Driftwood and Sand Beach sculpture event, Hokitika, 21-25 January 2017
The day before the start of this year’s Driftwood and Sand I walked along the beach to get ideas for my sculpture. There was a lot of shiny black seaweed along the high tide line, something I had never seen before. I just had to collect this and use it, somehow!
I settled on weaving a large waikawa basket from harakeke (NZ flax – phormium tenax), incorporating the seaweed as I went and then attached white beach stones to the rim. The piece was suspended with nylon fishing line from a tall piece of driftwood buried in the sand. I called it ‘Harvest” as the seaweed was definitely harvested from the sea.
‘Harvest” after installation – some stones removed overnight 
‘Harvest” Friday night – stones removed 
At sunset
There was some vandalism on the first night with some of the stones being removed. In the end I removed them all and actually preferred the appearance then.
“Harvest” received the most avant garde award.
It was interesting to see how the colour of the seaweed started to change from the time it was installed, initially moving from black to dark purple.
Starting to turn purple 
Colours keep changing
After leaving it on the beach for a while, I brought home to my garden which was in a garden ramble (tour). I had no idea when I created “Harvest” that it would be so dynamic. Over the following few months, the colours continued to change over time getting lighter until the seaweed began to fall off onto the grass and eventually the whole sculpture returned to the earth
After three and a half months. The seaweed is falling off to reveal the underlying harakeke basket… 
… and creates another artwork 
A dynamic artwork indeed!