There are some places we enter without needing anything from them.
A gallery can be one of those places.
You may arrive with no intention of buying a painting, knowing an artist’s name or even understanding precisely what you’re looking at. You simply enter and begin to look.
And looking — really looking — does something to us.
Recently, with the news that our local Art Nuvo gallery is closing its physical gallery space, I’ve been thinking about this.
For so many years they have given our community a beautiful place to step into — to encounter art, discover artists, have treasured pieces framed and simply spend time surrounded by creativity. That is something worth pausing to acknowledge and to thank them for.
Their story isn’t ending, either. Their framing work continues in a rather lovely and personal new way: they will now come into people’s homes, where a piece can be considered within the space in which it will actually live.
There is something wonderful about that — art being framed in conversation with the home, its light, its colours, the things already loved and collected there, and the people who will live alongside it.
I hope this next chapter brings them great joy.
At the same time, their transition has made me think about the particular gift that physical creative spaces give to a community.
There is something about standing in front of another person’s artwork that cannot quite be replicated elsewhere.
You see the brushstrokes. The decisions. Colour becomes a kind of syntax. Composition carries the visual narrative. You are seeing not only an object, but something of the way another human being has seen the world.
A garden gives us another kind of immersion in beauty. Here in Buderim we are fortunate to have places like Manawee Garden Centre where we can wander among plants and green things and receive all that nature offers us.
But an art soak is different.
It is an encounter between viewer and maker.
Perhaps that is partly why I have been looking at To Hold & To Have with slightly different eyes lately.
I spend so much time here that it is very easy for me to stop seeing the space as somebody entering for the first time might see it.
Every cabinet and shelf has been considered. Every piece has been selected and placed. There are paintings and old things, timber and textiles, gemstones and precious metals. Pieces made by hand sit alongside things I have collected or chosen because something about their form, workmanship or story belonged here.
And then there is the jewellery itself.
Jewellery is one of humanity’s oldest forms of artistic expression.
Scale changes things, of course. Rather than a great canvas, sometimes we have only millimetres in which to work. Yet within that tiny space are many of the same questions artists have always asked: line, proportion, balance, colour, texture, light and form.
There is the maker’s hand.
There is the designer’s eye.
There is the extraordinary colour that comes from the earth in a sapphire, tourmaline, opal or zircon.
And eventually there is the person who will wear it, adding an entirely new chapter to its visual narrative.
Perhaps that is why I am so touched when someone comes through our door and simply enjoys being here.
Some people look through every cabinet. Some ask questions. Some sit and talk with us. Others become absorbed in one particular gemstone or piece of workmanship.
And sometimes someone will tell me that they just needed to come in for a little beauty.
I think we need places where that is welcomed. Places where we are invited simply to be.
Perhaps that is also why there is a guitar resting on our couch, and a bookcase with books you are welcome to sit down and read.
They aren’t there simply to make the room look a certain way.
If being in this space makes you want to pick up the guitar and play something, you may. If you would rather settle into the couch with a book for a while, you are welcome to do that too.
Art has always invited response.
Sometimes we respond by looking. Sometimes by making, playing, reading, remembering or simply allowing our thoughts to wander somewhere they haven’t had room to go for a while.
There doesn’t always need to be a purpose to dwelling somewhere beautiful.
So I wanted to put something into words to remind you that part of our offering is hospitality. It’s why the space is – as it is.
You are welcome to come into To Hold & To Have without intending to buy anything.
Come and look.
Come and ask us what an unusual gemstone is.
Come and examine something beautifully made.
Come and sit for a moment.
Pick up the guitar if you feel like playing. Take a book from the shelf and stay awhile.
Come because you’re passing and the room looks inviting from outside.
Come because your eyes, mind or heart could use ten minutes amongst beautiful things.
There is no obligation attached to beauty here.
For all the practical things To Hold & To Have must necessarily be — a jewellery store, a workshop, a workplace and a business — I hope it can also continue to be a small physical space in our community where people are welcome to dwell.
To look closely.
To be curious.
To encounter the work of human hands.
And perhaps to walk back out into the world having a lighter brighter heart from stopping in at “To Hold & To Have”.
To Hold & To Have 