both surfaces and clamped using my super jaws and some padding being very careful not to apply too much pressure.  I left that over night.

The next day I inspected the join.  On reflection I could have possibly spent more time on sanding back the edges a bit more because the join was still obvious.  Now came the MOST challenging part, carving the whakarei.  I practiced again on the off cut, trying to figure out which tool would be best for the job.  Advice from my bro was just 'slow and steady'

A made a number of observations while carving. 

1.  Sometimes going too slow and steady doesn't do a nice clean cut as opposed to being confident and tapping the whakarei with the right amount of force.  I found the slow and steady cuts needed tidying up afterwards.

2.  Keep an eye (and ear) out for the change in the grain.  I could hear splitting while doing the whiriki lines and knew instantly that I had to change direction of my chisel line.  Sometimes I didn't listen carefully enough and small bits chipped off.

3.  Your whao needs to be sharp!  I used the factory sharp 13/4 whao thinking the smaller the chisel the better because its only a small piece... WRONG once I used my fav chisel 'Hori" which is a sharp haehae chisel and moves through the wood nicely, it really tidied up my cuts and its obvious on the completed piece which whao I used on each half.

After nervously completing the whakarei I thought about what thread to use to bind the pūtōrino.  I gave the pūtōrino a good coat of danish oil and then rubbed all the excess oil off because I read somewhere that the oil helps harden the wood.  I had some black thread and wrapped some around to have a look... 

I instantly thought the thread was too thick for the piece and then tried wax string.  I also thought the wax string would create a tighter binding.  I had to watch a you tube video to figure out how to bind tidily.  It actually took way longer (and quite a few attempts) to get it right.

Final reflection:  When working in my workshop at home I felt it super important to always start with karakia.  One practise I need to also include is to finish with karakia.  I found because I would always go back to my workshop throughout the day I never really thought about "Am I coming back in here later?" so there wasn't any 'finish' time set.  

I absolutely enjoyed this project and felt proud of what I had achieved.  Like anything else we do, skill comes with practise and I have to learn to tackle the whakarei with confidence, the same way I do everything else (tools, shaping etc).  I look forward to the next task and I'm also keen on getting acquainted with 'other' rākau.    

Things I'd do differently next time: 

*  Figure out how to have a cleaner cut when cutting piece in half) 

*  I would spend more time on the joins - thinking about our tupuna who wouldn;t have used PVA glue to join, they would have made the join as seamless as possible so no air could escape, even with the binding there would have to be no gaps at all.

*  Sharpen all the chisels,

*  Keep practising whakarei

*  Use some smaller g/f-clamps when joining rather that clamping just the middle using the superjaw.  

*  Possibly look at different stains to highlight the beauty of the rakau..

Clay Taonga pūoro

Today I finished off my clay toanga pūoro that I had started during lockdown.  I pit fired them a couple of days ago out at Tangiteroria.  This firing was successful because I watched a few more you tube videos on drum/barrell firings and learned so good tips.
1.  Make sure you burn all your wood for about an hour before putting the lid on (so the embers burn through the rest of the sawdust.
2.  Use copper sulphate and aluminium sulphate to create flashings on the clay.

They look really great and I have adorned them with muka and feathers (kukupa and pukeko).   I also burnished them with cold wax and gave them a bit of a polish. 

 

 

Back to the workshop - yaaaaay!

This week we headed into the workshop again.  It feels like forever since we were last in here and we were all stoked to be back in class.

We were lucky enough to be given two options to attend class.  12pm-4pm and 4pm - 9pm.  I was keen to attend both but was an hour late to our first class due to whanau commitments at home.

It was great to see my Zui friends and tutor in person.  We looked at sharpening chisels, talked about our design/project briefs and had a go at a couple of whakarei (haehae and pākati).

It was a GREAT day and I learned how to make up a jig for cutting my pūtōrino in half.  I also need some practice on carving the pākati design but a challenge I am enjoying.

