Artist in tune with nature

May is New Zealand Music Month and Dunedin artist Janet de Wagt is marking it with an exhibition of her latest work "Songs of the Land" celebrating the subtle sounds of nature and land in a unique way — on the guitar. She tells Rebecca Fox why she chose the musical instrument.

It is the middle of the night in Fiordland and artist Janet de Wagt admits she is a bit scared. In her hand is a tiny bat. As it warms up it crawls across her palm and down her fingers, then flies away.

"It was the most amazing experience of any sort of creature I’ve had," the artist says.

She was with the Department of Conservation’s "bat team" learning about the sounds the native bats make that people cannot hear.

It is one of many experiences de Wagt has used as inspiration for her latest exhibition "Songs of the Land", which mixes her love of the environment with her art.

While she has always featured the landscape in her work as an "en pleine air" painter, it began taking on a more environmental focus three years ago with a series of works, "Songs of an Art Thief", in which she used prints of old masters’ works and reworked them to add another layer of meaning to conservation issues in the South Island.

"When you’re out painting you think about things as well as think about nothing.

"I’m following on the environmental theme, looking at what in the environment makes noise, or music or song."

For de Wagt the guitar represents New Zealand music psyche, as whenever someone is making music a guitar is always present, whether it is a backyard sing along or a major concert.’

"I like the shape."

Years ago when Gwyneth Paltrow was in Dunedin shooting a film and was visited by her then musician husband Chris Martin, de Wagt painted a guitar.

"That just bubbled away, you don’t necessarily know it does, but it does."

More recently she also became fascinated with what is inside a guitar, what the soundhole does by resonating and amplifying the frequencies produced from the strings.

"We look at the visual of the guitar, the shape, but we don’t think much of the inside so that is why I’ve lit them up."

So last year she began to search out old guitars and ukuleles from wherever she could find them.

"As a collector, it took me a long time to gather them. Christchurch is the best place to get old dungy guitars. Ukuleles are quite good to get but full-size guitars are harder. They come in different shapes and sizes I’ve discovered."

She enjoyed going from painting on canvas to the guitars themselves as it required her to re-think her approach.

"I love creative problem solving."

De Wagt is not a musician herself, quickly admitting she is "a deafy", so to her, guitars are just a canvas. She had no qualms about "ripping the guts" out of them for her creations so they are no longer playable.

"I’ve stripped them, wrecked them."

Her idea was to light them up from the inside, in a way lighting up the issues she highlights in her work. That took a lot of investigating to find the correct electrical parts to make them a safe piece.

"I love all of that. I like doing different things."

The shape of the guitars also requires her to think carefully about the placement of images as well as what would fit in the soundhole. The Sinclair Wetlands is home to the raupo which was used to make traditional poi, that in turn is used during dance and waiata, so she put a poi in the soundhole.

"I plot things in my head, I’m not one for doing 10,000 drawings. One of the hardest things was fitting my big hand in the hole."

So she visited various sites around Otago and Southland and captured the stories of the site — from the albatross leaving and returning to Taiaroa Head to sea shanties sung by the whalers working from Weller’s Rock, the flight of the bumblebee or the clapping sound cabbage tree leaves make in the wind.

"I was trying to bring up these things about the environment and the creatures in it through song. I go a bit deep."

She discovers many things she does not know during these projects which she really enjoys as well as the opportunity to get out in nature — using the bonnet of her Falcon or an ironing board as her easel.

"I’ve got my paints all the time in the boot. One guitar might be quite a few trips. The hardest thing in a painting, one of the most important things, is the middle ground and you can’t get that unless you are out in the environment, you have to see it to paint it.

"The moonlight one I’m in the car down there with my headlamp on."

All up she has created 15 guitars and ukuleles for the exhibition in Dunedin and she is also creating a few Southland-focused ones for an exhibition down there.

De Wagt, who describes herself as a community artist, has many other projects on the go as well as her regular Room 13 programme at Bathgate School and helping out at Enrich School in Invercargill.

"I have projects all over the place. I’m trying to mentor people in community arts. It’s a bit specialised so I’m sharing my skills."

She is also about to hit a milestone in the cataloguing of her historical plastics collection, something that has so far taken three years. She is planning a celebration when she reaches 20,000 pieces catalogued.

"It’s a lifetime of work. It’s a really big collection. I started overseas."

Her next project is a tribute to her Dutch heritage and she is hoping to revisit her Old Masters series as she feels she has not quite finished with them.

To See:

Janet de Wagt "Songs of the Land", Gallery De Novo, Dunedin, May 5-18