After decades of hard work and dedication Rotorua carver Roi Toia may have cracked the big time with his latest work of art.
A gallery owner has told him his latest work, Tangaroa (the Maori god of the sea), could sell for up to $230,000 on the international art market.
The carving took
him almost a year, including time spent waiting for kauri wood to be sourced from the Coromandel.
Mr Toia, who moved to Rotorua with his family in 1983, is a graduate of Te Puia's (formerly the Maori Arts and Crafts Institute) carving school, where he was a student of renowned master carver Lionel Grant.
Working out of a humble shed on the outskirts of Rotorua with fellow artist and carver Todd Couper, Mr Toia said he was not getting too excited just yet.
"I just hope it's the start of making a decent living off my work. It may sound like a lot of money but I certainly don't get all of it.''
In recent years Mr Toia and Couper have exhibited their work in Canada and the United States, where it is snapped up. Some of their pieces have sold for more than $50,000.
"About 90 per cent of my stuff goes offshore where there is demand for indigenous-inspired art,'' said Toia.
"I guess what we do is quite common in New Zealand.''
Mr Toia said he used a combination of traditional techniques and contemporary ideas to produce his pieces and working on commission allowed him to create with total freedom.
The hardest part of being a working artist was finding a good gallery to promote and sell his works, he said.
"Finding an owner who represents artists with integrity and who [is] pro-active are hard to find. Six years ago I met Mark Moran who owns Toi o Tahuna gallery in Queenstown.
"He has a client who frequents Queenstown from New York who invests in art. He originally wanted the piece to sell in America but I'm told he likes it so much he wants to keep it.''
Mr Moran had said Tangaroa could fetch up to $230,000. Mr Toia said he had another two pieces in the process of being commissioned that would keep him busy for two to three years.
