At the cutting edge

A heart attack was the catalyst for a new career creating pieces of art for Gary Cross.
The Papamoa man had run several businesses since he moved to the Bay more than two decades ago.
But in 2009 he was forced to take five months off after suffering a heart attack. And while he was pottering about during his recovery, his new venture, Korugation, was born.
"After a few months of recovering, I had to do something before I went spare," Cross says. "The house had just been re-roofed, and I simply turned to an old piece of roofing iron with an angle-grinder, and out came this snapper.
"The neighbours all said they wanted one, so I made a few more, and people started walking in off the street."
Cross now creates similar artworks of all shapes and sizes, mostly on commission.
His designs include everything from palm trees to animals, Maori-inspired designs and business signs. The pieces were originally designed to hang outside on a fence or in a garden, but many now take pride of place inside people's homes.
Just a few months after he started making the Korugation pieces, Cross moved his business into the Cargo Shed, where he has a stall.
While Cross' background is in business, he says he has "always made things", and previously expressed his creativity through creating businesses.
Cross makes his pieces at home, working outside his garage. He lines up some wood, and lays a piece of iron over it before getting to work. "What comes out, comes out. When it's a design of my own it's simply me and my angle grinder, standing over a piece of iron with a hint of an idea of what I want to do."
He then digitises his designs so they can be sent to a cutting machine to create an exact replica of the original.
He enjoys the creative aspect of the work, and sees corrugated iron as simply a medium.
"I could do this out of wood, or any other medium, or wood. It's creating something new."
He also makes tables with corrugated iron, and has "played with" glass. His business has been expanding, with a new takeaway chain - Snapper Alley - commissioning him to create signs for each of its stores.
The first has already gone up in Melville, Hamilton.
Each sign includes an LED component and takes Cross a month to make.
Business is booming, but Cross has to remember to take it easy because of his medical condition.
"I don't get enough time now to work on the designs because I'm coming in here to work at the Cargo Shed," he says. But working on the floor in the Cargo Shed means Gary gets to meet his customers, and hear what they think of his work.
His most popular piece is the Caniwi - a Canadian maple leaf with a cut-out of a Kiwi inside it.
"Anyone with a Canadian friend will buy one," he said.
Some of his customers are cruise ship passengers, but he said not as many came to the Cargo Shed as he had hoped.
Passengers taken into Tauranga are not told about the Cargo Shed, he says, although more seem to be hearing about it.
Cross is passionate about New Zealand-made souvenirs, and is dismayed at what he says is a high level of imported goods sold as Kiwi souvenirs.
"The original artists at the Cargo Shed, that I personally have spoken with, pride themselves on using only New Zealand-sourced materials in the manufacture of their artworks and souvenirs where possible."
Marketing of the Cargo Shed is imperative to its future success, Cross believes.
He would like to see the exterior decorated, and more entries created.
And he hopes locals will get behind the project.
"Half of Tauranga used to say: 'I've been there - it's not worth going back.'
"Now they come in and comment that this place has really changed for the better."
Before he settled on the name Korugation, Gary called his business Fence Shui - a nod to the fact that his pieces brighten up even the darkest space in a garden.
"I'd like to decorate all the ugly fences around the place, or brighten up the dead fences at the back of properties - the corners that no one likes.
"If you had a feng shui design there, all of a sudden it gets used because it's getting noticed, and the ugly fences disappear behind it."