Today was the last talk at Te Papa by Weta staff. Richard Taylor, head of Weta Workshop produced a light-hearted session. He started off by showing pictures from babyhood upwards. When he was just a kid he found mud in the stream at the bottom of his garden and started sculpting. Now, he prefers to use Nelson White clay to create models. The clay comes in immense blocks. Most people would just see a lump of clay but Richard says he sees a monster, a creature, a castle.... And he can't wait to get his hands in the clay.
Richard said that though Weta dealt wth hardware, they preferred to call it 'heartware' because every image that was made up had to come from the heart of the person doing the creating. He said that if young people wanted to work for Weta it was no use sending in just the typical portfolio that encompassed only things they had been trained to do in classes. At the end of each portfolio book, he wanted to see the indvidualism, the heart, the imaginaton of the artist.
He showed shots from the New Thunderbirds series and also spoke of a projected animation tale about a bi-polar polar bear.
What a lovely man. And still with a great love that shines through for his work. I have hardly drawn a picture in my life and certainly never sculpted anything. But listening to an ethusiastic Richard, I suddenly wanted to run out of Te Papa and start working on my very own lump of clay.
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There is a dinosaur exhibition at Te Papa at the moment, with a transportation container in the forecourt. Notices on the container say something like 'danger, live dinsosaur inside'. And there are loud roars coming from within. The kids love it.
attention: my laptop is playing up. I can't seem to type properly on it. It may break down completely soon. If I havent downloaded a blog entry for, say, over a week, I hope you will understand...
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