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Carin Wilson
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Carin Wilson
Carin John Wilson (born 2 March 1945) is a New Zealand studio furniture maker, sculptor and design educator. He was a leader in the country's craft movement in the 1970s, 80s and 90s and was one of the inaugurators of the design showcase Artiture in 1987. He is a descendant of the Ngāti Awa ancestor Te Rangihouhiri and the founding chairman of Ngā Aho, a design initiative that advocates for collaborative and creative practices among professionals within the Māori tribal structure and community. The Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design conferred Wilson with an Honorary Diploma in Art and Design; in 2002 he received an inaugural Toi Iho mark, a registered Māori trademark of authenticity. His design practice, Studio Pasifika, has been in operation since 1993. Wilson is included in Helen Schamroth's 100 New Zealand Craft Artists, Douglas Lloyd Jenkins' At Home: A Century of New Zealand Design, and Michael Smythe's New Zealand by Design: a History of New Zealand Product Design.
Wilson's ancestry embraces both of New Zealand's founding cultures, Māori and European. His maternal grandparents were Italian, and his paternal grandfather, a Scot named Andrew Wilson, married Anahera Kingi. He was born and raised in the South Island and enrolled at Victoria University of Wellington in 1963 to study law. Soon bored with his legal studies, he found employment as a sales representative for a Māori publishing company, during which he trained in organisation and methods. Following a trip overseas where he indulged his fascination with art in the cathedrals and museums of Europe, he returned to his birthplace, Christchurch.
His woodworking occurred out of necessity when Wilson and his wife, Jenney, purchased a small cottage in the Heathcote Valley. The family needed furniture and Wilson adapted old kauri (Agathis australis) tubs, found on the property, into serviceable items. The involvement with wood was transformative:
One day I found an old gate under a hedge and I started cleaning back the timber underneath the weathering. As I peeled back those layers I saw something in the timber that I can only describe as its spiritual essence. So it was in every way a transforming experience for me. I’d made that connection with the wairua [spirit] of the timber and from then on I knew that I’d found a material that I connected with at a deep level. And that’s really the beginning. I started a process of learning the characteristics of the timber, of reading and teaching myself methods that I could use to work it.
Wilson tried to find an education programme that would complement his self-teaching but, at the time, Christchurch Polytechnic offered only carpentry courses. This absence in the availability of design/make training would have a subsequent influence on Wilson's agenda as president of the Crafts Council of New Zealand (CCNZ); in the meantime he honed his skills by doing. His first major exhibition was in 1974 at the Canterbury Building Centre: a buyer from McKenzie & Willis, the furniture retailer, purchased the entire inventory of occasional tables, shelf units and cupboards. As a consequence, Wilson established Adzmarc, rented a studio in the Artists Quarter in central Christchurch, hired employees, and made furniture in a rustic, textured style that was wholesaled to McKenzie & Willis for the next five years.
Seeing the need for woodworkers to come together for camaraderie and sharing techniques, Wilson instigated the Canterbury Guild of Woodworkers in 1978. This was the first of New Zealand's woodworking guilds. His networking put him in touch with members of the CCNZ and he became involved in the organisation at the national level as its southern regional representative. As the first furniture practitioner to sit on the executive of the CCNZ, he was able to bring woodworking to the attention of the membership; subsequently, furniture workshops, exhibitions and invitations to prominent international makers featured on the CCNZ's calendar and in its publications.
Wilson's awareness of the paucity of educational opportunities for designer/craftspeople prompted him to promote education as a significant mandate during his tenure as president of the CCNZ (1981–1983). In his first message as president he stated: "I am also keen to see greater participation by young people in the craft movement, and would hope that we can encourage school leavers to consider the crafts as providing a viable alternative to other employment, so that a proper master-student relationship can be encouraged with some of our experienced artists". In 1982 he was successful in applying to the Arts Council of New Zealand for a travel grant to enable him to visit art schools in the United States and Europe, to learn about curriculum and look at studio facilities so that New Zealand might inaugurate similar programmes. Wilson's report, as a consequence of this trip, for the Minister of the Arts, Allan Highet, was passed on to the Director-General of Education, William Renwick, thereby launching the process to establish the certificate and diploma programmes in craft design in polytechnics throughout the country in 1986 and 1987.
Wilson served on a number of boards: the executive board of the World Crafts Council (1984–87), Crafts Education Advisory Committee (1985–1988), the Designers Institute of New Zealand (council member 1991-93; president 1994), the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council's arts marketing working party (1991–92), the New Zealand Qualifications Authority’s craft advisory panel (1992), and the New Zealand Craft Resource Trust (1997). Bodies like the Arts Marketing Board of Aotearoa (AMBA) and the Craft Resource Trust were established to address the vacuum that was left by the dissolution of the Crafts Council of New Zealand in 1992.
