10
Nov
Jack Marsden Mayer – animal driftwood sculptures
“Just come to the back door, you can’t miss it there’s a dragon’s head on the wall nearby; and I’ll come down and let you in”……with an invitation like that how could you resist. In an old brick wool store building alongside the railway tracks in Whanganui Jack Marsden Mayer has set up his workshop come studio come home. It’s absolutely perfect for his purpose. A huge cavernous space which he shares with a couple of fellow artists, one of whom, Cracked Ink’s Simon Ormerod, has applied vibrant life to the bare brick interior walls.
Jack is a driftwood sculptor. We spotted his work in Waiongana Gardens in Waitara…..rounding a corner of the garden we suddenly became aware of a giant Moa towering above us….on closer inspection we saw that it was constructed entirely out of driftwood. This was a strange feeling… the size and strength and presence of the giant bird was convincingly captured and conveyed and yet when you closely inspected the work it was just pieces of driftwood. Jack Marsden Mayer has a unique and extraordinary talent. I think most of us would have wandered along a beach and suddenly spotted a piece of driftwood and thought that it almost looks like a twisted claw or a misshapen nose; but how many people would see muscles and tendons, fangs and feathers, long limbs or ancient skulls?
Inside the woolstore workshop there’s a vast pile of driftwood collected from the wild west coast beaches, quietly waiting to be turned into amazing beasts…..dinosaurs, dragons, birds, horses. It looks quiet, dormant, a load of flotsam washed up from the storm; and yet from it Jack will create living works of art. Look at that galloping stallion above….the charging legs, the flying mane…it is a creature in dynamic flowing motion…alive.
Perhaps one of the greatest testimonials for Jack’s work comes through the eyes of a child. A client, arriving to inspect his commissioned T-Rex, had brought his youngster with him. On glimpsing the beast the child refused to get out of the car…….it was too scary.