Book Launch

Here are the words of thanks from the Ceremony…

Thank you for gathering to celebrate the birth of our book. And honouring the experience of telling stories together and making beauty.

Today I want to acknowledge all who co-created this story of words which seeding with me when I was in high school and changed many times, from film script, to healing story to emerge here with us now, with its own grace, a WE story, growing in this moment and this place.

Firstly, thank this place, the Waitakere’s, the ground where the collective hard work and fun  in making this book happened. This beach where the shells are bound onto the collector books.

Belonging here, and this way of creating is how I and many of us through art & story belong.

Thanks, Nicky for joining me to Find Grace in pictures. We began with a waterfall bush walk with Thea and Mani… from here wandered in ideas, images and worked with our background painters over the last three years.

Thanks, Lois for working in translating the poem into Te Reo, and how letting the meaning of Grace reveal itself in the story came through in this mahi.

Thanks, to Lisa who patiently helped bring out Grace into beautiful book form, designing to our deadline for the Book festival. 

There are so many to thank and only a few we named in the back of the book.

Gratitude, to the patrons and those who preordered based on a vision helping make it become real. Big thankyou to Mum and Dad, super creative and supportive, thanks for always finding me, especially when I was hiding outside with my treasures waiting to be found.

We gifted the book to the Background Painters and then Nicky shared some words before Lois & I read the story.

Finally, thanks to the treasures we collected, to make our artwork and share for a time. Gifts from the nature that we are all part of – to be in, share, touch and sometimes leave it alone.

Last touch, invitation to add some magic & sprinkles and sing together Te Aroha.

Te Aroha 

Te aroha 
Te whakapono 
Me te rangimarie
Tätou, tätou e.

Love,
Hope,
Peace,
For us all.