Our Kowhaiwhai Art

Our Kowhaiwhai Art

In He Kakano ( senior maori group) this year we have been learning about different
kowhaiwhai patterns and what their meanings are. This term our He Kakano group had
to choose a kowhaiwhai pattern to draw and paint or create our own kowhaiwhai pattern.
We have chosen to work together to create our own kowhaiwhai pattern. We figured, doing an
animal in the middle would be a good idea with koru patterns as a border, then we painted it.To the left we have our full traditional design. The honu or turtle symbolizes a navigator in

the moana with the traditional pattern around the edges which represents the waves.  We chose
this pattern because the traditional colours pango, whero and mā are known to work together
to get the job done. The blue paint is the blue moana. Our whole design means, the turtle in
our moana helped navigate the waka to Aotearoa.

We enjoyed doing this task of painting and creating our own design for our kowhaiwhai pattern.
We believe that we did a good job of our mahi toi and took our time with it with a great
outcome.

This is an image of our kowhaiwhai artwork that Jennae and I created.