Clockmakers Loft, NZPS – Wairarapa, NZ

Normandell House – Wairarapa, NZ

I arrived in New Zealand in November 2017 to complete a Fellowship at New Zealand Pacific Studio, at Mount Bruce in the Wairarapa region of the North Island.  New Zealand Pacific Studio is an amazing artists’ residency space located in a historic house which was built by clockmaker Christopher Burton over one hundred years ago. Normandell House, as it’s known, has several residential spaces, studio spaces, a rustic cottage, a garden full of native plants,  and an attic library/loft which was the original clock-makers studio.

I completed my three week RAK Mason Fellowship in December 2017, and then decided not to leave.  Having quit some jobs and organised cover for my teaching gigs for the academic year, I wasn’t in a rush to return unemployed to Dublin in mid-winter.  So I began managing the property in exchange for continued residence, working on my writing, and eating a ferocious amount of silver-beet and purple cauliflower from the vegetable garden.

For more information on New Zealand Pacific Studio, click here!