The Monday Call:

Artists' decade of friendship and camaraderie fostered by weekly chats

Mike Mather | Waikato Times

It’s possible that as you are reading this, Jennie de Groot and Di Tocker will be on the phone, discussing the fact that people will be reading about them in that exact moment.

The two Waikato artists have a decade-long tradition of calling each other on a Monday morning and discussing ideas and the challenges of life as an artist: Funding applications, pricing work, professional setbacks, and other everyday realities of sustaining a creative career.

This is more than a garrulous gossip session for the pair. It’s effectively a creative life-line.

Working as a full-time artist can be a lonely life, says de Groot.

“For many people, being an artist seems like a social profession, but the reality is that much of our work is done alone.

“Studios are often solitary places, and artists spend long periods making decisions, solving problems and navigating the business side of art without colleagues.”

The pair work in vastly different mediums. De Groot, who works out of her home studio in Ngāhinapōuri, has forged a reputation for her evocative expressionistic landscape paintings, while Cambridge-based Tocker is equally renowned as a creator of unique cast glass sculptures.

They way they work is also dissimilar, with Tocker being very efficient and business-like in her approach - “I’m good with numbers” - and de Groot being more laid back, but also savvy with the ins and outs of the contemporary art world.

Despite these differences, the two artists have forged a mutually-supportive bond that began over a decade ago when they met at an exhibition opening at the David Lloyd Gallery, an initiative driven by Hamilton arts stalwart and entrepreneur, David Lloyd and got talking.

“We just connected ... We found we shared a frustration at the lack of community we felt was missing in the everyday experience of being artists, especially in the Waikato,” de Groot said.

“Large centres like Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch have galleries, arts community centres and events that occur almost weekly. It was slim pickings in Hamilton.”

Their dialogue quickly settled into a rhythm with the regular Monday conversations, and a kind of creative partnership developed.

“We discovered that we were equally ambitious with what we wanted to achieve, equally driven, and it went from there,” said de Groot.

The partnership has manifested in a series of exhibitions, the latest of which opens at ArtsPost in Hamilton on Wednesday.

“It’s kind of a cross-pollination thing,” said Tocker. “Most of what we sell ends up in people’s homes. But there’s no point in having plinths in the middle of a room and nothing on the walls. And vice-versa. That’s just boring.”

Even the way the pair became artists is complementary, yet at the same time utterly different. For de Groot is was relatively later in life after first pursuing vocations in archaeology and events management.

“When I was 40 I had a [health-related] near death experience, and that shaped my life in the time since. I tried painting and found that I loved it. I describe it as a gratitude career - the gratitude of still being alive.”

Tocker, on the other hand, “was just 18 when I discovered glass. I just knew it was my medium.”

After first working in photolithography, she wound up completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts, majoring in Glass at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

“It is a great life. I get to go to my studio every day and do what I want to do ... It can be a solitary life, but it does not have to be a completely lonely one.”

Adds de Groot: “That’s the magic of it. We have each other’s backs ... And we artists don’t retire. We just keep going until we fall over.”

The exhibition, titled The Painter and the Glassmaker, is free to the public and runs at Artspost until August 1.

Written by Mike Mather

Published in The Waikato Tumes | 6 July 2026