Visitors to New Zealand comment on the sharp clear quality of light here.  This is reflected in my work.  Sharp, clear, stark, even hard, colors.  Strong sun yellows, yellow green forest, dark copper blue evening skies, light blue summer skies, deep blue/green seas.  Developing these crystal glasses has been tremendously exciting, and I want to give credit to Croucher/Leggott for their skill, knowledge and tenacity.  This partnership has solved for me my major problem.  I have a material of quality seldom seen in the world outside of the Czech Republic.

Never a static situation, my close relationship with my glassmakers enables me to modify and explore the material to suit my own changing creative requirements.  I have never seen the idea as the primary moving force behind my work – it has always interacted with and been enriched by the material process.

At this 15-year plateau, a move from how to what I make has been combined with mature technical confidence.  I feel, finally, a freedom to explore my ideas that have been, for years, in the too risky category.  I see myself as a designer/maker of a very limited production series and one of a kind of prototypes.  I have arrived at a mode of working that satisfies production, economic realities, while facilitating one of a kind developments.

My culture is South Pacific, home of large ceremonial bowls.  European history here spans only 200 years.  Polynesian history, older and deeply embedded, has been critical to my development.  I have grown up with the vessel tradition of Samoa, Fiji, Solomons, Cook, Nuie, Raratonga, Tonga, and of course, Maori.  My own personal poetry has always centered around a love of the natural world – the patterns of life and growth move easily into my forms.  The more I see of these patterns, the more there seems to be seen.  Patterns I absorb from natural flora I find in the carvings of the Pacific people; patterns of Polynesia that look at a universal language of the cultures of the world.  The generosity of the bowl with its multiple layers of meaning still offers a rich canvas.  Artist statement, February 1997

Education
1980 Diploma of Fine Arts, Auckland University, Auckland, New Zealand


Selected Public and Private Collections
Auckland Museum, Auckland, New Zealand
Bellevue Public Library, Bellevue, Washington
Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York
Dowse Gallery, Lower Hutt, New Zealand
Karen Johnson Boyd, Racine, Wisconsin
Robert McDougal Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand
Microsoft Corp, Redmond, Washington
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
Queensland Art Gallery, Queensland, Australia
Stadtmuseum, Gottingen, Germany
Saint Paul Companies, St. Paul, Minnesota
Victoria and Albert Museum, London