Community farewells friend

   
TRAIL-BLAZER: Above, family and friends gather at the Mangawhai Museum to share memories and celebrate the life of local artist and personality Joy Agar. And Joy proudly presents a stingray sculpture commissioned for the new museum. – PHOTO/Julia West

Joy was an artist. Art was her passion. Whether it was hairdressing, sculpture, or painting, she was immensely talented and she trusted her instincts. She was willing to share with others. She inspired and motivated others by being enthusiastic and totally non-judgmental. She had a way of making everyone feel good. 

Believing it would inhibit her creativity, Joy never worked to a strict schedule, and reasoned that being excited about what she was doing made it easier to spend time doing it. ‘I only do what I want to do and I’m never rushed’ she once said.

A school-leaver in Gisborne, Joy trained as a hairdresser, a job that saw her move to the UK and win top awards.

Before leaving for the UK 35 years ago she visited Mangawhai and vowed it would be the place she called home when she came back to New Zealand. Returning after 17 years in England she felt immediately at home and never left. Joy absolutely loved Mangawhai. 

Joy was the founding member of the Mangawhai Artists Association. It all 

started with a conversation with another local identity, Jean Goldschmidt, while Joy was cutting her hair. Joy felt that walkers and their partners needed something else to do when they came to Mangawhai for the Walking Weekend. With friend Sue Blincko’s help, the first Mangawhai Art Trail was born. 

Though artists and their work had been around the area for years, the new association brought all the artists in the community together to promote and encourage each other. Joy felt that artists often work in isolation and this group would be a way of bringing them together to have fun. Joy’s motto was to be inclusive and it was her vision to make Mangawhai the art centre of the north. 

Joy worked hard to set up the Mangawhai Artists Group and she was a big contributor of our recent fundraising exhibition and auction. I was at the exhibition with her one day when a man came in and she asked him ‘What do you think of the stingray?’ He replied ‘That isn’t art because it’s actually real you know!’ She had great delight in telling him that she was the artist. 

Joy will be hugely missed by us all and we are very grateful for her passion for art, Mangawhai and its people. 

Thanks to Joy’s partner Dave Goodwin and her family for coming to the art auction which reinforced to us just how important this dream was to her. 

Joy said her belief was that when you find what you love doing, and live your dream, happiness and success, however you define it, will follow.