"The stone already knows its form. My job is to listen long enough to find it."
Write your opening paragraph here. Your whakapapa to the craft — not your CV, but the real story. Why pounamu. Why whakairo. What it means to work with stone that has been forming for millions of years beneath these islands.
Your second paragraph. The wider life — the shed, the tools, the sea, the fishing, the drawing. Who Ivan Toopi is beyond the stone. The things that feed the work even when you're not carving.
A closing line. Something about what you believe about this craft, about why it matters, about what you hope the person holding one of your pieces will feel.
Pounamu and native wood, carved by hand in a 30m² shed in Aotearoa. Every piece begins with the material — its colour, weight, the way it holds light.
Fishing is where the other half of the thinking happens. The sea, the patience, the waiting — it feeds the work in ways the shed never quite can.
Large-format print, illustration, digital design — the same eye that finds form in stone finds it on paper and screen.
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