The Art Gallery

July’s Featured Artist: Jody Lloyd

During covid lockdown in the small coastal town of Aberystwyth, Wales, Jody began to discover heart-shaped stones during his daily walks along the beach. Far from his daughter in the United States, navigating a difficult divorce, and enduring the depths of a harsh winter, he found solace and grounding in both nature and love – reunited with Rosie, a connection from his past. In the stillness of the shore and the rhythm of the tides, the simple act of finding these stones became a quiet, daily meditation.

Each heart-shaped stone, discovered by chance, marked a fleeting moment of hope – an anchor of love on otherwise turbulent days. Over five months, Jody collected dozens. On the eve of leaving Wales, he photographed each stone in a flurry of inspiration. He then carried and arranged them into a mandala on a familiar hill at the southern end of the beach, a place of reflection and ritual for the couple.

For a year, the photos sat in a folder on his computer. Then, one day, the idea came: to begin collaging them. What started as a simple act of documentation grew into a refined artistic practice. As Jody and Rosie traveled across the UK – Scotland, Hastings, St Leonard’s… the collection grew. Each beach offered its own palette, each stone carried the emotional landscape of its place. The greys of Aberystwyth reflected stormy skies and solitude; the jagged stones of Dunoon echoed the stark, rugged terrain; and the warm-toned, polished stones of Hastings mirrored softer, more nostalgic sentiments – a town where Jody’s parents once lived before emigrating to New Zealand in 1972, and where his sister Demarnia was born.

The works presented in this exhibition are the culmination of a deeply personal journey – part art therapy, part obsessive archiving, and part love letter to the overlooked beauty of the natural world. These images are more than arrangements of stone; they are stories held in shape and colour, fragments of time transformed into patterns, echoing loss, love, memory and healing.



Jody invites you to look closely. To see beyond the surface. To recognise how something as seemingly simple as a beach stone – shaped by tides, time and chance – gathered in moments of solitude, sadness and wonder can carry meaning far beyond its form. Each heart is not just a stone, but a symbol of love, resilience and beauty – and of finding connection in unexpected places. In a world that often rushes past the small and the subtle, these works ask you to pause – to breathe, to witness, to reflect and perhaps to find your own story mirrored in the quiet language of the earth and find LOVE in the ordinary. And to remember that even in our most fragile seasons, the world still leaves us gifts.



Jody and Rosie host Ecstatic Dance at The Bridge, two times a month.

For purchase enquiries, please contact Jody.

July’s Featured Artist: Demarnia Lloyd-Harris

Working from my Christchurch studio, I create with metal, wood, found objects, paper, and stone – materials that guide the unfolding of ideas.

Rooted in a childhood spent in rural North Canterbury without media distractions, my practice draws on a lifelong habit of making with what’s at hand.

This series of image and word collages emerged after rediscovering old ephemera and collections during a winter move. Through slow foraging and reflection, fragments gathered of hands, feet, white tones, thread and branches connect to form quiet narratives shaped by memory and material.

‘When botanists looked underground they said, “Oh, look at this system, it’s all one. This is one organism.” You see, when aspen trees propagate, they don’t send out seeds or cones, they send out runners, and a runner runs for the light, and we say, “Aha! There’s another tree . . .” until we look underground, and we see that it is all one vast connection.’
Margaret Wheatley, 1996

For purchase enquiries, please contact Jody.