Project Brief: Taonga Pūoro - Pūtōrino

Time to get into the mahi.  The Covid-19 crisis is now in reprieve (hopefully for good) and we have entered into Level 1 at long last.  This means our workshop is open for us to attend weekly night classes again.  I'm so excited to get into the workshop and have the experts around me as I continue my learning journey that is Whakairo.

Knowing we are heading into the workshop, I thought I had better get my project brief sorted for our first creative work which is due in at the end of this semester.  Initially I thought I could do my tekoteko, but after some consideration I thought I had better tackle a project that will allow me to practice some whakarei (because I need all the practice I can get).  So I decided on a pūtōrino, motivated by Shar in our class.  I saw her working on hers during our last couple of class zui so I thought, "Cool, I'll do one too so I can watch and learn from her".

So this weekend has been spent on creating a project brief, designing and thinking about the whakaaro of the taonga pūoro and getting into the shaping of the piece.  I used a piece of timber my bro had left in his garage.  We think it's a piece given to him by my cousin who supplies in specialised timber in Auckland.  I'll try and find out what the wood is.

Before I started I had a bit of a tutu with my chisels just to get a feel of what it would be like to carve.  The wood is beautiful and one day so will my carving skills lol. 

I drew up the outline of my pūtōrino onto my block of wood.  I used my skill saw to take out the corners and to cut out a cross-section.  Then I just used 'Tipene' and mallet to start taking out larger chunks of wood.

I enjoyed my time getting to know my new chisel "Tipene" . I named him after the helpful guy down at downtown tools.  I had a good yak to him and he was very interested in my whakairo journey and was super encouraging, so my new chisel (which I want to make a purupuru whakangao - after seeing Kawiti's and Matua Paki's) is named after him. 

I spent most my spare time on Saturday, shaping and trying to get the symmetry right for the pūtōrino so I can use the band saw in class next week to split and start hollowing the inside.  I also just had a look at the whakarei 'whiriki' design on the piece.  I'm looking forward to working on this next week.

Hazard control in the workshop

During class today we had a korero around identifying hazards in our work spaces.  I guess being an art teacher I've always placed an importance on identifying potential hazards and to always set up a safe working space.  I'm a bit of an organise freak at the best of times so one of the benefits is to always put things back where they live and continuously tidying up.

During my short time of carving at home, I noticed a couple of things and they particularly pertain to the type of wood I'm using.  Because of lack of confidence, my first tekoteko was made from treated pine and I could pretty much smell it while chipping away.  So when using bench saw etc, I made sure I had on the proper ventilator.

I also noticed that it pays to place a rubber mat down at the base of my superjaw because my chisel hit the base of it once, luckily it was an old chisel.  So the safety of the tools are important too.

Potential hazards in workplace:  Cords (lights, extension cords, power tools), my kuri, dust, fumes from confinement of garage, using goggles for equipment.  To eliminate these potential hazards (run cords under mat, cut up an old yoga mat to place under rakau - super jaw, wear protective gear ALWAYS,  Kuri has a bed that's placed away from workspace.  Some of my common practices are:  sweep up chips, place a table for chisels to sit on while using superjaw (but I do like the idea of having a tray on the table so chisels don't roll off)

Tikanga Whakairo and awa atua.

I was so excited to get back into the carving shed this morning because I'm loving the mahi on my first tekoteko (maquette). That feeling quickly disappeared when I woke this morning to a heavy awa atua (menstrual cycle) and it made me think... is there a tikanga around carving and women experiencing awa atua?

I quickly resorted to to kūkuru (google) and did a search to see if anything was online that could guide me (knowing very well the un-likelihood of there being much info online.) I found an interesting read published online by Ngāhuia Murphy called "Potent not pollunant: Exploring menstruation in the Māori world".

A couple of quotes stood out for me. The first being from Elsdon Best:  "Blood is considered very tapu (sacred, restricted, unsafe) in Māori law and must be treated with care. According to Hirini Moko Mead (2003: 49), a woman was especially tapu when menstruation because of the flow of blood and so there were restrictions placed on her at this time and dangers to be observed."

