Graffiti spree down Glasgow St leaves artist looking to new beginnings

On the morning Leonie Sharp spent painting over the damage done to her studio, she was presented with new opportunities. Photo / Shawn Rutene

A Whanganui artist who recently had her studio sprayed with graffiti is making light of the situation.

Leonie Sharp was away visiting her parents when her friend drove past her Glasgow St studio and saw a 6m x 2m purple tag on one of the white walls of The Nest.

Her friend reported the graffiti to the police.

Several other properties and the street footpath had also been spray tagged but Sharp said the white wall had never been tagged before now.

"Initially I was just frustrated that I would have to travel home to sort this but sometimes the universe works in strange ways."

Sharp has lived in Whanganui for 14 years and been at her studio for four years and said she absolutely loves her neighbourhood.

"When I built my giant nest outside my viewing space, everyone said I was crazy as people would just trash it. Well, they were so wrong. Everyone loves to come upon it and I have never had anyone pull at it or try to break it."

But Sharp said she has had a tough year so she decided to take 12 months' leave from her job to reconnect with people, weave a cloak for her niece and work on new themes of her art.

She got a family in to house-sit her studio and decided to buy and renovate a caravan to become her new studio on wheels.

On her return to Whanganui, she stopped in at Resene to buy some paint to cover the tagging and ran into the manager and artistic director of Gallery 85, Cath Watson.

After asking Sharp what she had planned for the next few months, Watson offered her a month's residency at Gallery 85.

Sharp said she was so happy with the offer as it worked perfectly with harvesting and preparing muka (flax fibre) for the cloak she is weaving for her niece.

She is looking forward to having somewhere free to live, a big space to mess up and be creative in for a month, she said.

"While I was painting over the graffiti, I was thanking the person who did it for pulling me back to Whanganui for the day.

"I was also thinking about the tag itself. It had great colour, form, purpose and was an expression of self, basically all the requirements for meaningful art."

She said she could not help but wonder what the person or people who tagged her property could produce given the resources and opportunity and whether art was something they would embrace or not.