thisNZlife

THE ART OF HEALING

Five generations of the Blundell family have made their home at Riverhaven in Clevedon, south-east of Auckland, first as farmers, then orchardists, and now artists

WORDS LYNDA HALLINAN

32

Clevedon artist Katie Blundell has made a home — and a studio, teaching workshop and gallery — in the same 1970s barn where she once helped her grandparents bag fruit

Clevedon artist Katie Blundell’s Farm Girl series was inspired by a tiki tour around the district’s farms to photograph “old fellas and their tractors”. The reduction woodcut print, Going Round in Circles, was ingeniously printed on the concrete floor of Katie’s gallery using an industrial roading construction roller. “It’s a Farmall Cub, a cute little tractor that looks like a miniature pony,” she says.

WHEN YOU GROW UP in an apple orchard, perhaps it’s inevitable that you won’t fall far from the tree. For Clevedon artist Katie Blundell, returning to her roots has meant making a home — and a studio, teaching workshop and gallery — in the same 1970s barn where, as a child, she helped her grandparents bag fruit.

When Katie left home as a teenager, she didn’t go very far. She walked across the paddock from her family’s farmhouse and hot-footed it up the 11 macrocarpa steps, hand-sawn by her grandfather John and uncle Pete, to the loft above Riverhaven Orchard’s packhouse. Twenty-five years on, she’s come full circle with wife Sarah Nicholson, son Harry (13), daughter Lola (7) and Pablo the miniature schnauzer in tow.

Having originally ditched the sticks for the city to study fine arts at the University of Auckland, Katie’s return to Riverhaven seven years ago was a homecoming and a healing. The eldest of three daughters, Katie had just turned 21 — her sister Anna was 20, and Sophie just 11 — when their mum Sue died from the rare lung disease, lymphangiomyomatosis. Sue was the first person in New Zealand to be diagnosed with LAM, a fatally degenerative condition the only cure for which is a double lung transplant.

Katie’s parents were teenage sweethearts who met at high school, and Guy, a practical chap more comfortable talking tools than feelings, was broken in bereavement. “I was completely lost,” he says. But rather than bury his grief, Guy chose to excavate it, carving out a creative future for the land his family has cared for for almost a century.

Like Forrest Gump, who started running and didn’t stop for three years, Guy climbed into the cab of his seven-tonne digger and moved heaven — not to mention hundreds of cubic metres of earth — to create a 20-hectare arboretum park in his wife’s memory.

THESE PAGES, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: From packhouse to arthouse: the heartwood macrocarpa barn where the Blundell family once picked and packed fruit is now home to Katie’s gallery and studio. The rolling wagon-wheel gate was designed by her grandfather John, while the roadside bollards are recycled power poles; the packhouse is where Katie works, lives and teaches art classes; this series of machinery drawings was made by Katie as part of inktober.com’s annual October challenge, calling on artists to create 31 ink drawings in 31 days; she had her grandfather’s old laundry mangle wringer converted into a printing press by Waihī craftsman Johnny Mulvay of Classic Etching Presses; Katie’s painting overalls hang on the packhouse door. “I’ve worn my orange overalls every day for seven years,” she says, so the transition to a new blue pair is taking its time; Katie pegs On The Job Learning tea towel prints — a cheeky twist on how boys are taught construction skills while girls get to do the dishes — on a rope clothesline inside the gallery.

Contents

en-nz

2022-07-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-07-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://thisnzlife.pressreader.com/article/282003266090173

NZ Lifestyle Magazine Group