The quiet power of creative friendship

Kay Ogilvie and Iona Matheson are two Coromandel-based artists who stand firmly in their own practices, but who also show how friendship, shared values and a deep respect for each other’s work can enrich creative growth rather than dilute it.

Kay has spent more than three decades shaping a life around making. “I’ve always earned a living on what I’ve made,” she says. “Right from being a teenager.” Her path into using clay began not with certainty, but with an awareness that there was something about design she wanted to understand more deeply. When someone explained how colour could lead the eye, she recalls thinking, “I need to know more about that.”

Her curiosity led Kay to a craft course where pottery was used as a way to learn design. “The first day, the first handful, the first look in the kiln, I was absolutely hooked,” she says. “That was 33 years ago and I’ve never stopped.”

Kay makes “everything from dresses to garden pots to totem poles to jewellery,” driven by an instinctive relationship with the materials. Clay, for her, is both medium and companion. “I don’t even necessarily think about what I’m going to make,” she explains. “If I just relax, this sort of happens.”

For 22 years, Kay has worked from her current Coromandel studio, having been previously located at the Waterworks on the 309 Road, where she made large sculptures that still inhabit the landscape. Even earlier, she helped establish what became one of Coromandel’s first craft shops. “They were craft shops then, not galleries,” she says, describing a time when selling pottery required inventing the infrastructure as you went along.

But Kay’s influence extends beyond her own work. She has fired countless pieces for other artists, hosted workshops, and quietly supported generations of makers. Again and again, she has seen people arrive saying, “I’m afraid I’m not very creative.” By the end, she says, they realise otherwise. “I just think that’s fantastic… the joy that comes out of making and the confidence in their own abilities.”

At the centre of it all is something she describes simply as magic. “It’s a connection with what I call the creative goddess,” Kay says. “I don’t think I call it up. I think it just comes with putting my hands in the clay.”

Iona Matheson’s creative journey began early too. Growing up in Wellington, she remembers deciding at sixteen that she was probably going to be an artist. She started screen printing, making clothes, gathering driftwood for jewellery, and selling her work while still in her teens. 

Like Kay, she went on to study craft design, where exposure to ceramics, fibres, glass, and drawing left a lasting mark. “From that, I’ve just got an absolute love of clay and fibres,” she says.

Life, however, took her in multiple directions. While raising her children, Iona continued exhibiting but also moved into teaching, initially with some reluctance. “I thought if I start teaching, I’m never going to get to my artwork,” she admits. But teaching became a pathway, eventually leading her to Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery and postgraduate study focused on how artists articulate their work.

Alongside this, Iona led ambitious community art projects, including large-scale collaborations, like a public sculpture made with a thousand children. “You end up doing these magical things you’d never do if you were just tucked away in your own studio,” she says.

For years, she lived in Anawhata, a small West Auckland community reminiscent of Coromandel. That life was abruptly shattered by Cyclone Gabrielle. “We were in a house that had broken in half,” she says. “We could have got killed.” In the aftermath, an old pull toward Coromandel resurfaced. A residency at Driving Creek became a turning point. “The first two weeks… were like the best two weeks I’ve had in my life,” she says. “I got to just focus on my creativity without any other responsibilities.”

That joy made the decision inevitable. “After two weeks, I went, right, are there any rentals up here? And then that fell into place immediately.”

For Iona, creativity is inseparable from wellbeing. “It balances you, doesn’t it?” she says. Working with clay teaches patience and resilience, she believes, qualities she now sees demonstrated in her work with neurodiverse communities. “People just get to go and relax and make and be,” she says. “Those little breakthroughs are huge.”

And when things go wrong? “If you’re having a bad day, get a bit of clay and wedge it really hard,” she laughs. “Smash a few pots.”

Kay and Iona’s friendship began long before they worked side by side. Each had heard about the other through mutual friends, with a sense of quiet anticipation. When they finally met, that expectation was fulfilled. “I just knew after that first meeting I’ll be back up here,” Iona recalls.

Their collaboration grew organically, beginning with access to a kiln. “I make, but I don’t have anywhere to fire my work,” Iona had told Kay. Kay’s response was immediate. “I said, no, I’ll fire your work,” she remembers. “I was absolutely in love with her work by then.”

From there came shared exhibitions, including the recent Sculpture Onshore, where Iona encouraged Kay to step into unfamiliar territory. Kay remembers protesting, “I’m not in that league,” and Iona replying, “I think you are.” That moment of belief mattered. Kay’s resulting volcanic sculpture drew on a long-held memory of being marooned on Rangitoto, working with roughness and unevenness as a guiding principle.

What defines their relationship is not sameness but trust. “We’re really different with our actual work,” Iona says. “We both have different skills.” Kay agrees: “Do we inspire each other’s work? I would have said perhaps not.” And yet, they support each other in essential ways, through writing proposals, logistics, and reassurance under pressure. “You kept saying, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to get finished,’” Kay recalls. “And I’d say, ‘No, you’re going to get finished.’”

When asked about the magic of creativity, both artists return to the unknown, the leap into making without guarantees. “That’s the magic,” Iona says. “You don’t know what it is yet, so you’ve got to conjure something up.” For Kay, it’s even more elemental. “I can’t imagine life without making all the time,” she says.

One thing seems certain with these two special artists and that is in the power of friendship continuing to encourage and strengthen their creative spirit into the future, both collaboratively and individually.

This article is part of a series of stories connected with our Creativity Lives in Waikato project. We know that Waikato thrives with diverse and transformative creative activity, so we are helping to highlight some of the creativity that lives in our region. Check out this growing collection of stories featuring the local Waikato creative community.