About+Mike

=**Artist Michael O'Donnell **=

Mike is working with the children of Waikino School to help them find out who they are and where they come from. They are discovering more about the place where they live; Waikino, and the history of this area. Together we are starting our journey by looking at a rainbow as the begining of life. By the children knowing the mountains all around them, the streams that flow from their valleys to the sea, the birds, the fish, the forests, they have begun to tell the stories of this world through song and movement, colour and painting, and then into clay. We will construct a series of murals and clay tiles that will form parts of a new entrance to our school and also a series of panels that will describe the water cycle and the water journey.

It is important that we walk with these children to experience these things first hand and so we will go to meet the mountains and the streams and our few forests that are left.

Mike is a clay worker and vessel maker, sculptor and storyteller. For 30 years he has been involved in the protection of the mountain streams and ecologies that surround and include the Waikino area. Using clay as a sculptor his artistic ability and his story telling he is bringing us to a greater understanding of that which we have almost lost.