Carving a niche

On a peaceful pastoral plot somewhere near Okaihau sits a man shed. That's not unusual in itself, there are thousands of man sheds dotted throughout the entire country. But not many would host the artistic atmosphere of Hugh McKechnie's shed.

Of course it has the ubiquitous dartboard, the comfy old sofas and pictures of family pasted lovingly on corkboards but that's where the prosaic ceases. This shed is filled to brimming with arcane bits of wood-palpated pieces of antediluvian swamp kauri, totara, puriri and macrocarpa that hang from the inner walls, lie lazily around the periphery of the outer ramparts or sit sleepily on tables. These are Hugh's carvings, the palpable interpretations of his artistic eye and shaped and shaved by his competent hands.

Some are finished products earmarked to journey elsewhere, some pieces are resting on the bench as works in progress while other senescent wooden posts are queueing quietly in a corner waiting for a reshaping that will reinvent their already lengthy lives. How did it all begin?

''My granddad was a carpenter and a fine wood-worker who encouraged me. He had a man shed filled with tools and I lived with him in Invercargill for a while when I was seven. He gave me a totara post and a chisel and I started carving wakas and bowls.''

His ancestry can't dissuade him from producing carved objects of distinctive Polynesian design and because of his olive skin it's easy to presume he's tangata whenua. But he's not. He's Scots-Irish although that didn't stop Rotorua Boys' High School from naming him top Maori student.

He thinks his background as a saw-miller helped his carving along the way. He would take native recycled wood and turn it into objets d'art. Such is his reputation now that he has people dropping pieces of wood off to his home from farms or demolition jobs, even kauri from the Viaduct Basin in Auckland was made into eight separate bar stools for a restaurant.

Currently he's in the throes of producing a series of carvings from the first flag pole at the first primary school in Kerikeri which was sited across the road from the Stone Store. It subsequently went to the RSA and then the golf club before being chopped down, but not for any of the colonial-politico reasons the area is known for. It's called the flag pole of Manako, the original pre-European name for the district and means a longing,a desire,a wish.

It's not surprising, given Mr McKechnie's love of the land and the products derived there from, that he'd like to see farming of native wood as a sacred testament to what the earth provides and to encourage fine trees to flourish, existing bush to regenerate and employment.

He feels these things deeply and although he's had numerous jobs over the years-gold miner, roofer, possum hunter, saw-miller, mayoral candidate-itwasn't until he was 47 years old that he seemed to find the raison d'eˆtre of his soul. He came to the area onawhim, a dream, and taught art and phys-ed at Kerikeri High School before essentially turning a talent for what he loves to do into a profession.

He doesn't sign his work and has no idea where in the world some of his pieces have ended up.

''Sometimes I'll make something without any notion of where it might fit and who it might suit. Those pieces seem to select their own homes.''

A dozen or so of his works have found their way home to the Waitangi Trust buildings in Paihia, including a carving of Jonah Lomu and an impression of the mythical lizard of the Hokianga. As they stand sentinel to an entrance that marks our nation's birthplace, the sculptor of the wood continues his work in a spiritual and physical man-shed of inspiration.