The Quarry – Famous New Zealand Arts Resource Centre

The Quarry arts resource centre based in Whangarei, Northland, New Zealand, was founded by Yvonne Rust, and is famous for its Summer Art camps.

The Quarry Arts centre in Whangarei was started against all odds, during the economic recession of 1980, by Yvonne Rust, QSM. New Zealand was only just recovering from the 1975 recession.

Yvonne Rust’s vision of an arts resource

Rust wanted a centre where people could learn to appreciate NZ’s raw materials and how they could be utilised to create well-crafted objects. She saw such a centre enabling the recognition of craftspeople as a vital part of society, contributors to the economic, social, and cultural wellbeing of the country. At The Quarry experimentation could be fostered and workshops could share tools and machinery. Of prime importance was proximity to local raw materials, saving on freight while creating a unique product.

Rust was known for her stance on the use of raw materials, speaking passionately on the subject at many conferences during the 70’s and 80’s. As far as she was concerned, New Zealanders weren’t yet poor enough because they couldn’t see the raw materials lying around them.

Fibres were inexpensive to harvest and were sustainable – flax, rushes, hairs, wool for spinning, weaving, and knitting. Bamboo and barks could be used to make paper. Possum, lamb and calf skins could all be tanned for leather or fashion wear, as well as saddlery. Wood could be used for making toys and furniture. Glass would be blown, stained, cut, etched, or painted. Jewellery could be produced. Pottery and glass containers could be made for chutney, sauces, pickles, fruit juice, honey, fruit leather, and ice-cream. Crucial to Rust’s idea was the belief that artists working in close proximity to one another would stimulate each other into cross-disciplinary fusion and the creation of wholly new concepts.

Each refinement of the raw material would require more people and so create more employment. The greater the number of people employed in producing an item, the longer the materials/resources would be preserved for future generations. Rust was appalled by the sale of unadulterated raw materials out of NZ, when NZ designers and artisans could refine them into desirable products which sophisticated international markets would clamour to buy.

Building the Quarry Arts Centre

She frequented cementworks, brickworks and glassworks scavenging for materials with which to build the Quarry. She collected waste cement for mud bricks, refractory bricks to build kilns, and used grinding media for the ball mill. She noticed felled gum trees in a gully near Kerikeri and salvaged them to support a roof, inserting a bottle of oil into the tops of each to drain through and preserve them.

Initially, the production of pottery clay provided an income for the Quarry. As the resource centre developed, leather tanning using natural tanins from bark, was added to the experimental facilities, then papermaking, from local plant materials.

In January 1987 Yvonne, a noted arts teacher and potter, began a new income stream for the Quarry.

Internationally known Quarry Summer Arts School

Today known as the Summer Do, the first of these annual arts workshops/schools included tutors, Barry Brickell, Richard Parker, Paul Pritchard, Michael Smither, and Chris Booth. The Annual Summer Do runs for ten days every January and regular workshops with well-known artists and craftspeople continue year round. Visitors are welcome to observe artists at work, and enjoy the grounds and art.

 

The Quarry is an Inspirational arts environment

An important factor in the making of good art, from Yvonne Rust’s perspective, was the necessity of working in an inspirational environment. The Quarry itself, approximately 150 metres from the gate to the back wall, has presence. A waterfall tumbles 20 metres down the rock face into a stream, before burbling away towards the town. When it rains the waterfall becomes a deafening torrent, but on hot summer days, the clear pool surrounded by moss and ferns, is just deep enough to cool off in. Because the site has been chiselled out of a hill, it is deaf to traffic noise. Twenty-six bird varieties have been identified in the surrounding bush, and at night, ruru’s ominous hunting call can be heard.

Yvonne Rust Gallery

In August 2011 the brand new Yvonne Rust Gallery, the replacement for a tumbledown gallery made from recycled materials which had stood for twenty years, was opened. The Quarry now boasts eleven day, and two live-in studios, all of which are permanently occupied by full-time artists, who include painters, clay sculptors, mosaic artists, photographers, glass artists, contemporary jewellers, wood carvers, fashion designers, fabric artists and a film producer. Two workshop spaces are available for casual use.

Resource: Theresa Sjoquist research for the biography, Yvonne Rust – Maverick Spirit (David Ling 2011)

©Theresa Sjoquist