Marty Vreede, printmaker and teacher, is taking a Paper to Print Summer School next month, involving harakeke papermaking with constructive woodcut.
"We've just finished a whole year of community-based print classes through Community Education Whanganui, and it was incredibly successful. It was to be a woodcut class, but the class was
based on whanaungatanga, and because of that we established participants' relationships with each other. It was based on a safe place to come and learn and trust each other, and learning about what it was they could offer the whole group."
That class has opted to remain together and further their studies next year as a group.
Marty therefore has to is offering a new course with new students, as well as the extended course, validating his status as teacher of the craft he loves.
Now he's offering a five-day summer school.
"It's to do with harakeke papermaking, so first they make paper then they learn new aspects of woodcut and print on paper they've made.
"They do that in five days.
"In essence the course deals with the traditional marriage of print, which is ink and paper. They're learning a whole new aspect to paper, which is how to make it. It's also tuturu, it's from here, from Aotearoa, and it just so happens it's a brilliant woodcut paper."
New Zealand harakeke is not European linen flax, but is a member of the lily family and grows naturally in New Zealand and Norfolk Island.
"When Europeans saw the muka fibre that the women were extracting, the only thing they knew that was close to it was flax linen fibre.
"Linen flax is a spindly thing that grows in a meadow and it has a tiny blue flower."
Marty's five-day summer school is spent in his Pakohe Whanganui print studio, part of the Tupoho complex in Wicksteed St. He will take the beginner and the professional artist through the simplicity of woodcut, to a changed understanding of the woodcut image.
Included in the course is an insight into history, relevant tikanga supporting the pa harakeke and applying recycling and sustainability principles.
"They'll get an intro into looking at it quite differently. Most people see it as the enemy of the lawnmaker, but you can harvest it so easily.
"And it brings in tui and all sorts of nectar birds."
Marty has been a printmaker for more than 35 years, has tutored locally and has exhibited extensively here and overseas. He is a Fullbright Scholar, a Nuffield Foundation Scholar, an Ako Aotearoa recipient and the 2010 Ako Aotearoa Prime Minister's Award recipient.
Paper to Print Summer School runs from January 11-22, 2020 and enrolments can be made through Community Education on 345 4717 or admin@communityeducation.nz