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Saturday, 13 February 2010
Casual opening 13 February - all day
Weekends only gallery
Paintings, sculptures and writing by Leo Cappel
Leo Cappèl absolutely refuses to accept any divisions between the different art forms, so has always practised painting, sculpting, writing and music as related forms of arts.
BRAGSHEET
My earliest memory is of my grandmother teaching me how to say cigar in Dutch ('sigaar', I was born in Amsterdam). Words intrigued me then, and have done so ever since. Words, sounds and patterns - read: writing, music and sculpting.
During the war I had to hide with a family in Friesland. The adults spoke Dutch as well, the few kids I befriended spoke nothing but Friesian. After the war the Red Cross sent me to Switzerland, to live with an elderly couple who spoke only Swiss-German. The Dutch word Papa became Heit in Friesian, Vater in Switzerland. Later still, when I was an art student in Paris, it was Père and now it's Dad. How could I not be fascinated?
I studied art at the Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam. I worked as an art teacher, as industrial designer and as scuba diving instructor before emigrating to New Zealand.
One of my first jobs in New Zealand was with the railways, as 'relay mechanic'. My English was still rather shaky and my off-sider came from the top of Scotland! At that time I still wrote in Dutch and had stories accepted in Holland and Belgium. Soon I was offered a position at the Canterbury Museum, to make small diorama displays - mainly for country schools - and some years later I found myself creating the very large dioramas in the Auckland Museum.
I got restless, decided to build a 54 foot yacht, so my wife Karen and I could go back to the sea. It took 7 years of weekends and holidays, financed by writing, performing on stage, playing music, sculpting, and building unusual musical instruments in what little spare time we could find.
We lived on board, getting ready to travel overseas. Then a bombshell: the asbestos in my lungs - legacy of my work at the Auckland War Memorial Museum! - started to play up, no more ocean sailing after all. My response: to write a cheerful novel, SAIL THEATRE, SAIL, followed by several stage plays and musicals, five of which have been produced, and the novel CLONE.
After 16 years aboard we lived for another 10 years on top of a hill on tiny Kawau Island, where there are no shops, no roads, no rubbish removal or any other services apart from electricity - most of the time - and telephone, and where we got our mail delivered by the Royal Mail Run ferry twice a week.
And now, 7 literary awards and prices later, we have moved to Whangarei, not far from where Linda and Jenny would have lived, if they had been real persons instead of imaginary friends of mine, living in my novel CLONE.
www.playwrights.org.nz/leocappel
98 b Paramount Parade, Tikipunga. (Not far from Countdown.)
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