The Old Firestation is the backdrop for six artists' original works in the final weekend of the 2014 Artists Open Studios.
Jodi Clark, Mike Marsh, Jo Giddens, Wendy Caldwell, Judy McIntyre, and Alison Lundy's art is as diverse as their creative backgrounds.
Clark, who started her BFA in the '90s at the Quay School of the Arts and finished at Elam, says she has gone full-circle with her paintings, influenced by the Asian experiences when she and partner Geoff Mackintosh lived for two years in Hong Kong followed by five years in China.
"Some of my symbols are trans-cultural," Clark says of her large paintings with a graphic influence, in which she says she is "creating a new vocabulary".
Marsh, another graduate with a BFA from the Quay School of the Arts, says Pop Art influences his painted "t-shirts" of Mark Mothersbaugh from Devo, Alice Cooper, Robert Smith from The Cure and Brian Eno. Ben Stiller's character in Zoolander is painted on a Nissan Laurel bonnet, which Marsh first showed in the Edith Gallery last year. Working full-time, Marsh says he fits his art around his day job.
Caldwell has a bachelor of design from Victoria University, and after working in Auckland and London, arrived in Wanganui three years ago because she had heard of the city's reputation for the arts. She says her work on board is a combination of pastel, acrylic and pencil... "that has evolved".
Giddens, a senior lecturer at the Whanganui School of Design, "migrated to Wanganui to do her masters". Her counterform works are the positive and negative, where she looks at typographic forms she integrates with graphics. Giddens uses old-school techniques; typewriters, letterpress, silkscreening and wood block printing and hand drawing.
"I'm avoiding computers," she smiles. "Art is a lifestyle, design is work, and I combine them both."
Lundy, a painter, went to the Royal College of London and graduated with a Master of Arts and McIntyre is a graduate of the Quay School of Arts.
+Arts After Dark, in the final act of the Tall Stories Film Festival at the Old Firestation this weekend: tonight, Painters Painting explores the New York art scene from 1940-70 through a series of conversations with the artists themselves. The closing-night film tomorrow, Herb and Dorothy, looks at two Manhattan art collectors who, on the salary of a postal worker and a librarian, prove you don't need to be a Rockefeller to amass a priceless collection of contemporary works.
Pre-film food and drinks will be available from 6.30pm and film screenings start at 8pm.
The festival is open to the public and admission to the films is by koha (suggested $10 per person).
For more info and trailers, see the Tall Stories page at whanganuifilmsociety.org.nz