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Carin Wilson
Carin John Wilson (born 2 March 1945) is a New Zealand studio furniture maker, sculptor and design educator. He was a leader in the country's craft movement in the 1970s, 80s and 90s and was one of the inaugurators of the design showcase Artiture in 1987. He is a descendant of the Ngāti Awa ancestor Te Rangihouhiri and the founding chairman of Ngā Aho, a design initiative that advocates for collaborative and creative practices among professionals within the Māori tribal structure and community. The Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design conferred Wilson with an Honorary Diploma in Art and Design; in 2002 he received an inaugural Toi Iho mark, a registered Māori trademark of authenticity. His design practice, Studio Pasifika, has been in operation since 1993. Wilson is included in Helen Schamroth's 100 New Zealand Craft Artists, Douglas Lloyd Jenkins' At Home: A Century of New Zealand Design, and Michael Smythe's New Zealand by Design: a History of New Zealand Product Design.
Wilson's ancestry embraces both of New Zealand's founding cultures, Māori and European. His maternal grandparents were Italian, and his paternal grandfather, a Scot named Andrew Wilson, married Anahera Kingi. He was born and raised in the South Island and enrolled at Victoria University of Wellington in 1963 to study law. Soon bored with his legal studies, he found employment as a sales representative for a Māori publishing company, during which he trained in organisation and methods. Following a trip overseas where he indulged his fascination with art in the cathedrals and museums of Europe, he returned to his birthplace, Christchurch.
His woodworking occurred out of necessity when Wilson and his wife, Jenney, purchased a small cottage in the Heathcote Valley. The family needed furniture and Wilson adapted old kauri (Agathis australis) tubs, found on the property, into serviceable items. The involvement with wood was transformative:
One day I found an old gate under a hedge and I started cleaning back the timber underneath the weathering. As I peeled back those layers I saw something in the timber that I can only describe as its spiritual essence. So it was in every way a transforming experience for me. I’d made that connection with the wairua [spirit] of the timber and from then on I knew that I’d found a material that I connected with at a deep level. And that’s really the beginning. I started a process of learning the characteristics of the timber, of reading and teaching myself methods that I could use to work it.
Wilson tried to find an education programme that would complement his self-teaching but, at the time, Christchurch Polytechnic offered only carpentry courses. This absence in the availability of design/make training would have a subsequent influence on Wilson's agenda as president of the Crafts Council of New Zealand (CCNZ); in the meantime he honed his skills by doing. His first major exhibition was in 1974 at the Canterbury Building Centre: a buyer from McKenzie & Willis, the furniture retailer, purchased the entire inventory of occasional tables, shelf units and cupboards. As a consequence, Wilson established Adzmarc, rented a studio in the Artists Quarter in central Christchurch, hired employees, and made furniture in a rustic, textured style that was wholesaled to McKenzie & Willis for the next five years.
Seeing the need for woodworkers to come together for camaraderie and sharing techniques, Wilson instigated the Canterbury Guild of Woodworkers in 1978. This was the first of New Zealand's woodworking guilds. His networking put him in touch with members of the CCNZ and he became involved in the organisation at the national level as its southern regional representative. As the first furniture practitioner to sit on the executive of the CCNZ, he was able to bring woodworking to the attention of the membership; subsequently, furniture workshops, exhibitions and invitations to prominent international makers featured on the CCNZ's calendar and in its publications.
Wilson's awareness of the paucity of educational opportunities for designer/craftspeople prompted him to promote education as a significant mandate during his tenure as president of the CCNZ (1981–1983). In his first message as president he stated: "I am also keen to see greater participation by young people in the craft movement, and would hope that we can encourage school leavers to consider the crafts as providing a viable alternative to other employment, so that a proper master-student relationship can be encouraged with some of our experienced artists". In 1982 he was successful in applying to the Arts Council of New Zealand for a travel grant to enable him to visit art schools in the United States and Europe, to learn about curriculum and look at studio facilities so that New Zealand might inaugurate similar programmes. Wilson's report, as a consequence of this trip, for the Minister of the Arts, Allan Highet, was passed on to the Director-General of Education, William Renwick, thereby launching the process to establish the certificate and diploma programmes in craft design in polytechnics throughout the country in 1986 and 1987.
Wilson served on a number of boards: the executive board of the World Crafts Council (1984–87), Crafts Education Advisory Committee (1985–1988), the Designers Institute of New Zealand (council member 1991-93; president 1994), the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council's arts marketing working party (1991–92), the New Zealand Qualifications Authority’s craft advisory panel (1992), and the New Zealand Craft Resource Trust (1997). Bodies like the Arts Marketing Board of Aotearoa (AMBA) and the Craft Resource Trust were established to address the vacuum that was left by the dissolution of the Crafts Council of New Zealand in 1992.