The Blog

Lisa is a free spirit, with caring embedded in her bones, concepts beyond her years & ideas well above her current status. A new graduate in Social Work from Massey, the idea of joining a government agency both repelled her, based on her brief work experiences, but also sparked the germ of an idea to transform the sector. Bold? You bet. But she might just be the person to carry it through.

Lisa's lifestyle can easily be labelled 'modern hippy' but she may well be a woman of her time. The realisation that we are healthier & happier & certainly kinder to our environment and each other when we adopt 'alternative' practices is fast gaining traction. Of course, in our higgeldy piggedly world, alternative means out of the mainstream, whereas eating local, natural sustainable food, recycling & repurposing, and paying attention to the energies present in our environment & ourselves is just logical, isn't it?

Born in South Africa, Lisa's spirit was forged watching cripples & beggars on the main street & living with appalling inequality. I, too witnessed the slums and the full extent of human depravity at a young age in Africa & South-East Asia, so I have some inkling of where her compassion springs from. Her mother succumbed to breast cancer when Lisa was two, a tragedy. It feels almost as if Lisa has adopted & developed super strong maternal instincts that she wants to use on the world, to fill the void left by her mother's passing. However one explains it, she is an old soul in a young body..

Raised in New Zealand from the age of 5, Lisa has always confronted authority, questioned the status quo & rejected the automatic adoption of 'the normal'. This combined with her natural compassion has guided her life so far. Her father, a civil engineer, offered her the inspired choice for her to study Social Work, firming up her direction and purpose. Her experience of work placement soured her view of government run agencies ("the distribution of resources is f***ed" & they are now trying to "buy people's happiness") & she started to find her own way. Living in a holistic village & community for the past two years, Albany's Kawai Purapura, has allowed Lisa to examine her vision for her future path, and also explore her own feelings & motivations. In her words, she had "an awakening" there.

Now working with PHAB Lisa is beginning to forge her own views on how disabled youth can be helped to build life skills and emotional awareness, and it's not in regimented half-hour counselling sessions! Lisa is a performer & her natural energy & vivaciousness has rubbed off on some of her charges, so she has begun to see the benefits of expending co-ordinated physical energy. As she explains so eloquently in the video interview, connecting an active mind to an active body is vital in achieving life balance. Obvious, really, isn't it! So she is now taking things a step further forward, enrolling in a circus training school - the Dust Palace  - to expand her knowledge & skills so she can pass that on. Not content with simply doing that, she is hatching plans for a full-blown disabled circus.

Given the deserved attention our paralympians have received this year, it seems that our society is nearly ready to recognise the valid contributions that disabled people can make. OK, it's easier to package up a pole vaulter or long jumper into something we all recognise, measured against familiar standards, but what Lisa is keen to stress is that while most of life is about energy exchange, people with different disabilities have different energies that come from different places & once we can allow those energies a true outlet, we will see disabled people flourish within our society.

Lisa is struggling with that age-old issue. If we are a compassionate race, how can we allow our most vulnerable to be cast aside, and how can we make redress? Sure, she is idealistic, but she is passionate, talented & most importantly, intelligent & street smart. It is hard to say no to someone so committed, so I hope she manages to exploit that, because if her dreams come true, they will affect many lives & hopefully our society, for the better. Purple truly represents her energy, her creative spirit, her life force, her individuality.

Sally is an artist, in the broadest sense. She lives and breathes creativity. Some of it mad, like the insane World of Wearable Arts costumes she conjures up; some of it playful, like the masks she crafts out of paper, old brooches & discarded remnants of cloth and bric-a-brac; some of it serene, like the canvases she floods with light; but all of it, well, creative…

You may have seen her on tv recently. She was a challenger on Mastermind NZ, choosing David Bowie as her specialist subject. Brave? I would certainly hesitate (aka run away) before putting myself out there in such an intellectually challenging environment, but Sally did it on a whim! Read what Verve magazine said about that… So why not explore another aspect of life? This says so much about Sally. She likes to explore boundaries & push herself to do new & interesting things. She is writing a cookbook; not just an ordinary cookbook, mind you. This will be a lifestyle cookbook designed to encourage you to have the confidence to make the most of whatever you have in your fridge & enhance your kitchen culture. She also transcribes & edits lengthy & technical documentation - "to keep my brain alive". She writes for Destinations magazine which combines her love of travel & writing. She is a puzzle & crossword fanatic, always challenging her brain to wrap itself around new teasers. Not content with that to satisfy her love of the written word, she has her own blog - "Two Words" - where she expounds on a diverse range of subjects, always interesting reads.

Returning to New Zealand after her lengthy OE, she took courses in both calligraphy & decoupage that stirred her innovative juices. These evolved into glass painting, painting, masks & more. During this period Sally spent a large chunk of time facilitating organisational change & the challenges she faced generating innovation fuelled her personal growth which helped propel her towards her creative dream. I was first introduced to Sally through her mask making. She fell in love with Venetian masks & after several years of experimentation alongside someone local who could provide the bases she quickly built a small business providing the appropriate accoutrements for masquerade balls. At the time, I was experimenting with body art photography & wanted to extend the look. Collaborating with Sally produced some memorable images ( see the image gallery, below). She also created a whole new range of iPatches for me when I wanted to do something for the Rangitoto College Fashion Show, StyleMe & raise some money for the Blind Foundation at the same time. After her years working for them, it was a cause close to her heart.

It is her art for WOW that has the most visible impact, though. Every year she finds inspiration from the strangest places & combined with items she has in her Aladdin's cave of a workshop or happens upon while travelling, she crafts stunning & beautiful pieces of art to wear. If you have never experienced WOW I urge you to go, it is a visual extravaganza & something you will experience nowhere else in the world. I am lucky to have been privy to Sally's creations before they were released on stage as I have been photographing them from the start & some of them can be seen in the image gallery, below.

Sally is a born facilitator and becomes most animated when engaged in conversation about teaching kids the art of creative thought, or mentoring people in clarifying & progressing their business and individual values & vision. With a fairly unique perspective on life, art & everything (to paraphrase Douglas Adams), Sally never disappoints by peddling the standard view on anything. She doesn't regard herself as an 'artist', I think primarily because she has never been formally trained in any traditional art medium and because she works in so many different mediums. She regards herself as a creator, but as is so often the case, we ourselves are blind to how others see us. She may regard herself as a horse racing fanatic (she owns a horse & Trackside is constantly on in the background when she is creating) but Sally is an artist, in the broadest sense.