Artists Greg Barron and Jin Ling's garden

Spacious gardens allow Whangarei artists Greg Barron and Jin Ling the room to display their large works in beautiful surroundings.
Greg, who is a potter, and Jin, who is a sculptor, moved to Glenbervie about a year ago.
The choice of an adobe house was natural since Greg has made his livelihood out of shaping clay with his hands.
He has built a spacious new studio and gallery – and the only grumble at first was that he wasn’t able to spend as much time as he would have liked on creating his own artworks.
However, he has made up for lost time and his distinctive pottery is now filling the gallery.
Jin, who is originally from China where she was renowned for her large-scale metal sculptures, is reveling in the extra space.
Since moving to New Zealand and marrying Greg, Jin developed a love for working with clay.
Her sculptures are often life sized – she loves to create serene stylised buddhas and women holding doves.
Jin says her works are so large that they are difficult to display well in galleries.
“People can see them here out in the gardens where they are not crowded with other works.’’
However, she does make smaller items as well. Her stylized glazed wood pigeons are in honour of the large birds that swoop around the puriri trees on their property.
To their delight, wood pigeons have often perched to drink from one of Greg’s large bird bath basins that has been balanced on a log near the base of a tree outside a window of their studio.
Jin always makes sure there is plenty of water in it to encourage the pigeons to return.
The couple has placed most of the bush, comprising puriri, taraire and karaka, in a covenant to protect it for the future.
Greg’s next major project is to build an adobe house alongside the gallery.
The couple has planted a mixture of native trees in a screen for road traffic noise, and Jin has created an attractive bromeliad collection near the entry to the gallery, which has a wide verandah frontage.
Placed around the gardens are sculptures and pots in an outdoor gallery among the trees.
Greg says the new surroundings are already inspiring them, which is vital to artists “who should always let ideas evolve to keep dynamic’’.
With commissions to fulfil and exhibitions and galleries demanding their works throughout New Zealand and overseas, Greg and Jin now have the peaceful setting and space to enjoy their craft and share it with others.