GRATITUDE…..

Summer has arrived and some of my mokos, free of their studies have come home to Hawke’s Bay for a complete change of pace and focus.

Ella my eldest grandchild has been staying with me for three weeks now, loving the peace of this place – a retreat of sorts – and a leisurely unwinding of her particular set of pressures. She’s taken her time to find a summer job in the real world of business, working in the area she is studying, i.e. law and tikanga māori and at two days into the job she is gathering information and organising it, while informing herself.

Louis, her cousin is the next eldest and by contrast he has picked up the pace and is working long hours on selling the Cookie-time biscuits that ends at Christmas. His goal is to sell hundreds of buckets of cookies to set himself up for another year as a student in Wellington. He’s even recruiting his mates as his sales support. Such energy, such a sense of purpose – I worry he’ll exhaust himself but he seems to be thriving on the challenge. Go Lou!

Jeremy, Louis’s brother is an artist, thoughtful and quiet. He has been spending many hours in my studio this week creating a clay sculpture under my guidance; he has a great eye and has the ability to translate it into an image with the biggest challenge being the techniques of hand building in clay. This is a male head in terracotta and he’s using a book of drawings of the head as reference. He should finish it today.

Such a precious time and stage of life, soon these darlings will be fully-fledged adults leading full and independent lives. I will remember this summer, always.

Jeremy building a ceramic sculpture of a human head in clay