Resurrection. Revelation. Inspiration – those three words got a hectic workout at Parnell’s Holy Trinity Cathedral on Sunday.
It wasn’t just a matter of Dean Jo Kelly-Moore putting them through their paces in her morning sermon, either.
They were ringing out across the cathedral forecourt in the early evening, too.
Those words were being bandied about in the twilight not by the clergy – but by people like John Banks, the Auckland city mayor, and by Terry Stringer, who’s one of the country’s most celebrated sculptors. By arts people, by Parnell people, and by city council types.
They were all reaching for ways to describe how ‘right’ they felt Terry Stringer’s whopping Mountain Fountain sculpture looks in its new cathedral forecourt home.
More than 400 gathered in the forecourt for the 5pm dedication of the sculpture – which had spent the first 28 years of its life in Aotea Square, near the old Auckland Town Hall.
In the mid seventies, the Auckland City Council had excavated the foot of Grey’s Ave (next to the old town hall) for a big underground car park.
The carpark’s ground level roof became Aotea Square, and in 1981 the Auckland Savings Bank commissioned Mountain Fountain to anchor the new square.
There it would have remained, no doubt – much favoured as a concert vantage point, a ramp for skateboarders, and a jungle gymn for kids – but for the council engineers discovering, in 2004, that the car park roof had become weakened.
The square and the carpark were closed for an $80 million dollar repair and upgrade project.
The Mountain Fountain was carted away and mothballed, and the engineers made it clear that it wouldn’t be coming back.
For one thing, they said, the new carpark roof couldn’t accommodate the plumbing the fountain needed.
About then John Wilson, who’s an architect, a Lay Cathedral Canon and a member of the Cathedral Council, was seized by a bright idea: what about replanting Mountain Fountain in the cathedral forecourt?
Bishop Ross Bay, the Cathedral Council, the Parnell business association, the Auckland City Council (which still owns the sculpture, and paid for its relocation) and its arts advisors all gave John’s idea the thumbs-up.
More importantly, perhaps, when John ran the scheme past Terry Stringer, he was all in favour, too.
At Sunday evening’s dedication, Terry spoke about what moved him to design the Mountain Fountain in the first place.
Auckland is built on a ring of extinct volcanoes – and he told the crowd that he saw his sculpture as a new volcano, erupting through the earth’s surface.
The water that streams down the flanks of the bronze mountain is meant to add to that sense of movement, he said, the sense of the mass thrusting up towards the sky.
For Terry Stringer the resurrection of the Mountain Fountain at the cathedral speaks of a more poignant, personal resurrection, too.
As he was casting the bronze in 1980 Terry would take time out to visit his father, who was dying in Auckland Hospital.
To see Mountain Fountain back in action again, he said, renews his memories of his dad.
Most of the folk who turned out on Sunday evening wouldn't have carried such personal memories.
But perhaps they marvelled at how the crags of Stringer’s bronze sculpture seem to echo the three peaks of the cathedral roof.
And for some, it was almost as if Mountain Fountain had found its true home, 30 years after it was cast.
Prayers for Canterbury
This Wednesday at 6pm Holy Trinity is hosting an ecumenical service of prayer for all affected by the Canterbury earthquakes. Monsignor Bernard Kiely will lead it, and Bishop Ross Bay will attend.
Dean Jo Kelly-Moore says the service will also allow for contributions to the Canterbury quake appeal that Bishop Ross has initiated.
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