Time passes

New Zealand mourns

New Zealand mourns the lost miners but we all so admire Australian Peter Whittall, a man very different from some of his media colleagues from across the ditch. This is what the Otago Daily Times reported today:

A second Australian journalist, from Australia's Channel Seven, asked: "Can you imagine New York firefighters standing around the World Trade Centre waiting to be told they shouldn't go in if there were lives in the balance."
Pike River Coal chief executive Peter Whittall said that was an inappropriate question.
"I'm not going to comment ...my guys are underground, I'm not going to answer a question like that." 
 
Newsmen like these give their country a very bad name.

Only at Modaks

Where else do you find the most beautiful peonies in a glass jar?

SITE exhibition, Dunedin

Upstairs violinists, downstairs Dunedin Art School graduates celebrate with friends and relatives.

Franz Liszt in Ceramic

This portrait of Franz Liszt is made of ceramic. He is part of a series of ceramic portraits I made when I was in Dunedin. I unpacked them the other day and thought how lovely they are. All of them apart from Liszt and Wagner are of people in Dunedin whom I admire. When I made them I intended to have a show called 'Heros and Saints' but I left Dunedin before I was able to exhibit them. Instead, two years later, I am exhibiting them online.

My violins

Flower shop in Dunedin

Flowershop in Dunedin ..... next to the coffee shop featured below.

Tasman's view

Tasman likes to sit on the top of the chair-back looking out at the view. Time passes and Tasman looks. More time passes and Tasman looks some more. Views are like that. So are cats.

John Cage and the Musak Company

I read in the New Yorker (Oct 2010) that John Cage once tried to sell  a silent work to the Musak Company. Wouldn't it be wonderful if his piece 4'33" was loop played in all the places that play Musak Music?

Practise session

Trial, error, frustration and sore eyes. I have been back in the film room relearning long forgotten software.

Cumulus

Cumulus clouds rolling over Dunedin's hills.

Dunedin Weather

The Met Service prediction:

Today: 26°C   Friday 17°C  Saturday 26°C    Sunday 16°C
Huge great drops have just started falling from an overburdened sky. 

 

Coronet Peak Landscape

Coronet Peak Landscape in watercolour and ink.

Coronet Peak through the Clemetis

Central Otago is stunningly beautiful. Blue hills, yellow broom and gorse, tan hills and emerald green waterways.

In the evening the hills turn from tan to dark blue to purple as the sky darkens.

Making Coffee

View through a Bay Window.

This 'period charmer' I am house-sitting in Dunedin's North East Valley has a  bay window that looks out over the hills opposite.

Big trees and lots of flowers

The rhododendrons in Dunedin's botanic gardens are a mass of flowers.

Wander down the hill and you come across some huge trees, including this Pinus radiata.

Azaleas

Azaleas in Dunedin's Botanic Gardens.

Dunedin Spring 2010

Changing season

How confusing. Two weeks ago it was Hamburg and autumn and now it is Dunedin (NZ) and early spring. All the rhododendrons are in flower and I am being careful crossing the road as I no longer know which side of the road to expect traffic from.