High roller

He used to exist on the dole and carve angry faces on surfboards. Now Aaron Kereopa has learned to value the life he leads and one of his artworks can fetch $15,000. Words: Sue Hoffart; Photos: Jane Ussher.

AARON KEREOPA did not name his first-born child lightly. The Raglan artist is determined that four-year-old son Kaitawhiti – meaning traveller – will journey more smoothly through life than he did. The older Kereopa expects the moniker will inspire his child to venture beyond their small west-coast Waikato town, hopefully avoiding the fury and failure that dogged his own youth.

These days, buyers pay up to $15,000 for one of the intricately carved and painted surfboard inners he sends to a Queenstown gallery. Fifteen years ago his annual income was $5700 on the dole. Back then he was living with his unemployed mates, angry, unhappy, a failed student, an undiagnosed dyslexic who drank too much and took life-threatening risks as a surfer.

Now aged 39, the gently spoken artist is a picture of contentment, paintbrush poised over the magnificently carved board resting on his knees while a te reo Maori radio station croons in the background. Partner and “Raglan-hood sweetheart” Jasmin Radford chats with him, their one-year-old daughter Mikahinewai on her hip. “What’s my dream?” Aaron asks. “This is it; I’m in it. Making a living doing my art, being able to sustain this lifestyle and a family.”

His chosen medium is the polystyrene heart of a surfboard, the blank or buoyant core normally encased in fibreglass. Originally he tore apart boards scavenged from sheds and rubbish bins and carved them with a kitchen butter-knife. Now he imports packs of damaged blank “seconds” from an Australian manufacturer. Using a surgical scalpel and a Stanley knife, he weaves Pacific cultural designs around his experiences and political views; the latest includes his take on the New Zealand flag. He rarely sketches anything, transferring his thoughts directly onto foam.

Working in the shed alongside their rented semi-rural hillside home grants Aaron plenty of flexibility to down tools and hit the water, either on his stand-up paddle-board or in a single outrigger canoe, occasionally surfing or paddling waka ama. He still surfs, claiming both art and surfing grant him a sense of peace and happiness, that both release creative energy.

His art career has other benefits, too. “I can pay cash for my car – I’ve got the freedom to work and freedom to play with my family whenever I want, pretty much. My only downfall in terms of art production is the kids. They come out here all the time and I end up making toys.” He grins at the painted paper bag dangling from a wall of the shed. “Look, a kite. It started off being a superhero mask.”

The second of six children, Aaron grew up across Raglan Harbour on the sheep and beef farm his parents managed in tiny Te Akau. When he wasn’t on the lambing beat, collecting dead lambs in a plastic sled made from a spray pack, he usually had a pencil in hand, filling page after page with pictures of fast cars and trucks. Drawing was also a distraction from schoolwork which was hard for Aaron. He was in his late teens before doctors diagnosed the astigmatism that affected his vision, blurring textbooks and blackboards. No one discovered he had dyslexia, albeit teamed with a photographic memory. He could sometimes fool teachers by memorizing reading books or large bodies of text. “The other kids thought I was cheating. I thought I was brainy but obviously the teachers didn’t,” he says of the years he was held back a class.

Like his siblings, he attended South Auckland’s Wesley College. Those years strengthened his Maori cultural knowledge and broadened his horizons. “School taught me how to tie a tie, polish my shoes. It taught me to be with people other than just Maori, that there were greater things out there than how Maori communities live – I thought it was just beers and work. Samoan, Pakeha... there were Tongan royals... seeing other brown people who were leaders in kingdoms.” In addition to cultural exchanges in Canada and Hawaii, Aaron learned to design moko and paddle a war canoe, to speak Maori and compete in kapa haka.

Trouble hit when he left school and started a business management course at Waikato Polytechnic. Once again he was at the back of the classroom, unable to see or read blurred, jumbled words. Too shy to ask for help, he was certain everyone viewed him as “a Maori… trying to get some grant money. They didn’t give a rat’s arse about my cultural background.”

What’s more, his heart wasn’t in business. “I was pleasing my mum and dad because their boy’s getting an education. I was going to get a mean-as job. It was a big hoax.” He started skipping classes and surfing more. After three years of failing as many papers as he passed, he dropped out and moved to Raglan. He moved in with his parents who had shifted to Manu Bay alongside Raglan’s renowned surf beach and joined his father painting houses in Hamilton. “I was semi-educated but working beside guys just out of prison. In summer, there were students finishing their degrees. That hurt. Here I was painting houses, expected to do that for life.” He tried obtaining an apprenticeship but was twice let down by employers.

Surfing became an escape and an outlet for his anger, a place to pit himself against violent, dangerous waves. “Surfing, the only person who lets me down is me. I was on the dole for six or seven years. Winging it, scamming it, working in bars, dish pigging – washing dishes for all these happy people in the bar. I was going nowhere, had a group of Maori guys around me. Everyone thought we were bums, staying at the old shed on the land for pretty much free.”

One day he picked up a broken surfboard from a corner of the shed. He’d seen a television news item of a Gisborne surfer waving a carved surfboard blank to protest nuclear testing in the Pacific. Both the art form and the political statement appealed to Aaron. “I thought I could say something here about what I’m going through just in our own country. I started with angry faces, making angry Maori warriors and giving them away.”

It was something to do between surf trips until Jasmin convinced him to visit Australia’s Gold Coast. Their six-week break became six years and homesickness channelled him back into carving. He honed his skills between jobs washing dishes, welding supermarket trolleys and plastering houses. The couple was adopted by a community of Samoans, one of whom showed Aaron how to paint his boards. Jasmin qualified as a massage therapist and the warriors on Aaron’s surfboards gradually became less angry. As expatriate New Zealanders increasingly begged for boards that reminded them of home, he began to wonder whether his art had monetary value.

In 2001 he took boards to a surf expo in Coolangatta and made $380. He began selling boards at beach markets, initially dismissing critics who claimed his work ought to be in galleries. As demand and his prices grew – $50 a board, $150, $350, $400 – he began to envisage a future where art was his sole income.

He sent a bundle of carved boards home so his brother, Raglan-based surf champion Daniel Kereopa, could test the market. “He started giving them away at charity events ’cos he’s quite famous. All these stars were buying them.” Demand was similarly overwhelming in a Raglan café, then a local gallery. Aaron’s big break came after one of his boards wound up in a Queenstown home and an art gallery owner spotted the piece and tracked him down. That was four years ago and the gallery takes – and sells – everything he produces.

Aaron has long since repaid all his dole money in taxes and likes to think those funds might support another creative person. Truthfully though, he still has plenty of unemployed friends bound for nowhere. “That’s why I named my boy. I want him to use his initiative earlier in his life than I did, to know there’s so much more out there. Now I know what’s up.”

* Toi o tahuna gallery in Queenstown is hosting an exhibition of Aaron’s work on 13 August 2010.