Studio Insights - May 2026
CREATE: What I’ve created/done & what I’m working on.
INSPIRE: What art has inspired me.
LEARN: What I’m learning to develop my practice.
PLAN: What I’m planning next.
“If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all. ”
This entry officially marks 2 years of creating my studio insights blog every month. When I first set up this system, I really had no idea how far I would take it - it's quite an achievement to still be going strong.
This month was again quite low on the creation front… but I did manage to see plenty of art that inspired me, including some of my own old work. More on that below.
Table of Contents:
CREATE: NZ Games Festival
INSPIRE: NZ Art Show
LEARN: 2 Year Reflection
PLAN: Format Change
CREATE: NZ Games Festival
I volunteered for the NZ Games Festival - a week-long celebration of gaming, hosted in Wellington. This featured the Pavs Game Awards, Play by Play conference and a range of workshops throughout. With my recent keen interest in the gaming industry, I decided that volunteering for this event would be a great way to get my foot in the door and find some inspiration.
I first helped with the careers conversation evening, which brought together 4 industry professionals to share their valuable knowledge on how to make it in the gaming world. Next, I helped set up and host the exhibition at Play by Play. This space showed off the finalists for the Pavs awards, along with playable demos of each. Thankfully, there was quite a bit of downtime, so I got the chance to have a go at most of them. Shape Senders Deluxe, a physics puzzle game, really stood out to me. It was incredibly polished, had great character and was a ton of fun! I also loved the creator’s talk at Play by Play, with his presentation hosted entirely within a modified version of his game. Probably the most unique and engaging ‘slideshow’ I’ve seen in a long time - what better way to show off a game than to just play it?
INSPIRE: Expressions in Clay
The NZ Art Show has become an annual ritual for me over the years, and I look forward to connecting with the art community each time. I chose not to exhibit this year, instead just appreciating the art. I even purchased a piece for myself (Atomic Habit print by David Dawon Choi), something I’d actually never done at an art show before!
There was a lot to be inspired by as usual, but I wanted to highlight this section ‘Cone-illogical’ by artist Dean Proudfoot. This featured a series of paintings with traffic cones in silly places, with an equally silly wordplay name for each. I love this concept of taking something super simple and exploring all possibilities. It reminded me a bit of the rubber ducky exhibition I joined a while ago. Anyone walking past can instantly understand the idea with no explanation, and have fun laughing at all the ridiculous ideas. I felt inspired to try something like this when I eventually rejoin the art show. Just one small idea for my entire display, taken to the absolute limits. I’ve learnt over the years that at these shows, with over 100 artists, audience attention is at an absolute premium. Very few have the energy to read long paragraphs of text when overwhelmed with thousands of artworks to take in all at once.
I stumbled onto some of my own old work this month as well. Firstly, I found this Zine I created with Kieran Shipley, which is a part of the library collection. I’d completely forgotten it was there until we found it on the shelves at the brand new central library. How exciting!
I also took a trip back to Blenheim, and visited my old high school while there. I was pleasantly surprised to see the mural we did as an art class still standing after over 10 years. It’s made up of about 10 separate panels, each done by different students (my panel pictured below)
LEARN: 2 Year Reflection
When I first set up this system for blog writing 2 years ago, I wanted to challenge myself to think deeper about all the influences and lessons in my art career each month. I really wasn’t sure if it would stick, but with minimal adjustments I’ve kept it going strong over the years. While I am thinking about streamlining the format somewhat… I still want to keep creating monthly blog entries for the foreseeable future. I truly believe reflection is such a powerful thing. To this day I’m still surprised every single month when I look back and see all the things I’d forgotten about.
Over 2 years, I’ve created 31 posts (24 Monthly ‘Studio Insights’ + 7 ‘Special Entries’) with a total of over 27,000 words across the lot. I was curious to see how that was split across each month; I know my desire to write varied a lot. Because I’m a massive nerd, I made a graph - Enjoy!
PLAN: Format Change
As mentioned earlier, I’ve been thinking about stripping back my studio insights format as I find myself spending less time in the studio these days. Ironically enough, I had thought to do it for this entry but didn’t have the time. I don’t know what it’ll look like moving forward, but I’m thinking I want the whole thing to fit just within the email I send out. Perhaps challenging myself to write more concisely!