'No perfect, fool-proof plans available': Artist Jenny Hunt

Jenny Hunt was in the forefront of the international fibre art movement as it began filtering into New Zealand in the 1960s. Its aim was to revolutionise the use of fibre as an art form. She became a member of 'The Group' of Christchurch in 1973, and in 1975, jointly won the national Hansells Sculpture Award with a free-standing soft sculpture. Venus Has No Arms, God Has No Clothes is her debut book, a memoir of her childhood and fight to become an artist. It is a moving and detailed portrait of the childhood of a prolific New Zealand artist, evoking the conservatism of the era she grew up in and the obstacles she had to battle to realise her vocation. Kete asked Jenny some questions about how it felt to release this book now, and her current favourite reading matter.

Kia ora Jenny! What’s been the best part of writing and releasing Venus Has No Arms and God Has no Clothes? Can you tell us more about it? I experienced an intense sense of ‘mission accomplished’ after completion and publication of this book. Writing began around fifteen years ago in response to NZ publishers who were appealing for older people to record their memories of post war childhoods. 'If you don’t,' they warned, 'an important part of this country’s history will be lost.' Working with an adult understanding of childhood, and where I fitted in the historical, cultural and social period of NZ was both enlightening and clarifying. Post war austerity, non-demonstrative parents and religion were the rule for family life, while the over-riding, nation-wide motivation was to re-build and re-populate the country. At a personal level, I wanted to know why I am who I am. How do our inherited environments and our personal characteristics combine to shape our identity? Apart from dealing with the predictable traumas and angst required to achieve maturity, I can see, looking back, that my childhood was rich in physical, emotional and spiritual adventures.

Who is your ideal reader for this book? Who needs to read it? We all need stories to help us understand who we are, so anyone of whatever age should read this and other similar books. Childhood seems endless when you are in it but it’s really a very short period in our lives with a lot to achieve while we are in it. Just knowing how someone else has gone about it can be encouraging, because there are no perfect, fool-proof plans available. Being who you are and allowing yourself to be that and doing what you came onto the planet to do is at the core of this book. Re-inventing ourselves and reaffirming our identities are lifelong requirements, and, my old friend Socrates reminds always that, 'the unexamined life is not worth living.' But I also want readers, young and old, to know how exciting it was to welcome new inventions into our little town. Things that they have always known, like plastic, ballpoint pens, coca cola, sliced bread, instant coffee, rock and roll and television. Tell us what inspires you? An author, a book, a place, or whatever you like…. When I was five years old, as the older sister, I was assigned the position of number one helper and minder to my mother. Watching her and interpreting her needs made me into a people watcher. People have always been my inspiration, how they appear, what they say and how they interact with each other. As an artist, I am intensely interested in colour and how it is affected by light. A shaft of afternoon sunlight as it lights up a shadowy part of the garden, or inside my house, how it intensifies the colour of a wall or a cushion. I am inspired always by my garden in moonlight, the perfection of clouds and the sea, distant hills and the way a road becomes striped by shadows of tall poplar trees. It has been a privilege and an inspiration to be part of a small writer’s group here in Kapiti. Sharing ideas, writing exercises and endless, enriching discussions on art and life have been encouraging and certainly helped the final push to finish this book.

What Aotearoa New Zealand book do you wish you had written? Lioness by Emily Perkins. Emily Perkins is one of many New Zealand women who have successful careers in the arts. I admire them all because in the 1950s when I was looking for role models, they didn’t exist. Despite having a big family, my mother had hoped to pursue a career as a writer, but she was several generations too early to be part of such a cohort.

What’s been your best read this year so far? Physically, I am unable to ‘flit’ anywhere anymore, but my mind certainly can, and this year it has flitted constantly between books, magazines, journals and web sites for reading matter. This has now developed into a full-on habit of reading in ‘snatches.’ When doing the domestics, I like to pause, pick up a book, read a few lines of poetry or a paragraph or two from a favourite book. Every cup of tea demands a sit-down with a book or journal or an on- line visit to an international art gallery to see how far removed the art world is now, compared to the time when I was operating in it. I love the new Folly Arts journal. The short stories and poems by newer, younger writers are fascinating to me. Their subject matter and writing styles reflect the world they live in, a world totally foreign to me and which I am now several generations too late to understand or enjoy. Some of the books I have been reading in snatches are Wing Dust, exploring the eccentric mind of the artist June Black, by Sheridan Keith; Ripiro Beach, a memoir of life after near death by Caroline Barron; I’m mostly here to enjoy myself, one woman’s pursuit of pleasure in Paris by Glynnis MacNicol. And, finally, Like Moths to the Flame, a history of Ngāti Raukawa resistance and recovery, by Ani Mikaere. One other book which has exercised my mind a great deal is a collection of poems by my friend, Debbie Broughton. The Ani Waaka Room. We both have strong links back to Taranaki, the mountain and the land. It is the differences between the relationship we each have with this place that exercise my mind.

And last, but definitely not least, what are you writing next? In Venus Has No Arms, God Has No Clothes, I introduce my Aunt Grace who could be the third daughter of Tzar Nicolas of Russia. The widely circulated story of the mass-murder of the Romanov family is now regarded as a myth and it is on public record in Britain that they were all rescued. Grace, or Maria, married my uncle. They had one son who I have worked with to tell the story.