Newsletter: Additional to February 2024

The Creative Role Model continues in the face of adversity.

Spending the last three months gathering my pieces of digital artwork together, to create this silent moving gallery of my art? It’s been wonderful. A life saver in times of real adversity.

With the experiences of being systematically shut out of my community. To have this and other creative structures? The whole of my being remains in balance and focus.

The background, or what I call the foundation images. That sit on all sides of the digital frame. These are images from the environment I live in. They’re trees, grasses, flowers, leaves, stones, human made structures of concrete steps, seats, iron fence work and the occasional pathway lamp.

However, trees feature the most. Albert park and the surrounding reserves of greenspaces offer up for me the best and interesting looking trees I’ve seen since One Tree Hill domain.

This time with the video art gallery, unlike the previous, I used more of Canva.com to tautoko the vision I had for each piece. I dreamed them into the Matrix. It was quite deliberate to do so. I like to believe that changing the programme, with a glitch in the matrix is so fun.

I engaged video, graphics and photos from Canva.com sources. They have a good variety. Not as superior as Photoshop Adobe. Whom have been around providing software opportunities to artify our digital worlds for longer than…

I find Canva.com easy to use and just click here and click there and it’s done. Though I’m not using the full extent of the software, because that’s not the function of this Creative Role Model.

How I dreamed them into the Matrix?

Looking at the foundation image is always the first step. My big thing as an artist and their work, is seeing faces, hands, mouths and other human features within them. It doesn’t seem to matter what the original object is that I take a photo of. I simply see human beings in all things.

This knowledge about myself is a tautoko to step out into the unknown. Because I don’t know how, at first, how I’ll be able to enhance the human part I see, till I’m at least half way along in the work.

I’m thinking about the whole image as I turn it around on the digital canvas. Then magically without any effort the humanity in the work reveals itself to me.

Each piece, once I put it onto the canvas timeline, can take up two days of focussed attention to complete. That’s from start to finish. Some are even quicker. Although I will return to a piece over and again making adjustments till I feel the. “Ok it’s time to stop this mahi and commit.”

Like the cabbage tree, there are fundamental pieces that I keep re-artifying, adding, changing and clarifying. If you’ve seen the other two digital video art galleries you’ll recognise pieces that I’ve relived. I love that about the cabbage tree momentum. It’s an eternal feature on our country’s landscape.

Many a great artist has been facinated by the cabbage tree and Māori have folk stories about this amazing portal into other realms. Though I don’t have the cabbage tree in any of my mahi. It’s the philosophy of this mystical that I’m drawing from to bring to my art work. This is via the Creative Role Model.

Favourite pieces?

Oh, hard to pick. So many capture my imagination and hold my attention. They all together inspire me. The colouring, the angles, the way the pieces present themselves to my vision? All these in heart, mind and soul is what makes the words. “Wow that’s beautiful.” or “Aw, I love the vibrance of colour.” or “Ah, joy.” And so on and so forth.

Images: 22 and 80 are narley. 225 gives the essense of me leaping into the void. 231, is the Sunday afternoon when I’m just being me.

The support through adversity.

At the height of any challenge that I face in life. Art is the one place I return to over and over again. Also poetry. But art. It’s the biggest release I have for stress and worry.

At this particular time in my life where I’m facing so much racism and racial profiling. The stress and worry I feel at having to make complaints to owners and managers. The discussions back and forth through the email or phone calls are tense and the denial on the other persons part is unpleasant to experience.

I’ve done a great deal of empirical research on the CBD racism to put towards a book/documentary on the experiences of it, in the Tāmaki Makaurau CBD sector. I’ll incorporate the Podcast The Cosmic Wāhine Guide to Living in Tāmaki Makaurau CBD. It’ll be digital, video and audio something very different.

Overall though, whether I call this thing video digital art gallery or video art gallery or moving image gallery or digital video art gallery. It’s altogether my biggest source of strenght, tautoko, comfort and sustaining love. Epecially now, in this time of great stress and anxiety of being on the awful end of receiving indignities based on individual distorted perceptions of me, myself and I.

Dedicated to the Colonised Child. Ciana Reimond.