Another account on the restrictions during mate mārama was... on the first day the woman would apply a tohi whakatapu (the principle of restriction) to herself, meaning she would abstain from working in the food gardens or gathering seafood at the beach. She would instead use the time to have a rest from what was a physically demanding lifestyle and go off to quiet spaces or only do light duties around the home (Murphy 2013: 100-101). The key point was the restrictions were self-imposed in order to claim space for themselves and provide a welcome reprieve from the daily demands of community living (102).

This is Ngāhuia's summary of her article:  "This research set out to outline the reasons for the restrictions upon menstruating women in pre-colonial Māori society and the connection with the Māori concept of tapu. It was an attempt to address some of the misconceptions of uncleanness and female inferiority that mostly resulted from the colonial literature and patriarchal lens of the white male ethnographers and a call for Māori to start telling our own stories. It is also a call for the need to reclaim our traditional rites and rituals. To shift the dialogue away from mate mārama being seen as a polluting experience and instead be viewed again as a powerful and potent “awa atua” that acknowledges women as not only the bearers of future generations for their people but as a vessel that connects the living and spiritual realms."

This article and other readings online were not necessarily related to whakairo BUT they are all written from a Te Ao Māori perspective.  My instinct told me that it wasn't right to be working on my whakairo mahi, firstly because it was my first day and secondly because it was so heavy.  I thought about what has happened during my course up until now and I realised that this is the first time I have been 'carving' with whao and rakau since I started the course so having my awa atua never affected me in the past because I was either sketching, reading, thinking about ideas etc.   

So, my whakaaro around tikanga whakairo and awa atua... Always go with your instincts because ultimately if your own mahi comes from a place of tika, pono and aroha and not from unease, uncertainty and ill feeling, then you can't go wrong.  Tekoteko... our journey will continue together, just not today. 

UPDATE:  11:21am I talked to my bro and asked if he'd heard any korero about the topic.  He said not particularly for whakairo but for kai gardens and ranranga etc... but his advice was, "Up to you sis as you're not under a tapu...  Some days your whakairo will drain you so rest up as your wairua is important, it sucks the life from you (so to speak)  Part of you becomes part of your mahi, some days you just 

need a pick me up or more inspiration.  You set your kaupapa and you'll be fine."  I am always grateful for the korero I have with my bro...Ngā mihi ano bro xx  

Tekoteko tuatahi

I started my first tekoteko today with some apprehension.  I'm so thankful that I had my bros unfinished tekoteko beside me while trying to get my head around the tinana and a 3D form.

I started with some cross cuts using my benchsaw and realised later on that I had cut them too deep and have lost some of the shape in the form.  So lesson number 1 - make sure your cross cuts don't go too deep into your form.

Once it was all cut out I then tried to get my head around starting to shape the form of the tinana.  I remembered what Kawiti and Johnny had reminded me about... draw in the centre line. 

 After that it was a matter of acquainting myself with the whao to figure out which one was best suited to the different jobs.  I found that I was using 2 whao in particular throughout and not and then I'd pull out a couple of smaller whao to 'tidy' things up.  The two popular whao were 'Hori' my v-chisel (12/10) that I named after the old chap I bought it second hand from (George Campbell) and my 2/16.  These two whao were my best friends during this task.  Now and then I'd use the 8/7 just to get into some tight places.

Another lesson I learnt was the value of not working on one side to much so that you could try and keep things symmetrical.  So moving it around in the superjaw made sure that the lines were kept true to (or as close as possible) to the design on paper).  A trick I found helpful was the traced vivid sketches I often used to keep my lines true to design also.

My traced designs on my homemade light box

I am really enjoying the wero and process of carving my tekoteko marquette and secretly wished I had the confidence in myself and used some totara instead of playing the 'safe card' and using an old treated pine bed leg.   Here's more pics of our progress...

My first attempt at raperape...

Well I finally gathered up the courage to have a go at raperape... it took AGES but I found it both challenging and rewarding.