Under the Maunga: A Day in the Studio August 1, 2026 12:29

People often imagine a glass artist's day as hours in front of a hot furnace or hunched over a flame at the bench, glass in hand, kiln glowing away in the background. The reality of kiln-formed glass work is more about precision — precise cuts, using tools to 'nibble' away at unwanted areas, careful placement of colour, and understanding how glass moves under heat. When I’m kilnforming glass, I spend a lot of time getting my glass the right shape, deciding on colour, and aligning pieces in the kiln so they move the way I want them to. A lot of my day is spent hunched over my cutting table, hunched over my kiln.

In Ohakune, my day is layered in domesticity — and centred around the weather, as you'd probably expect, living in an alpine town during winter.

A normal winter's day — actually, every day — starts with coffee first. Definitely my biggest vice.

First job, every morning, is feeding Tu Meke, our cat, before anything else happens. She's very vocal about her demands, and is definitely The Boss. She’s our treasured cat with heaps of personality!

Then it's lighting the coal range. I light it in the morning and keep it stoked right through the day, because at this time of year in Ohakune, that range is doing a lot of the work of keeping the house warm. Tu Meke generally supervises this whole process, offering no help whatsoever but plenty of opinions.

When I head outside, it's to the chickens first — I love getting that blast of fresh air, out into the cold, scattering feed, chatting to my chickens before the studio day starts.

Once the range is going and the chickens are sorted, I head out to the studio. Mornings here are for the work that needs full attention and steady hands — cutting glass, building up layers and shapes, the kind of tasks that don't forgive a rushed or distracted approach. The studio has its own rhythm, and most days I can happily lose track of time out there.

That happens until about 3pm, when the kiln goes on and the temperature outside starts to drop, making the decision for me. Ohakune winters mean the studio simply isn't a place to linger once the light starts dropping and the temperature follows it. So inside I come, and the first job is lighting the fire in the lounge, getting it going early enough that the room's toasty warm by the time evening properly sets in.

The afternoon and evening shift is different work — still glass-centric, but a different kind of attention. Some days it's constructing kete and glass skirts, building up the more sculptural and textural pieces. Other days it's painting on glass with enamel paints, work that gets set aside for firing later, layered on with a relaxed, more instinctive hand than the cutting and building earlier in the day.

And then there's the part of the job nobody really pictures when they think "glass artist" — the laptop. Book work, invoicing, keeping on top of the business side of things. Managing the Glass Art In NZ (GAINZ) Facebook group, keeping up with what the wider NZ glass community is talking about. After dinner, it's back to the laptop again — research, emails, whatever didn't get finished earlier — before it's finally bedtime and the whole thing starts again the next morning.

It's not a glamorous rhythm, but it's a happy one. Cat, chickens, coal range, studio, wood fire, glass, laptop, repeat. The Ruapehu maunga sits over all of it, changing mood with the weather, a quiet reminder of why we're here in the first place. Once a week I vary it up with a walk in the bush, clearing a trap line of pests, helping restore the balance for our native birds. But that's a story for a different blog.

Most days are spent in creative flow — it is exactly the life I was looking for, even if I didn't know it at the time.

Made by hand. Made to keep.