Helene Olivia Smith
Shared Lines: Kaikōura exhibiting artist
Once Were Moa, Installed as part of Art & About. Photo by Jennifer Shields
The Left Overs (2018)
Helene’s wide-ranging artistic practice included painting, flax weaving, jewellery design and black-smithing. After enrolling in a weekly pottery class in 2014 Helene became completely and utterly obsessed with making from clay. Now in her final year of the Diploma of Ceramic Art under the tutorage of Tatyanna Meharry in Christchurch, Helene also teaches Beginner Pottery classes at Rising Holme, where her involvement with ceramics began. Helene is currently working alongside her artist partner Michael Springer, in their home studio beside Lake Wairewa at Birdlings Flat, towards a major show together at Chambers Gallery in Christchurch in January 2019
Immersed in a landscape filled with forever shifting stones, big southern seas and eroding volcanic hills, the earthly elemental act of hand-building with clay and the unpredictable transformation of glaze and fire, lends itself to my often experimental and organic aesthetic.
With an interest in archelogy, geology and the forces of nature that shape our lives, this body of sculptural works
“The Leftovers” explores how we might search for meaning in what is left behind. Unidentifiable forms hint at some function now long forgotten and ultimately the rise and fall of civilizations throughout all time. These bio-morphic relics of an unknown era, give us clues to a lost way of life and poses the question, what accidental remnants will we leave buried for future discovery and what stories might be imagined, when the detritus of our time are viewed with new eyes?