Imaginative tribute to maker of Tolkien movie

• Author: Judith Lacy
• Published date: 14 July 2022
• Publication title: Guardian, The

She’s the artist who painted 10 bollards outside Harvey Norman in George St

The bollard with the trees is key to this story, which also has Tolkien and a Finnish film director as main characters. There’s also an octopus, but more on that later.

Nesser fell in love with the film Tolkien that captures the early life of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, an orphan who initially struggled at the University of Oxford but went on to write some of the most loved fantasy novels.

Inspired, she contacted the director Dome Karukoski for three words to incorporate into her next bollard and received poetry, memory and isolation.

If she could have reached out to Tolkien she would have, but he died in 1973. The next best option was someone who dedicated quite a bit of their life to recreating the image of the writer and academic, she says.

The bollard, My Neighbours’ Trees, was painted on the first day of this year. Nesser says it — like the other bollards she has painted — also gives a glimpse into her life the week before she painted it. She can see the distinctive cypress trees from her bedroom window.

As Karukoski was unable to visit New Zealand to see not just the...