It was the spacious studio that made Catherine Macdonald buy her inner city abode. Photo / Bevan Conley Whanganui Chronicle
Living two streets away from Whanganui's main drag isn't for everyone - but Catherine Macdonald tells LAUREL STOWELL that she likes it.
From her small central city home and studio artist Catherine Macdonald can walk to work, to town, to three supermarkets, to her kung fu class and to openings at the Rayner Brothers' Gallery.
She's been living in Campbell St for 15 years, and wasn't happy at first.
It took a while to make the place her own, but now she can see a lot of advantages.
"You can be close to where you work and have a really nice life. You aren't having to spend it earning money to try and afford expensive houses and lifestyles."
Macdonald is having a nice life. She works Monday to Wednesday doing draughting for Dalgleish Architects and has the rest of the week for her art practice - thinking, drawing, writing and making things in her spacious studio.
She lives in that triangular piece of central Whanganui between Victoria Ave, the river, the base of St John's Hill and the Aramoho Shopping Centre. It's an area that used to be known as Poverty Flats.
It's a hotchpotch of small old workers' houses, mixed with a lot of newer townhouses, pensioner flats, churches, businesses and a school.
In Dublin and Glasgow Sts shops and former houses are being turned into premises for doctors, dentists and welfare agencies. Macdonald lives near the former Wanganui Regional Community Polytechnic campus.
"I always liked that campus. It's a beautiful spot with all the native trees and single storey buildings around it," she said.
The so-called flats are not completely flat. The land slopes up onto flattened former sand hills and down into former swampy hollows. The area can be dingy, and there is definitely some poverty, but it has its own brand of charm.
"It's kept a lot of its original character. Now Whanganui is at a point where it's starting to appreciate that," Macdonald said.
Walking to town, she avoids busy Victoria Ave. Wicksteed St is better, with its big old London plane trees for shade. Campbell St is broken by the former polytech campus, now Tupoho Community Complex.
Bell St is hot and barren of trees, but it has big, interesting old houses. There's one house there that a tenant told her is haunted, and she's noticed it changes hands frequently. On a good day there's a great view of Mt Ruapehu from the top of Ingestre St.
In Keith St there's a set of four skinny dilapidated villas squeezed close together.
"There's part of me that would love one of those."
Tay and Copeland Sts are dinky. Artist Peter Ireland's house in Liverpool St is very old and "quite gorgeous". Ellwood Electronics in Plymouth St is an old former shop front. There's a lot to appreciate as she walks around.
Macdonald was brought up in Upokongaro and finished her fine arts degree at the Quay School of the Arts in 1997. After that she flatted in Durievale, which was a wonderful blend of city and country and just a short walk from town.
She saved money and realised she might be able to buy her own property. A big garden and river and mountain views were on her wish list.
The property she chose had none of those. She bought her Campbell St building in 2002, a steal at $70,000. Built around 1878, it has been a Presbyterian and a Catholic church, the Pyramid Masonic Lodge, and a martial arts studio. While Macdonald was at high school it was Kura Te Waru Rewiri's artist studio.
It was the hall part of the building that sold the place to her.
"Really I wanted a studio. That was what I was looking for."
The building needed plumbing work but has had no major alterations.
"When I first arrived here I hated it. The house was quite run down. It took a while to get it to feel like my place. I felt like I was in someone else's place for a while."
What she has now, behind the studio, is her own small, attached house. There's a connecting room, a kitchen/living room with a woodburner, bedrooms and a bathroom. At the back there's a little deck and a small garden.
It's full of her own woodwork - kitchen units, occasional tables, lights and other fittings. It's clean, slightly spartan, and comfortable. She has a selection of Whanganui artwork - Brandon Sayring, Angela Tier, Margaret Silverwood - up on the wall.
When she moved to Campbell St Macdonald was doing a lot of art work about plants - trees, flowers, leaves, landscape. Her focus has gradually shifted into the urban central city environment.
She and her neighbours pick up rubbish when their street gets too "roughed up". She draws buildings, wandering dogs, power poles, crushed aluminium cans and scuffed cigarette packets.
Sometimes there's a trail of liquor containers leading up to the liquor ban sign, as walkers abandon them on their way to Victoria Ave.
There are dogs. The one on the corner is nice, and ignores Macdonald. Another used to walk just behind her, growling.
She started working with wood to make things for her house, with help from her father.
"Growing up around tools, they weren't too intimidating."
She also started writing stories, fragmentary stories of the life she sees around her, in flats where the people seem to move on every couple of months.
"When I was at high school I always thought I was pretty bad at English, but I really enjoy English. I was writing, but being a little bit quiet about it," she said.
Journalling as part of her art practice pushed her along, and she makes and illustrates small books about ordinary lives. The lives of the transient people she sees around her are intriguing.
"I have had a life where I have been in the same place for a long time. Their moving every two months seemed strange to me."
People have told her those stories don't reflect the Whanganui they know. But she says it's also possible that most people are just "getting by".
"I think everyone's life can be a bit scrappy at times.
"I want to talk about that stuff that people don't want to talk about in life. I'm trying to understand that, partly, shed a light on it, and maybe explain it."
In 15 years she's gotten to know most of the long stayers in her area. There's a man in his 80s living in his parents' house, and a woman who runs a beauty business from home. One woman sold her house to a family with two young children, then bought the next house along and moved in.
There's a Samoan family, and a retired man who does mechanical work. For while there was a man who seemed to be living in his car.
There are a surprising number of artists - Rachael Garland in Alexander St, Mark and Paul Rayners' gallery in Glasgow St, Marty Vreede using the former ceramic department at the Tupoho Complex, and for a while there was a glass gallery.
She's been surprised by the mixture of people just within her block, and most of the long stayers say hello as they pass by.
One of the things she really likes about living in Campbell St is that there are a lot of people who do walk by.
"It's more of a proper community, as opposed to a gated community of like-minded people. We aren't all like-minded here, but we all try and get along."
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