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Hana Kumagai:

Hana is an artist and artisan from Miyagi Prefecture in Northern Honshu, Japan. She works almost exclusively with what she finds around her, both natural materials and waste resources from our community

Weaving, spinning, dying, paper craft, embroidery, sewing and mending.

Baking, painting, building, planting and pruning. She applies her unique carefree sensibility to so many different arts.

She also plays beautiful music, and creates mesmerising compositions with cut flowers and great care.

When asked for a profile, Hana said - "There is an inspiration that is born from need... I grew up in a very poor family and my father is a psychedelic singer songwriter and poet, so my childhood years were spent amongst many interesting characters. I avoided them as much as possible and wanted more than anything to have a 'normal' life... but now i enjoy myself."

Hana's instagram photos say a lot about her.

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David Duval-Smith:

David was born in NZ, graduated a graphic designer from Wellington Polytechnical Institute, and promptly went to live in Japan for 27years.

He went to japan looking for interesting work, but soon realised there was no interesting work for those not already doing interesting work, simple, so he started pretending to be an artist.

For many years he worked representing Japan in the international contemporary arts scene, co-founding the arts collective Namaiki ("cheeky"), and the Tokyo based performance art space SuperDeluxe.

Despite having a lot of fun, he had a 'carbon footprint moment' when he realised how much rubbish he was making. 

He left the city to study traditional Japanese farming, bamboo crafts and earth oven construction. He discovered a love of beauty that went deeper than appearances, a love of work deeper than money, 

He now lives in a Waiheke Island garden with his family, sharing his love of soil, music and the creative arts.

Some of David's watercolours

some of his work with bamboo

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Corner Garden is where we live in Ostend, Waiheke.

It is also where we homeschool our children and host many collaborative creative activities for the community. 

some photos of our garden

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