Helen Back is nursing blood-red wine when we catch up in a Dunedin bar. A discreet nose ring flashes in tandem with her eyes. She has the relaxed, comfortable air of the world-weary and the unshockable.
The Bluff artist opens her latest exhibition at the Artist's Room this weekend.
"Nocturne" is a joint show with her friends and colleagues, Oamaru painter Donna Demente and Picton painter and printmaker Sue Syme.
The sculptor weaves magical, mystical art, its tendrils curling back deep into her own childhood.
"When I was 6 years old, I really wanted a horse and Dad said if I could dig a hole big enough to bury it, I could have one," she muses.
"I tried several times, but I couldn't . . ."
she tails off, as if unsure herself what to make of the anecdote.
She instead quotes German poet Johann Schiller (1759-1805):"`Deeper meaning resides in the fairy tales told me in my childhood, than in any truth that is taught in life'.
"I try to find the magic in things. I've always loved fairy tales - which are really children's wonderful horror stories. But all the original fairy tales are too political now.
"I mean, Hansel and Gretel were abandoned by their parents in the middle of a forest. How scary is that?"
When you're growing up, you have your illusions dissolved.
You start selling your soul and, then, you realise that everything is a sham and you can just laugh your way through it."
Although there hasn't been too much laughter lately.
"The last 18 months have been really quite hard. I think I've been having my mid-life crisis," the 43-year-old chuckles.
"But you know, I wouldn't change a thing."
"It's about broken people and broken lives. I like to create little worlds for people to walk into. As I evolve as a person, the work evolves," she says.
"I've got five kids to two different fathers and I've had lots of experiences and things . . . After a while, life is just a steamroller.
"Everybody gets broken at times in life and you just have to patch yourself up and carry on. It's the baggage you gather on your journey that really matters," she says.
"I think my work is about people breaking and how, when broken, we find ways to adapt and rebuild ourselves, the traits we adopt and hide, secrets we keep, lies we tell, the crutches we lean on and the strange things we gather around us for comfort and shelter.
"And then how, when we are mended, we creep slowly back into society to limp along with everyone else.
"I liken my work to, well, let's say a cup that has been used often, dropped and broken and glued many times back together, so that the pieces don't really fit anymore.
"It's still essentially a cup, but now it has a wobble, unreliable handle or maybe no handle at all - just a sharp piece sticking out where the handle used to be. It's all chipped and has a slow leak, but it's still a cup.
"I think that's my work today, anyway," she says, smiling.
Back's one-off sculptures are crafted on wire frames using clays, Fimo, papier-mache "and lots of fabric and paints".
She credits former Otago Polytechnic School of Art sculpture lecturer Jim Cooper with her development as an artist.
"Jimmy was a great mentor to me. I did my first few exhibitions with him in group shows in the late '90s and he really encouraged me along."
Back was born in Auckland, but spent most of her life on the West Coast, where she ran the Jester's Nest Gallery in Karamea and was a member of the Punakaiki Crafts Collective.
She moved to Bluff 18 months ago to manage the Jimmi Rabbitz Gallery, with her partner, Invercargill sculptor John Wishart, and five children, aged 21, 18, 16, 14 and 9.
Back's works appear in the "Nocturne" exhibition at the Artist's Room.
Catch it
"Nocturne" opens at midday on Saturday and runs until October 31.
