Taking on art and life with relish

Stringer next to one of his works, Self-portrait Temple. Picture / Paul Estcourt

Terry Stringer, who I hope will not mind being called a grand old(ish) man of New Zealand sculpture, likes sophisticated takes on childish pleasures. He is about to turn 60.

He certainly doesn't mind this. It is hard to imagine anybody approaching this particular birthday with such a sense of barely contained glee.

I ask him what 60 feels like and and he says, "I've always felt that as an artist in New Zealand that you're promising and forgiven your mistakes up until you're 30, at which point you're no longer young. At which point people get a feeling that they've got you pigeonholed, then you're open to any kind of dismissive judgment. Until you're 60. At which point, I think, you become a sacred cow, and I'm hoping, you become a little bit safer at 60. Ha. Ok, I'm trying to give a significance to 60."

He will celebrate with an exhibition at Webb's: A Life In Sculpture. And, rather grandly, with a little opera - a retelling of Pygmalion. The opening is on August 27, just before his birthday on September 3. You are invited, everyone is.

He would rather people didn't bring presents. Actually, he is very stern about this. "I don't want presents. I couldn't bear coping with the presents. I don't like receiving presents. I'd rather give a present, I think. I don't mind if they're edible." Would he mind a mango? "What a good idea. That would make an exotic present." What he really likes, actually, is chutney. " I do occasionally have a birthday occasion where I say that I'd appreciate a jar of chutney from everyone concerned."

He is not quite as magnanimous as this - oh, just a small jar of chutney, how kind - sounds. The real reason he doesn't like presents is, "I don't like the idea that people can predict what I like." I'm interested in what he thinks this says about him. "It says that I try to control things too much. Doesn't it? I like to dictate what the presents are or not have them at all. Is that sad?"

I'm not sure that it is sad, but, as he obviously knows himself better than anyone, I'm happy to let him reveal himself as a controlling sort. I tell him I have a vision of people turning up for his birthday exhibition, lines and lines of them, all bearing offerings of chutney. "What a great idea. And you must help with the judging of the chutney."

His real present is the little opera. "You know, it is in a way. It's self-indulgence, isn't it? I'm saying it's my gift to everyone else. But it is really to myself, you're quite right."

There's absolutely no point in self-indulgences unless they're grand, gorgeous ones. An opera though, even a 20-minute one, sounds awfully expensive. "It should really be, but this happened by the kindness of friends [otherwise] it seriously would be." It is composed by Jonathan Besser with a libretto by Peter Wells, and is directed by Jennifer Ward-Lealand, who will also perform it. Stringer, who provided the brief, is not yet sure whether he will get to see a dress rehearsal. "I haven't actually asked, but if they let me. That's Jennifer's call. She may prefer that they work together without my interference." They obviously know him pretty well.

The opera is based on the myth retold in Ovid's Metamorphoses, about a sculpture that comes to life. Stringer wanted "to take the story of the opera as a metaphor for the life that goes into a work of art: like an inspiration or an insight."

The title of the exhibition, A Life in Sculpture, continues the metaphor. The obvious meaning is that he has had a life in sculpture, and what a nice thing to have had. "It's a privilege, is the way I would think of it. Indeed, it's so nice to do the only thing you want to do and be able to do it full-time."

He has spent his life doing the same thing, really. "I've focused on the standard subjects that I repeat over and over again: hands, faces, folds of cloth." He knew from the age of 10 that he had an interest - to put it mildly - in form and figure. "I think up until that age I thought I was an extension of my parents. I was probably a late developer. At 10 I realised I was independent, that I had my own functioning way of thinking. And at that stage I was making little figure works in plasticine modelling clay. I had this funny idea that if I constructed them with all the right shapes of intestines and hearts and bones, and put them all together in the right order, that it would automatically function as a moving [figure]. It was a strange expectation of a figure - that it would literally be alive."

This opera, then, is really the 10-year-old's boy fantasy come true. "The ultimate sculpture coming to life? I think we might just have unblocked something there!"

He was a very focused little boy; he hasn't changed much. His parents came to New Zealand from Britain when he was 5. They were restless souls who moved around a lot. Stringer likes to stay put, which he says is likely to be some sort of reaction. His father was an insurance assessor; both parents were happy for him to go to art school from Auckland Grammar. "They were very accepting of taking the risk and not going into what was a safe occupation. I don't remember them ever suggesting there were more sensible things to do."

He thinks being "good" at his life's work, or knowing when he was going to be "good" - this is my term - has been about finding "just that little extra push. It's focus. It's obsession. I think for me it's obsession; for some people it might be just genius, really. Some people, maybe Mozart, can get it just right almost without that kind of anxious effort. That's just another way of saying obsession. It's not quite anxious because it's [also] pleasure when it's done. And it's a working and reworking and reworking. Which doesn't sound like genius, does it?"

You look at Stringer and you think: clearly there weren't more sensible things to do. He is a very successful artist who, on the verge of 60, is a contented man. He is patently comfortably off. He lives in a wonderful house - with his sweetheart of a partner, Tim McWhannell - which has walls which conceal secret spaces and can be pulled out to make new rooms. Stringer says could we stand "here", or "there, please," and he pulls the wall and voila! We are in a completely different space. This is like magic and Stringer looks as pleased as a 10-year-old who has just perfected a conjuring trick. Or as a man who owns his own theatre house, because "it's like back stage at the opera."

Outside is the sculpture garden where you can see sculptures (mostly his) against a stand of tall kauri. There is a maze inside a walled space which used to be cattle yards. The sculptures inside are locked in. In case, I say to McWhannell, they get out and gallop off. "Yes," he says, "it's like a children's fantasy: they come to life at night, and they all have opinions."

This is the sort of conversation you find yourself having at the Stringer/McWhannell house. It is a place which encourages your imagination to leap fences and gallop away. The sculpture park is open for visitors from Labour Day, seven days a week. McWhannell leads meandering tours. "I just make it up as I go along." There is a folly which is home to a pipe organ. It is a tiny folly and a large pipe organ. It can only be played with the doors open.

Stringer likes mazes and follies and surprises. He says, "I work hard at being devious." He means an inclusive variety of devious. "I'm trying to deliver an art work which changes as you get to know it. I'm trying to offer extra layers. Perhaps I'm working hard at not being as superficial as I really am."

I'm delighted he is so superficial. He is terrific to talk in a way many artists - who can be complicated bores - are not. He has a horror of talking meaningless twaddle, although he didn't, not once. But he will say, "Oh, that's pretentious isn't it?" and have another go at saying it.

He and McWhannell are a very comfortable couple to visit. They have been together for a very long time. Stringer says a friend worked it out recently and a significant anniversary was looming. He thinks it might have been 30 years, but he's vague on this. Of course he is. A significant anniversary might involve the horror of presents.

He can't avoid the birthday though, so he's decided to embrace it. I'll be sending him a jar of the very best mango chutney. Nothing but the best will do for this sacred cow, great sculptor, control freak and lovely man.