Street artworks tell a story

As the New Year starts to take hold, the festive pohutakawa street banners along Napier's Emerson St have come down to be packed up until next Christmas.

In place are 64 new three-metre screen print images.

Nine artists and designers from Napier, Te Awanga and Clive have been working with printmaker Rakai Karaitiana to produce a canvas of visual stories of the "old and new".

Ahuriri Art School owner Nic Scotland said it involved a couple of days of intense learning and an opportunity for the artists to work alongside each other.

Ms Scotland's blue and white print, lei of welcome, is a floral exploration of "old and new" cultures, the English rose, hibiscus and frangipani.

Raewyn Harris explores a juxtaposition of Art Deco architectural forms, The Dome set against a more modern Pania Hotel.

"It shows the work as a whole and how the lines do work together," Ms Scotland said.

Painter Jules Clarke has drawn two strong, but opposing figures in time, celebrating together. Anna Hill's Moroccan has traditional Art Deco geometric design and Rae West's native flora and fauna are stylised in round "Tondo" form.

Other contributing artists include Karaitiana, Christine Heaney, Cat Haslam and Willow Sharp.

"It's making art a little bit more accessible to the public, so it isn't just in a gallery," Ms Scotland said.

Napier Inner City Marketing manager Meg Rodel said while Hawke' Bay Museum and Art Gallery received a new face it seemed fitting to enhance art on the street for the public's enjoyment.

The banners will outlast the time it takes for the museum to have a makeover as they have a potential five-year street life.

Inner City Marketing and Creative Napier are looking to profile other art and artists in the city by putting together an "Art in the City" brochure.

There will be stories behind Words on Walls poetry, Pania's statue, the mosaics on the Emerson St bollards and the bronze statue of Sheila Williams, who led the New Napier Week Carnival in 1933, with her elegant dog, "who is well-loved and appreciated by locals and visitors". And there is also the statue of the soldier on Marine Parade, who fell off his plinth in the 1931 earthquake.