The creative oldsters at Newling Gardens Retirement Village can teach young people a thing or two.
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Artists and authors, smiths and sculptors, woodworkers and writers, poets and printmakers, gardeners and needleworkers, cooks and craftspeople – many in their eighties and nineties – exhibited their work at a four-day Art Showcase from Friday to Tuesday.
“This weekend shows people that when you retire, you don’t just retire,” village manager Sue Nelson said.
“It’s a time they find they can start their passion in what they want to do, and spend a lot more time doing that.”
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NERAM director Rachael Parsons launched the art exhibition on Friday night.
"Art is a lifelong pursuit, and it's wonderful to see the refinement that comes from continuing your craft for a long time.”
Artist Heather Winch won second prize in the Daphne Young Art Prize last year. She studied fine arts at East Sydney Technical College, then moved to the Hawkesbury, where she founded the Ferry Artists Gallery, and taught workshops in watercolour and life drawing.
Merle Goldsmith, 94, won international recognition for her poetry – in her nineties.
Her poem “Full Moon” was awarded third prize in the poetry category of the International Writing Contest held by the powerTALK International organization, 2015.
An earlier poem, “Written in Sand”, won first prize in the same competition a dozen years ago, while a volume of her poetry, Pebbles on the Roof, was published in 2010.
Ninety-two-year-old Judy Eburn is still sculpting with elm timber, sandstone, and plaster. She began sculpting more than 30 years ago, and is also an oil painter and occasional jewellery maker.
David Donald taught himself how to work with wood.
“I know just about enough to be dangerous!” he joked. “It’s always been a hobby, ever since I was a little fellow, but grew from there.”
His works include lamp stands, clocks, vases, clocks, and coasters, and he has more than 400 different types of timber in his collection, from as far away as Madagascar and South America.
Retired station manager John Campbell painted in oils in his twenties, but only got back into it five years ago, when a friend enrolled him in one of Walcha artist Ross Laurie’s classes at NERAM.
His acrylics draw on his experience as a jackaroo and rural property manager. His wife Rosemary makes jewellery from sterling silver.
Bev Lilley and the Newling Gardens Craft Group get together each week to make skullcaps for soldiers, knitted jumpers and beanies for Aboriginal children in remote communities in Central Australia, and teddy bears for new-born babies at Armidale Hospital.