My Friends at Estuary Arts

Rosie Little and Bruce Hamlin are artist friends of mine who live in Collingwood, Golden Bay, over the Takaka Hill from Nelson on NZ's South Island. They are renowned as potters but also paint, sculpt, and in recent years started making glass pieces http://www.estuaryarts.co.nz

Each year on my vacation I would call into the Estuary Arts Studio in Para Para, past Takaka, to visit them for life updates and add to my growing collection of their work.

I must confess that I see them less regularly now that I live in NZ, but I do manage to catch up every other year or so, and Rosie and I maintain an irregular correspondence of scribbled life updates at least once a year. Oddly enough, after writing the first draft of this post, Rosie rang to query me about Auckland logistics related to an upcoming trip Bruce is making to attend a conference on glass making.

Bruce is a fisherman and his early pottery involved fish:

  
 

Rosie's usually flowers or fruit:

   


Although she went through a nude period:

 
Not sure whether this vase was made by Rosie or Bruce, but I love the color, glaze, and cattails with dragonfly and frog:

 

 

And then there's the glass:

 

I wasn't able to photograph one of Rosie's paintings in a way that would do it justice. I have them framed with glass and it is too reflective. For some reason her mountain landscapes remind me of Georgia O'Keefe. Bruce has taken up painting again but I haven't (as yet) acquired one of his paintings.

I love the fact that their art evolves and that they work in different media. If you get out to Golden Bay call into Estuary Arts or check out their website. When Rosie heard about this impending blog post, she warned me that quite a bit of my collection is now "ancient history" given their current work, so I'm assuming its value has increased accordingly!