Friday Feels Like: The Great Escape

Goals are a funny thing. I’m not sure I have ever sat down and properly written out my own goals. But if there is one specific thing I do know that I want, it is to live by the coast. Born and bred in Titirangi, in the Waitakere Ranges, I grew up with the coast and all it’s brilliance right at my doorstep. The ocean, the air, the wild bush and cliffs, the taller-than-you flax bushes, and the locals.

This ‘goal’ of mine just got hit by a massive swell after reading this beautiful interview on Freunde von Freunden with kiwi artist, Judy Millar. Living a 10 minute walk from the majestically secluded beach, Anawhata, in a solar powered house – designed to look like a boat and made from recycled materials, Judy’s lifestyle (with regular escapes to her home away from home in Berlin), is enough to make anyone swoon with envy…

I picked out my favourite bits of the interview below… enjoy!

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You live in such a beautiful setting, I understand you purchased the land your home is on today when you were quite young and just out of art school, is this correct?

Yes, I bought the land for an incredibly small amount of money the year after I left art school. I had become pretty rebellious against everything and everyone and I think I saw something in the place that matched my moods. It was the externalisation of the rage and power I felt inside. I knew I needed to be there.

Your friend and architect, Richard Priest, designed the house for you inspired by the Werner Herzog film, Fitzcarraldo, and imagery from the scene of the boat being dragged through the bush. What was the process like and when was is completed?

The time of designing and building the house was an absolute adventure from beginning to end. I had always loved the image of the boat being dragged through the bush in Fitzcarraldo and thought the house should be the boatshed on the top of the hill. Richard and I began with the thought of just putting a small simple structure on a jetty cantilevered off the cliff. The house has changed over-time but the essential idea is still there.

When I built the house in 1986 a huge number of old buildings, warehouses and small industrial structures, were being demolished in Auckland to make way for mirror-glass towers. Many of the materials, windows, floorboards, wooden panelling and beams all came from demolition sites, often in exchange for a crate of beer and a smile. As I found things, Richard would alter the design and incorporate the materials into the building.

What do you love about your home and surrounds?

The place is the most energetic, wild, epic, sometimes violent, often beautiful, crazy place I have ever found. It’s the New York of the natural world and I love every minute of being there.

Do you ever feel isolated?

I don’t feel isolated when I’m there, quite the reverse, I feel at the centre of things. Waves, wind and sky.

Do you have any daily rituals?

Well I love my first coffee of the day but aside from that I don’t have any particular rituals. I take each day as it comes. In summer I do love to swim every day. I take the 10 minute walk down the cliff and then a 20 minute journey along a walking track to Anawhata beach.

What are your hobbies aside from art? You have a great sprawling garden that looks like it withstands the rugged coastal conditions. Do you spend much time outdoors maintaining it?

I love to grow things. The four acres I have is covered with regenerating sub-tropical bush that I tend to and nurture but which really grows quite well without any input from me. But I do grow vegetables in summer, if a little haphazardly with huge bursts of activity followed by total neglect due to lack of spare time.

What are your motivations for making work? From where or who do you draw inspiration from?

Just what my motivations are I really can’t say. Making work is something I need to do and put everything else aside to be involved with. Inspiration comes from working; you know, doing something, doing something else, hating a result and needing to change it.

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(Love that last quote, “Inspiration comes from working; you know, doing something, doing something else, hating a result and needing to change it”).

…Read the complete interview with Judy Millar on Freunde von Freunden here.