Big things happen when art imitates life, albeit on a much smaller scale. Seven Sharp’s Lucas de Jong meets the Waikato artists handcrafting miniature versions of iconic backcountry huts found in Aotearoa’s bush and national parks.
It all started with a big tin that brought tomatoes from the other side of the world to a café on Cuba St, Wellington.
That’s where artists Kemi Whitwell and Niko Leyden first noticed the slightest of details — small grooves.
“The cans are miniature corrugated iron. Let’s take some home and see what we can do with them,” said Whitwell.
In 2014, the couple were asked to make small huts and spread them around Wellington’s green spaces. They thought the job was done until the crowds started to gather.
People couldn’t get enough.
“We thought let’s try and make a sustainable income making these huts that people love,” said Leyden.
Grandad’s Kihikihi shed
When you step into Leyden and Whitwell’s, you can almost feel creativity vibrating off the walls.
It was once a place where Whitwell’s grandfather stored all sorts of old farm supplies, but after a few good cleanouts, it’s been transformed into their creative lair.
Black-and-white pictures of ancient huts adorn one wall, while stacks of tins and upcycled old paint cans are stacked on another.
There are machines for every minute job, some of which the pair made themselves, an ode to the many systems they have in place to streamline production.
In Kihikhi, Southern Waikato, the pair makes a living from making miniature huts.
Tiny caricatures
Across one wall, their tiny little creations are on display. The first thing you notice is the brightness.
Oranges that pop, clean lines, tiny grooves — although small, they’re made with incredible attention to detail.
“We tend to prefer older-style huts, so historic huts and forest huts. A community story is always amazing,” said Leyden.
With 900 huts in our forests, choosing can be the hard part.
Over the years, they’ve made more than 50 tiny stylised caricatures of our famous backcountry shelters.
But it’s not as simple as finding and copying the latest picture. Instead, Leyden and Whitwell opt to capture a moment in time.
“So we choose a certain hut from a certain time and colour.”
A historic black-and-white photo may be all they have to go on, but if it speaks to them, the hours melt away, and the details come to life.
Then they get building.
Nothing new
“It will always be salvaged materials,” said Leyden in a very absolute manner.
“That’s a big part for us. We are not about making excess stuff. There are plenty of materials going straight to landfill that can be used.”
The only new items in their tiny creations are the nails and the paint — everything else has been sourced from scrap yards, building sites, or local cafés.
The pair are so devout about not adding to this plastic world we seem surrounded by.
As Whitwell demonstrated his supplies shelf, he proudly showed the metal exterior of the many spray cans they go through.
They’ve been cut and beaten flat for use on the next hut, which will have a flat iron exterior.
Other shelves show slightly rusted miniature corrugated iron from those famous tomato cans.
“Because I also spray them with acid. Some huts are really rusty, and some are just slightly spotted. Got to get it right,” Whitwell smiled.
Bigatures
Leyden and Whitwell quickly realised they needed to think bigger when the details became too complex for their tiny creations.
“We’ve also got bigatures. Big miniatures,” said Whitwell.
“There are some beautiful idiosyncratic huts we can’t capture as a mini hut.”
Te Waiotukapiti Hut sits proudly on their workshop shelf, a snapshot of a time from the 1980s.
“I spent hours going over photos looking at every angle we could find.”
The tiny white door opens to reveal an aged wood interior. The fireplace has been painstakingly replicated, and even the tiny gutter on the roof matches the few photos he found from that era.
The only thing missing is the musk of wet tramping boots.
Ironically, hard bushmen once painstakingly constructed these huts in the remote corners of our wildernesses. Now, the huts are being painstakingly recreated by a couple in a Kihikihi shed.
“I love going into and thinking what they were thinking,” explained Whitwell.
“Each piece of tin on the top and sides were the same sizes because people had to carry them up there.”
Bigatures are commissioned creations that almost embrace passion over profit.
Whitwell knows that the time and energy required to make the bigatures are beyond most collectors’ budgets.
“You can buy them if you want, but they’d be pretty expensive,” he joked.
The secret sell
While most artists would turn to galleries or gift shops to find buyers, the Kemi-Niko model is slightly more exclusive.
“We have a secret shop where we release to our mailing list,” revealed Leyden.
They release a new run of miniature huts once a month. When Seven Sharp visited, their latest creation, the Mt Brown Hut, went on sale at midday.
“Bing!” It was 12.02pm, and five huts were sold.
“In three hours, they’ll all be gone. Sometimes it’s half an hour,” Leyden said with a slight tinge of guilt.
They’ve found a niche client base of tramping art collectors who want to collect them all.
Leyden can’t even hold a conversation without her phone pinging away next to her.
“There’s another one [sold]. We can’t make them fast enough.”
So double production, get more people in, stop using old tins of tomatoes, and buy flat miniature corrugated iron from Mitre 10, right? Nah.
They talk about sustainability, not only in a material sense but also in their lifestyle. They have land to manage, kids to raise, a tiny home to complete (it’s covered in corrugated iron, of course), and tramps to tick off their bucket list.
They’re not interested in pumping out paperweights.
Passion
I’ve never met artists who’ve found such a beautiful intersection of their passions and a market that is so loyal.
I wonder if Andy Warhol loved soup as much as these two love corrugated iron shelters.
They still look like they’d slot into their old Cuba St scene in a heartbeat, but in the rolling hills of the Waikato, they’re building a life, building huts.
“They’re toys for adults. Toys for tramping nerds like us.”
