RUST WITH A PURPOSE

Photo credit: Maria Lambert

For Howard Esler, the rustier the steel, the better the sculpture – and after 55 years wielding a welder, he's still finding new stories hidden in other people's scrap.

Howard Esler of Mangawhai is a sculptor working almost exclusively in rusty steel, and he wouldn't have it any other way. Rusty steel, he explains, has a fourth dimension – the surface shifts and deepens over the years, moving through browns, oranges and yellows, until eventually pieces begin to fall away entirely.

His sculptures take their form from whatever waste material happens to be on hand. Anything steel and over 3mm thick is fair game, as is old corrugated iron. Inspiration tends to strike simply from being surrounded by raw materials laid out where everything can be seen – and while that spark of an idea can come at any hour, it most often arrives with the dawning of a new day at 6am. From there, the design and engineering take shape in a matter of minutes.

Howard's love of building things in metal goes back to age five, when he was already making toys. His first welder arrived when he was 16, and remarkably, it's still in use 55 years later. These days, Howard channels much of that passion into teaching, running two-day sculptural welding courses that have introduced more than 80 people to waste steel in a new light over the past five years. Most participants, he notes, tend to be older women – "victims of an age when girls did not help dad in the workshop." What a waste, indeed.

For Howard, the appeal is obvious. Old stick welders are cheap (he's got twelve in the shed), rods are cheap, the raw material is free, and there's no need for a diabolically noisy angle grinder to clean the surface. Scrap iron saved from the dump becomes not just a recycling message, but often something deeper – or simply a nice ornament for the garden. Either way, what's not to love?

Howard's next project sees him turn his attention to an unlikely subject. Opening in July 2027 at Mangawhai Artists Gallery, ‘Crossing the Ditch’ is a collaborative exhibition with painter Ian McGowan and guest artists, dedicated to putting New Zealand's much-neglected native wombat firmly back on the map. Through a range of sculptures and painted works, the exhibition will explore the history and habits of this remarkable, and surprisingly controversial, creature.

howardesler@gmail.com | 027 463 7117