In a modest workshop nestled in the Karangahake Valley lay the works of Mike O’Donnell – sculptor, ecologist, spiritualist, activist and vessel maker. Known as the ‘water man’ his skilled hands create clay vessels to carry water around the globe asking the same question. “Do you remember?”
It was quite an unexpected Sunday when we called in to meet Mike. Those are often the best Sundays.
Mike O’Donnell is a very special man. You’ll know it too if you have the privilege to meet him. A talented sculptor he uses clay as a language. He is a keeper of knowledge and through his storytelling brings the past into the ordinary, addressing issues of belonging and identity, among other things.
For Mike, his identity is well defined. He is a mongrel of Irish, Jewish and African descent with his soul connecting deeply to ways of Maori, paying tribute to a primordial time of ‘the fish people’. His inspiration for the past 40 years has come from the Tarariki Stream that runs through his bush clad property. All of his work is about water. He is a natural storyteller. He has Shaman in his blood.
His love of clay, or more accurately the ability to create water jars, now walking around the world carrying stories and memories, is extremely rewarding.
Remember what, you may ask?
Knowing your bones and why they dance the way they do is important. It is an everlasting quest for some. Mike believes the repast is the essence of everything. He happily tells us there is nothing new. There are cyclic patterns and sometimes in life we must learn through bitterness to find the sweetness. We have a responsibility to ‘carry the water jar’ of knowledge and learning to pass onto the next generation, before it gets lost and the cycle starts again, for it will, with or without our wisdom.
What started out as a chat about pottery became a chat about life. Some things are so very simple it will make you smile or look ashamedly at your dusty shoes. We must not forget to listen to the birds, the earth, the sky and the water, for the answers lay there just as they did for generations thousands of years before us.
Mike gets it, big time. We were beginning to make perfect sense of it too.
Mike noticed people stopped buying teapots. If his ancestor’s tea went cold, so had the conversation and this meant something was very wrong. In a busy world where no one has time to hold a fruitful conversation to discuss the ordinary as the barometers of what’s happening in our community, we too come unstuck.
He sees the purpose and joy in the simplest of forms. He takes us around this workshop pointing out the mundane to the magnificent. A simple pottery bowl is more than meets the eye. It is not just a fired piece of clay. It is an ode to the garden, the gardener, the seed gather and the children who aren’t yet here. Everything has meaning. Everything has value. Mike told us of the tomato seeds carried from a WW1 soldier in his socks back to New Zealand from Italy. Mike has those very heritage tomatoes growing in his garden. Needless to say sliced tomato on toast is a morning ritual that doesn’t go without complete gratitude.
Amidst this, we realise we are having an ‘ah ha’ moment. We too have been on this journey of rediscovery, of repast. Literally every day we’ve been grateful for the vegetables we’ve grown and amazed how clever we are. It isn’t just about the veges. It is the process of stripping back some of life’s complexities that often accrue to the point of implosion and welcome the rewards of nurturing, of creating, rather than constant consumption.
We stopped and reflected for a moment in silence. We drank fresh stream water from clay jars clasped with both hands and listened to the birds.
Do you remember?
What a wonderful Sunday.
Keep your teapot warm.
Grow vegetables.
Talk.
Be grateful.
Know your bones and why they dance that way.
