Adsett Sandy
(b Wairoa, Hawke’s Bay, NZ, 27 Aug 1939). Maori painter, carver,
weaver, costume and stage designer. His involvement with art began
at Te Aute Maori Boys’ College (1954–7), Hawke’s Bay, Waipawa
County, and continued with formal art training at Ardmore Teachers’
College (1958–9) and at Dunedin Teachers’ College (1960), where he
trained as an art specialist. He subsequently worked for the
Department of Education as an arts and crafts adviser and served on
committees for national art education policies, the Historic Places
Trust (with particular reference to Maori sites), art museums and
tribal committees (dealing with traditional and customary art forms
and architecture). He helped to promote contemporary developments in
Maori arts for community buildings, meeting houses, churches and
public sites, serving on private and governmental commissions. In
his own work he maintains a balance between the conservation of
older traditional materials and forms of Maori arts and the
experimental use of new materials, such as composite chipboard,
synthetic dyes, plastic-coated basketry fibres and composite,
laminated board. His painted and woven-fibre works are notable for
their rich but subtle colours and controlled sense of line. They
vary in size from complex architectural installations or stage
designs for the Royal New Zealand Ballet to designs for postage
stamps. At Te Huki Meeting House (1982), for example, the carved
figures supporting the walls and the house-posts, as well as the
painted rafter patterns of the ceiling and woven wall panels are all
linked by style, motif and colour to relate intricate tribal
narratives.
