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.