Studio Insights - November 2025
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.
“I would rather die of passion than of boredom.”
A truly exhausting but fulfilling month. The time I’d been waiting on for years finally came with the opening on my solo exhibition The Castle in the Sky. There was a bit of everything this month - last minute prep, celebration, documentation, creative work and gallery sitting.
Table of Contents:
CREATE: Castle in the Sky
INSPIRE: Exposure
LEARN: Sculpture Experimentation
PLAN: Documentary
CREATE: The Castle in the Sky
My exhibition had a resoundingly successful opening on the 13th, with a beautiful collection of friends, family and the creative community showing up to make it special. I was so proud of how the whole gallery setup came together. It somehow almost perfectly fit the vision I had in my mind which doesn’t happen often!
I spent the rest of the month working on documenting the space, facilitating a couple guest artist workshops and working on my own small sculpture.
INSPIRE: Exposure
As a Massey Alumni I always make an effort to go along and see all the awesome upcoming talent shown in the annual graduate exhibition, Exposure. Last year I was absolutely gutted to have accidentally missed it… so even though this was on right in the middle of mayhem I found some time to get along. I’ve loved seeing how the concept design section has grown over the years - it didn’t even exist when I studied there.
LEARN: Sculpture Experimentation
This month, I worked away on a small sculpture, replicating the figure pose found in my main painting. I loved tinkering away at this while gallery sitting, finding it quite relaxing and therapeutic. I had little idea what I was doing and learnt a lot about sculpting in this process. First lesson - it takes TIME. It was so strange spending hours on an arm when I could paint it in a couple of brushstrokes. I also learnt that I needed a better base to hold the sculpture… I kept ruining parts by holding it.
It took a bit of figuring out to get the wire base right. I first tried making it in sections, but this lacked structural integrity. So then I had to figure out how to make the figure/chair skeletons using just a single piece of wire each. I should have used a little more for the chair - it’s a little wobbly with the whole weight of the figure.
PLAN: Documentary
Now that the exhibition is all done the only piece left to come together is the documentary. This will cover the whole story of my exhibition from ideation, painting, opening and an in-gallery final reflection. Keep your eyes out for this coming out soon!
Once all that is done, I’ll be properly winding down for a big, well-deserved, relaxing break over the holidays.