Instead of looking ahead at the view when hiking, Ben Pearce has his head down searching for interesting chunks of rock, taking photographs and picking up the odd rock shard as he goes.
"I'm like I've still got 15km to go that day. Right, I've got to get there and start ignoring this. And I always come back with a kilo of rocks in the pocket."
The best of the haul goes on a shelf in his workshop where there are rocks from his hikes as far and wide as the Hump Ridge Track in the south to the Tongariro Alpine Crossing in the north.
For Pearce, every rock is beautiful, whether it is found on the side of the road or up a mountain. "It’s a very democratic thing to be inspired by."
He also has a special soft spot for standing stones, such as Stonehenge, finding them very intriguing.
"It's sort of really interesting as humans how we put a kind of meaning into rocks."
For Pearce, who lives in Hawke’s Bay, his fascination with stone is funnelled into his sculptural practice. He is known for his large, Corten steel sculptures, inspired by stacked rocks, which are held in private collections throughout New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
He recently made a large "miniature" Stonehenge-like work popped up on a rock called On a hill at night faint music could be heard, which was included in Auckland’s sculpture trail last month alongside works from nine other artists, including Lisa Reihana’s giant female octopus Te Wheke-a-Muturangi.
But his works started out as small sculptures made from offcuts of different types of wood from his work with furniture and lighting designer David Trubridge.
Then he was asked to make a piece for the Brick Bay Sculpture Trail in Matakana, north of Auckland.
"I was looking at one of the little wooden creations that I made, and I thought, oh, that would be really amazing, you know, three or four metres high. Doing that work spawned the whole thing."
However, his love of art has always been with him.
"I actually remember when I was 4, knowing that I'd be an artist for my whole life. As a little kid I remember having these dreams about being in a workshop and welding and making things. Like, I just, I knew. I remember I had a really strong passion for it.
"I had a vision of what I'd be doing and just along the way things kept falling into place."
As a child, he would enter every art competition he could and his mother encouraged him, even suggesting he enter the competition for the phone book cover, giving him some old eyeliner brushes and test pots of paint to use.
"I entered and I won. I was, like, 14 years old. And I was like, that's two and a-half grand. That's going to pay for my first year of art school."
As things fell into place, Pearce never questioned his direction.
Intuitive feelings about what he should be doing have led his direction ever since and he headed off to art school, majoring in sculpture, at the Quay School of the Arts, in Whanganui, in 2003.
But when Trubridge, with whom he worked for 18 years, and some friends set up an art and design incubator in Hawke’s Bay, he saw sculptors working in steel.
"It opened my eyes. Actually, I can make much more large and adventurous things in steel and am not limited to them being inside. Yeah, and I thought, ‘OK, there's something really interesting in working with steel’."
The sculptors allowed Pearce to use their workshop when they were not working.
"It's quite different when you're standing in front of a piece of timber and you're carving it or drilling it. But when you're in front of a piece of steel, when you pull the trigger on a welder, you've got like hot melting metal flying around.
"It has quite a big impact on you and you feel like you're working with the forces of nature."
That feeling is what drew him to working with steel as well as the ability to fix mistakes.
"You can just weld it and put it back together and carry on."
Working with steel meant new tools were needed and new skills. But he says it comes naturally to him. His parents taught him knitting and cross-stitch as a child and his father was always working on old cars.
"One funny memory is, like, whenever I got a new toy, like it might have been a toy I was waiting for or I really wanted, as soon as I got it, I would immediately take the whole toy apart, all the little screws, just to learn how it works."
"So it's neat to be able to bring those ideas, those kind of mental images that you might have, into, like, physical objects. Then it's a physical brute force to make it happen."
Luckily, he has been able to pick up some skills not just through research but in his day jobs. At a winery fabrication company, he worked inside stainless steel wine tanks doing fine metal work which had to meet high standards.
"I don’t think I’ll ever be finished learning all that stuff."
He finds Corten steel to be a nice material to work with.
"It’s almost like you’re working with nature a little bit. Like, depending on the day that you apply the patina, it can be quite different. If it’s a really hot day, it is different to doing it on a cold day. The steel reacts differently, so no two works can ever look the same."
One of the challenges he has faced as his works have got larger and more precarious is getting them to stand up straight, especially when they are not bolted down. He has devised large square bases to provide a stable platform from which he can cantilever anything.
"Then it’s kind of hidden engineering inside the work. There’s large supporting beams inside the hollow form."
Until four years ago, he was making his works in a single carport at his Napier home which was open to the road. He managed to fit in what was essentially a full engineering workshop. But it was not secure and his tools were regularly stolen.
"When it rained, the rust would wash down the road and I'd have to sweep it up. It was really challenging. But a really well-known UK artist, Anthony Caro, worked out of his garage carport as well. And he's amazing. It didn't stop him from becoming one of the most worldwide known sculptors. "
Pearce’s interest in making things work has come in handy when it comes to fixing the multiple tools he has for his work. He even rescued a second-hand forklift headed for the recyclers and, with a bit of tinkering, got it going.
"It has meant I can go a little bit bigger as well. I'm not trying to lift everything. I tend to have to roll the sculptures across the gravel and the concrete. So I just kind of work on them, and now I can just flip them up, turn them around."
Pearce, who has been a finalist in the Wallace Art Awards and won people’s choice in 2009, recently received his first commission for a bronze version of one of his sculptures. The costly material elevates the work into "serious" territory, he says.
"It's going to be really fun. You can't be, as a sculptor, afraid of risk and complexity. It's either all in for something or you just don't do it. Yeah, it requires a very determined kind of mindset."
He also makes smaller sculptures from bronze, wood or stone.
His works have ended up all around the country, some hidden in gardens and others looking out to the mountains but often he does not know where they go. In 2022, he took part in Paper Pals Aotearoa, a large-scale, four-plinth public commission for the Wellington Sculpture Trust, outside Te Papa.
"I had my first work from a collector in Hawke's Bay. She moved back to the Netherlands and she decided to sell most of the artwork but she kept my big sculpture and actually shipped it to the Netherlands. That was like a 100kg sculpture."
Just getting his sculptures from Hawke’s Bay to Dunedin for his exhibition at Milford Gallery was interesting. Six sculptures were packed into a trailer to be driven south — just 400mm under the maximum height to go on the ferry — and the freight company gave him daily updates.
To see
Ben Pearce, "Sculptures for a Wilderness", Milford Gallery Dunedin, June 14-July 7.
