Waiheke artist Marie Holdaway has been having a whale of a time during the lockdown.
In April, Marie took delivery of a whale tail – one of 80 sculptures that will make up WWF’s Whale Tales Art Trail on display around Auckland from January 2022.
The tails are sponsored by organisations and businesses, which were able to choose designs from those entered by artists like Marie.
The Pukekohe Business Association selected Marie’s design and the whale tail was hand-delivered to Waiheke back in April.
“Myself, and Lucy Moore, art co-ordinator of Whale Tales, were to-ing and fro-ing how to get it to Waiheke,” says Marie. “Being two metres by two metres large, it’s not as easy as taking it to the post office.
“We were about to organise it being freighted over when Lucy’s partner Rupert suggested bringing it over on his fizz boat.”
After a good laugh at the thought of how it would look coming across the Hauraki Gulf, Marie says they realised it was actually a solid solution.
“It’s certainly not the kind of whale tail you’d normally see in the ocean!”
Marie and her friend Steve met Rupert at Kennedy Point and the special delivery was then carefully strapped down into Steve’s ute and taken to Marie’s garage.
Since then, Marie has been slowly chipping away at decorating the tail with her design that started off as a loose 15cm by 15cm sketch. • Erin Johnson
Full story in this week’s Gulf News… Out Now!!!
