Popped down to New Plymouth for a day over the long holiday weekend to attend the annual auction of stone sculptures by the Te Kupenga Stone Sculpture Society. Sculptors from around NZ and from overseas have been working away on the New Plymouth foreshore over the past several weeks, including brother-in-law Alan Axten.
We're in the market (sort of) for a sculpture for the gardens at the new(ish) house at Struan Farm. We haven't finished the gardens just yet, and know that we need more structure than we've got right now, some visual focal points. Sculpture is one way of doing this, trellises another.
It was a fun day trip. The prices paid at the auction were slightly above our "ballpark" for something spontaneous, however. If we're going to pay what these sculptures command, we need to know where it would be going, and be agreed on the design. Below are several we liked, including two by Alan:
I favoured either one of Alan's two or the "Kereru" (woodpigeons). (I could see designing gardens around them more easily.)
On the drive back we stopped off at an area called "The Three Sisters," where there are interesting stones and cave formations along the coast, as well as a funky little settlement of bachs (traditional kiwi vacation getaways). One had a quirky wall of jandals/flipflops outside. We also stopped at Mokau, where they were pulling in kowhai (local fish) for dinner.
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