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In 1993, John and Jo Gow bought a 60-acre coastal prop­erty on Wai­heke Island, a 30-minute ferry ride from Auck­land, New Zealand, intend­ing to restore the prop­erty from sheep pas­tures to all-native plants.  Years later, real­iz­ing they had cre­ated “out­door rooms,” they decided to install sculp­ture suited to each unique set­ting on the property.

In this pod­cast, John Gow tells the story of cre­at­ing what even­tu­ally became the Con­nells Bay Sculp­ture Park, now well known around the world for its more than 30 sophis­ti­cated and sur­pris­ing site-selected sculp­tures exclu­sively by New Zealand’s lead­ing con­tem­po­rary artists.  About half the pieces have been com­mis­sioned from sculp­tors invited to stay in one of the property’s cot­tages and develop a vision with­out inter­fer­ence from their bene­fac­tors, who appre­ci­ate the process, the art and the rela­tion­ships that emerge.

Before open­ing Con­nells Bay, John Gow, a for­mer banker, raised fund­ing for musi­cal the­ater in major cities such as Lon­don and New York, includ­ing “Cats,” “Les Mis­er­ables,” “Phan­tom of the Opera” and “Miss Saigon.”  He and Jo Gow applied their con­sid­er­able energy in 2002 to co-founding with oth­ers “Sculp­ture on the Gulf,” a bi-annual event that dis­plays juried art along a 2– to 3-mile walk­way on Wai­heke Island.  They’re also help­ing to orga­nize the Inter­na­tional Sculp­ture Cen­ter’s Feb. 11–15, 2013 annual con­fer­ence in Auk­land, hop­ing to bring greater recog­ni­tion to New Zealand’s bur­geon­ing sculp­ture community.

The artists rep­re­sented at Con­nells Bay Sculp­ture Park, open from mid-October to mid-April for guided tours.

Men­tions:  The Mallin Col­lec­tion & Buck­horn Sculp­ture Park, Anish Kapoor, Gibbs Farm, Kroller-Muller Sculp­ture Gar­den, Maya Lin, Richard Serra, The Han­nah Peschar Sculp­ture Garden

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