Raegan and ynon

This was my best friend of 13 years, Sasha

My name is Raegan, and I am a native of New Zealand who is a long way from home.

I left my home in my beautiful little country at the bottom of the world about 2 years ago now, for that nobelist of all reasons, love. Since then I have been mostly here in israel, where I  work  as a volunteer, whilst the wonderful man I came here to be with is finishing university.

For the past year I have been working as an unpaid volunteer for Hadassah Neurim youth village, which is a boarding school for troubled and disadvantaged youth here in israel, it is a very nice place, with a very good cause, and lovely people, and I donate my time to working there every day, even though they cannot pay me, it is a good cause, the people there treat me well, and it allows me to have a volunteer visa to stay here in Israel while I wait for ynon to finish school.Being a volunteer here in israel though, means that I cannot legally work to support myself, which makes living here VERY difficult, so because I like to make things, and because I really hate not being able to stand on my own two feet, I have decided to try and sell some of the things I have made here, on ebay to try and help support myself. I work at the village as a gardener, which is pretty physically tough, and tiring work, but I as a kiwi I am not afraid of a bit of hard work, and I'm pretty tough, so I'm not going to cry if I get all dirty, scratched up, or smelly, or if I break a nail! The weather on the other hand has been very difficult for me to cope with, comming from one of the wettest places on earth to working outside in such a hot climate with VERY few days of rain per year, I'm still not adjusted, and I don't know if I will get there.

Anyway, I come from a very large family of people who are quite artistically talented in different ways, but who all seem to suffer from a severe lack of motivation, and so for the most part don't exercise their talent, however I have been sculpting, drawing, sewing, dyeing,painting, and just creating since I was a child, it's something I love to do, so much so that I can't just sit and be idle anymore, my hands have to do something, which tends to mean that when I'm watching tv these days, I'm really just listening to it, and focusing on whatever it is I happen to be making at the time. I like to learn, so I dabble in MANY different forms of art, and from time to time I can be found, carving, sculpting(paper mache is my favourite)sewing, carding, spinning and weaving wool, skinning and tanning hides, making chain mail, deying fabrics and wool, embroidering, jewellery, mosaiac, pottery, puppettering, carpentry, leatherwork, the list just goes on, and every thing I do and every skill I have in art is completely self taught! I have never studued art in any official capacity, so all of the skills I have, have been aquired through years of trial and error, learning from mistakes, thinking laterally and working out how to do things in an efficient and for the most part a very organic manner, that means that my art has evolved and continues to evolve, and that most of the way's that I go about things are very logical, they had to be, I taught them to myself.

I have spent a few seasons teaching art at a seinor vacation centre in pensylvania, it was very challenging work, and I even managed to show some people who did decoupage as a hobby, and knew it to be expensive because of all the equipment needed for each piece, that you could make an absolutely beautiful multi layered decoupage picture, that would only cost you 10 cents for a glue stick, and time!

I have also taught children, in fact in my native New Zealand I trained to work with special needs children, it is very difficult, but very rewarding work.

Other than my artistic hobbies, my other hobby, and that of my family is to rescue and care for abused, or abandoned animals, since I was a child we have been taking in all kinds of animals from dogs and cats, to ferrets, ducks, and battery farm hens that we have been saving as many as we could manage for years, because when they are too old to be productive for the egg farms anymore, they just kill them, so we've been taking on as many as we can handle and giving them a nice quiet retirement, in fact right now there is one still roaming around at home that we rescued over eight years ago! I don't really know how long a chicken is suppossed to live but she was old when we got her, we are starting to believe that she will probably outlive us all!

Other than chickens at the moment my family has 3 cat's, 2 of them rescued as kittens from a drowning, 2 dogs, both of them rescued from gangs and being forced to fight, and my baby...Goodegg, my little ducky that I hatched from an egg after her mother was uprooted and the nest was abandoned, and who I miss very much(actually I talk to the duck on msn messenger sometimes) :)

Well that is about all I think, I continue to experiment and evolve, and so does my art.

If you have any questions please do let me know, I will answer everything as quickly and honestly as I can.

Thanks for reading

Rae