About John Woodham

I have designed and made stuff from an early age but it is only in recent years that I have been able to fully indulge my creative interests.  I enjoyed a long and successful career in social services and then in design, marketing and manufacturing. Along the way I have also had horticulture interests.  Currently I have 800 fig trees  and sell the fruit  locally to Te Mata Figs.

As a 65 year old emerging artist I was persuaded by my wife Sally and her friend Julie Russell to exhibit at the last two Wildflower Sculpture Exhibition at the Round Pond near Hastings. This was a hugely successful biennial fundraising event which was initiated by the Russells with Sally’s input.  It made a significant contribution to the local art community and to Cranford Hospice. It was also a great success for me, exhibiting and selling my sculptures for the first time.  Sadly, Sally died 4 years ago and the Russells decided not to continue with  the Wildflower event.

Sally was an exceptional gardener and together we developed a large iconic garden near Haumoana where we lived for 47 years. I created a number of sculptures to complement the contemporary home we designed and built some 25 years ago and the new landscaping we developed around it.

At the time, inspired by Sal’s frustrations with the appalling trolleys provided by garden centres and her encouragement to design something better, I built trolleys for a couple of the local garden centres. I saw this as a way of recuperating some of my wife’s garden centre expenditure but it quickly progressed to much more than that when an international judge of the NZ garden centre of the year awards saw my trolleys and proclaimed them around the world.  Fuelled by the  positive response, I began to focus all my creative energies on designing and manufacturing garden centre trolleys and plant display systems for the New Zealand and international market.

I did not own a factory or employ staff as everything was done under contract to local companies. I was surprised and delighted to see what interesting stuff these factories discarded….agricultural discs, plough boards, frost protection and helicopter blades, petrol station signs, various pipes, tubes and metal extrusions. I could see the design potential and  I was inspired!  And so began my evolution as a whimsical fabricator of the found  when other people’s throw away objects became the victims of my imagination.

My Process is to savour an object and then sketch out some design options until I have a result that pleases me. I then fabricate from that plan but will often add or subtract as I proceed to the finished sculpture. My preference is towards an abstract rather than a representational or defined result as I enjoy people putting their own interpretation on my work and appreciating an unexpected juxtaposition of form and materials.

Press
4 Nov Hawke's Bay Today - John Woodham’s huge whimsical sculptures on show at Birdwoods exhibition here