Fifi is our ninth resident for the year and the first to be affected by Aotearoa’s Level 4 Alert status for Covid-19. This means Fifi will be ‘working from home’ for her residency. Whilst we are sorry not to be able to welcome her to the house we are very happy that she will still receive her stipend thanks to CNZ kindly agreeing that this is important given the circumstances.
Graduating in Wellington with a Diploma of Visual Communications Design (1980) and an MA in Creative Writing (IIML Victoria University 2003), Fifi freelances with fingers in many creative pies. She is an award winning published junior fiction novelist, children’s book illustrator of more than 30 titles, past columnist poet (Next Magazine) and a previously long-standing television presenter of arts and crafts on firstly TVNZ’s ‘What Now’ and then ‘The Good Morning Show’. Fifi is a veteran of Wearable Arts; a finalist and award winner over 24 years with 26 entries in show. She has also worked with Weta Workshop, 3 Foot 7 Productions, Pukeko Pictures and The Production Shed in the New Zealand TV and film industry as a costumier, puppet maker, writer and illustrator. Fifi is very active visiting schools and community groups, inspiring budding artists and writers through workshops in creative process.
Fifi’s residency project is a YA work that involves a variety of mediums and is a graphic style novel documenting the perceived decline of an art maker by a stranger.