Pasifika careers bloom in receptive city

ELEANOR BLACK talks to two of the artists who will share their vibrant visions of island life at the Pasifika Festival.

Sylvia Marsters' brilliantly coloured island flowers are mesmeric - the hibiscus and frangipani blooms crowd the canvas with tropical abundance and draw you in for a closer look.

It is hard to believe their creator, who draws heavily on her Cook Islands heritage, has been painting for only five years and was raised in a home where there was little time for art.

But it is her late arrival to oil painting - after taking a class from painter Lois McIvor, who learned from Colin McCahon - which has inspired the artist to share her techniques at the Pasifika Festival this year.

"My father worked at the freezing works for about 30 years and he paid for our education but he didn't have the knowledge for me to be able to have an art career," she explains.

At Pasifika - the annual festival celebrating art, music, dance and food from the Pacific - she will simply set up an easel and work, building up layers of intoxicating colour into a lush still life.

Anyone who shows an interest is invited to stop and talk about how she broke into the art world, a leap of faith that still amazes her.

"I pinch myself every day ... I love the idea that people have got [my paintings] in their home and knowing that I made their life a little bit better."

Marsters hopes to travel to the Cook Islands for the first time next year for a three-month arts fellowship. The trip will also give her added material to work from: "I'm really looking forward to seeing the blooms over there. They say frangipani here is no comparison to frangipani in the islands."

Kulimoe'anga "Stone" Maka is so pleased to be back in his adopted country he has trouble putting his feelings into words. The best thing about returning to Auckland to attend art school, he says, is the positive attitude towards artists.

In his native Tonga, there is little chance to make a living from art, and what he does - working with tapa cloth - is the preserve of women.

Maka is making a name for himself by adding a contemporary edge to the traditional art of tapa. It distinguishes him from the swirl of other Pacific Islanders trying their luck in Auckland and helps him to define his place as a Tongan living in a European environment.

"New Zealand is very tolerant of Pacific Islanders and Pacific artists - I think this is their headquarters. I have found something to identify myself in a foreign country."

He will spend his time at the Pasifika Festival working in the arts arena set up by the Tautai Contemporary Pacific Arts Trust, helping to make traditional tapa and showing his own work.

Maka uses both blank sheets of tapa and printed pieces, to which he applies oil paint gently: "I don't want to wipe [the design] off. I still respect those ladies who put their hearts in the tapa."

Maka has been experimenting with a special coating to help preserve his artworks and developing new themes for his art. "This is just the beginning of what I will do with tapa."

* The 10th anniversary Pasifika Festival at the Western Springs Stadium and lakeside opens on Friday at 7.30pm. It runs from 9am to 6pm on Saturday.