Huriana Kereru
Gisborne

Huriana enjoys creating and being around like-minded people who share her love for the arts. Describing her inspiration is easy; it is whanau. Add to this the wider network of people that she calls creative souls and you get the sense that Huriana is a people person.
Lucky enough to have connections to the beautiful Anaura Bay, there is much to encourage Huriana to create. Lately she has been focusing on burnished and textured clay pots. Varying in size, they are made using bowls - cereal bowls, glass bowls, and even a cake mixing bowl - as simple moulds. Once the main bowl shape has been formed, the top is enclosed using a coil producing a shape perhaps best likened to the classic UFO. Bisque and sawdust fired, the resulting range of pots are coloured from ebony black to smoky copper. Even with a definite love for clay, Huriana's artistic flow also extends to creating vibrant figurative and landscape paintings and lovely mosaic panels.
Huriana lent a hand to the organisers of the 2007 First Light Potters Convention, held in Gisborne from the 6th to 9th of April and was rapt to have had the opportunity to share ideas and be around such renowned Maori potters as Baye Riddell.
Given this appreciation for the spirit of sharing, it is little surprise that Huriana enjoys passing on her skills to others. She runs an after school art programme for 7-13 year olds - workshops in clay in which students explore different techniques of hand building with clay and make their own pots and creatures.
Huriana exhibited her work in the 2007 Gifted Sands exhibition at Maahia. Her work has an earthy attractiveness, in part communicated through the colours and textures with which she imbues them, and her smaller works urge you to pick them up, hold them in your hands...

Anyone interested in commissioning Huriana will need to get in early. The clay process can take up to 6 weeks to complete. Huriana can be contacted via phone: (06) 867-7341 or email manawacreations@xtra.co.nz