ko au te kete

ara 1.(noun)way, path, lane, passageway 2.(noun) line of weaving, layer of thatch on a roof

https://maoridictionary.co.nz/search?idiom=&phrase=&proverb=&loan=&histLoanWords=&keywords=ara

Who am I and who the H E double toothpicks do I think I am starting a website??

A website that focuses on the indigenous art of New Zealand weaving?

To be completely honest, I’m absolutely no one.

I’m not a specialist, I’m not a master, I’m barely a novice.

I started a piddling 7 years ago and quite by accident. Some of our great masters have been at it for decades. I can only dream of being capable of what some of these artisans are now producing.

Anyone that knows me will have heard this story a thousand times.

I stumbled upon mahi raranga quite by accident. While scrolling on Instagram, I saw a friend smiling and holding a handful of green leaves.

She looked happier than she’d looked in a while and I was intrigued. Once she let me know what she was doing, I thought, gosh that sounds boring. She invited me to her class. There was space for me to enrol so I went a long with it thinking it probably wasn’t for me.

It didn’t take long for me to realise I was completely obsessed with this plant and this art and that I needed to know more.

The 20 week course has become a lifelong obsession and I’m very proud I was able to complete a Bachelor in the art, under master weavers for the last two years of study, in our country’s hub of indigenous art, Rotorua.

It is a dying art and only a very small number of people hold knowledge of it. Part of my reason for doing this is to ensure it never dies, and also, as I say to my students, in the zombie apocalypse, our art will be very useful!

It is laborious and time-consuming and requires great patience, focus and favourable weather, which we don’t have a lot of in our country.

Fortunately thanks to publicly funded wānanga (indigenous schools) and a few of the wonderful families that were able to maintain their arts after colonisation – mahi raranga and mahi whatu have been brought back from the brink of extinction.

We have many to thank for this not to forget the New Zealand government and taxpayers that have supported the mission to keep our arts alive and intact for the generations to come.

I’ve thought deeply about my art and I see the whole world, universe and everything in it, conceptually, through this art. I don’t understand why it speaks to me so deeply and endlessly and why everything I see and think somehow connects back to it.

I hope to be able to articulate some of this here and share it with the world. Whether it speaks to anyone or resonates remains to be seen.