Studio18 is held by trees.
They stand close enough to soften the light and filter sound, close enough that the day feels buffered from whatever urgency you arrived with. Leaves shift gently overhead. The air carries a steady calm that settles quickly into the body, the kind that makes it easier to stand at a bench for longer than you planned and to stay with a piece of work without watching the clock.
Birds are part of the studio’s daily rhythm. Tūī move through the trees with their metallic calls, sometimes sharp, sometimes conversational, as if commenting on the progress of the day. Fantails appear without warning, quick and curious, tracing small arcs through open doors before vanishing again. Kererū arrive more slowly, heavy and deliberate, settling into branches that always seem just strong enough. Their presence is grounding rather than distracting, a reminder that work happens alongside life rather than apart from it.
Inside, the studio is set up to work
Shelves hold stoneware and earthenware in quiet succession: work just made, work drying, work waiting for the kiln.
All the tools of the practice are here, and they feel familiar quickly….
Ribs worn smooth from repetition.
Wires that have cut countless bases cleanly away.
Trimming tools laid out where hands reach for them without thinking.
Sponges, blades, measuring guides, buckets of slip, glaze tests with notes written in a language only the studio fully understands.
The kiln sits nearby on the same street, close enough that firing remains part of the daily conversation. Kiln days are felt in advance, work quietly lining up on shelves, glazes settling into their final decisions. When firing happens, it brings a collective pause, a shared attention to heat, time, and transformation. Nothing emerges unchanged.
This is a place where both wheel work and sculptural work belong equally, where hands can move between techniques without apology.
Light matters here.
In the morning it arrives gently, making clay look cooler, more reserved. By afternoon it warms and softens, revealing edges and curves differently. Late in the day, the studio settles into a deeper calm, and it becomes easier to leave something unfinished, knowing it will be there when you return.
For an artist, this is a place that offers something increasingly rare: the chance to work without performance, to be surrounded by quiet competence, and to let your practice unfold in conversation with materials, tools, and time. Stoneware, earthenware, sculpture, wheel work all sit comfortably together here, shaped not only by hands, but by attention.
