Gemma Stratton

Gemma has been a resident craftsperson at Rekindle and is one of our regular tutors. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Canterbury School of Fine Arts, and weaves her long-held dedication to resourcefulness into everything she touches. Gemma’s time in the Rekindle workshop developing brushes and lightshades has been funded by Creative New Zealand.

Gemma has taught a variety of workshops using tī kōuka (cabbage tree) leaves within our resourceful skills workshop programme.
@g.m.stratton @g.m.stratton

Image above by Justyn Denney.

Tī Kōuka Brushes, Autumn/Winter 2020

Tī Kōuka Lampshades, Autumn/Winter 2020

Tī Kōuka Brushes, Spring/Summer 2019

Gemma has spent months developing ways to make useful functional brushes from exposed tī kōuka fibre and local hazel for handles. She is now sharing these skills in our workshop programme.

Image 1 & 4 by Alex Yerks

Tī Kōuka Pendants, Winter/Spring 2019

Two large scale light pendants commissioned to hang at the Riverside Market in Christchurch. Made using local hazel poles as the frame, woven with harakeke as the warp and tī kōuka as the weft using the pairing technique we teach.

Gemma & her husband Ruben Hamblett engineered the extraordinary internal structure for these large hanging forms so that the use of anything other than local materials was minimised.