What do you do?

I laugh a lot. I make whakapapa quilts. Story blankets to wrap people in and to heal them and make them feel all the love that is theirs. I run workshops for people to give fabric folk art a go. Usually, I just go where people ask me to

What could you imagine doing if you didn’t do what you do?

I’d definitely be a badminton coach. Badminton is like dancing and smashing and lunging and scheming and the older you get the schemier you get . It’s really good for the neck and shoulder muscles.

What images are pinned to your studio wall?

All my old rejects and mistakes, taken out of ‘maybe’ piles and hidden in cupboards and draws. I still love them, maybe only I would.

Lots of weaving taonga, artworks by Pania Molloy, Mathew Macintyre, Katherine Morrison, Mel Tangaere Baldwin, Lissy and Rudi Robinson Cole, and Anna Marie Obrien. I like kick-ass and colour.

What is the first artwork that inspired you?

A small print by Beatrice Smith, an American Artist born in the 1870s . She painted scenes of slaves picking cotton on plantations, in simple forms and colours with mint green hills and ice cream scoop clouds . True folk art, from the heart and hearth. I bought it for 5 cents from the Vinnies in Newtown when I was 8 in 1978.

It would probs be offensive today, but in my naivety, I saw me and my cousins and Uncles and Aunties in that print, out in the Hastings sun, weeding cucumbers, picking asparagus, pruning kiwifruit as a whanau. It was the photo we never had. It takes me straight back there, I can feel the breeze on my sunburned arms. That print travelled everywhere with me until it finally disintegrated somewhere in the early 2000s, but it’s still alive in my mahi.

Who is your ideal studio buddy?

Jeff Koons – he could teach me how to be all about the money.

The residency that I did in 2022 at the Hihiaua Cultural Center was the best thing ever. I got to share space with traditional Maori carvers. No question was too silly. They were generous, and they led by example. They were amazing, I learned so much and would do it again in a flash. But next time I’d like to use their tools. I hope they read this lol.

What are you listening to?

Listening to lots of PJ Harvey, ‘Fallen Woman in a Dancing Costume’ on repeat. Her work is so pure and so well crafted, plus, she’s been around for as long as I have.

Black Sheep, the RNZ podcast about the worst New Zealanders. A bunch of rogues – terribly funny and well-researched. It’s a gold mine for any Kiwi activist. Some extreme characters dug up from the old world.

What are you reading?

Sylvia Ashton Warner. I scored her autobiography from the Cats Protection op-shop in Pahiatua. I’d read about how horrible she was in the Patricia Grace novel ‘Baby No Eyes’, and I had friends who were taught by her in the 1940s. To be fair, she’s facing her past actions with honesty and that is really surprising and refreshing.

‘The Savage Colonizer’ by Tusiata Avia. Her poetry is never a love story, this book is fierce and uncompromising. A kick up the ass for all activists. Artists are always trying to invent their own language. She says what we are all too afraid to say, in words.

An artist you would like to meet?

Whoever carved the Venus of Willendorf 30,000 years ago. She’s timeless and powerful and fat.

I’d also like to kick back and have a beer with the artists who painted the Altamira Caves.

And Victorine Meurent – International cancan dancer, nude model, impressionist painter. She lived out loud and managed to outdo most of the men who painted her. She made and paved the road.