Ngā uiui o Ngā Whakaputanga Kura

School Publications interviews

[Welcome slide with a dark background and a blurred repository image. Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga Archives New Zealand logo in white colour moves from the right of the video screen to the centre].

[Slide with a black background and text written 'Interview with artist Dick Frizzell on his work with the School Publications'.]

My name is Dick Frizzell, and I'm an artist, illustrator designer.

I had just gone out freelancing from advertising, and I needed income, and did illustrating. I thought I was doing a lot of commercial illustration, you know, which is a different sort of kettle of fish.

And I thought, well, you know, I'll have a go. And I did it, and I sent it to Vanya.

And she said, it's good. It was a story of pirates, I remember. And she sent me another one, then another one and another one. And then I just that became the thing, you know, I just got into it.

My work was it was very old fashioned. It was still influenced by the other generation of school like E. Mervyn Taylor and Russell Clark and that generation.

And so, all my black and white work had a slightly quaint old-fashioned look about it. And it was only when it went when they that suddenly with the colour, I mean, it was a huge announcement! We're going to colour, you know what I mean?

And so, there was an explosion of colour and creativity. You know, all of a sudden, my kids went from wearing grey shorts and roman sandals to wearing blue jeans and sneakers. I mean, almost overnight. It was quite bizarre.

The what was new was you getting you're getting stories from people like Margaret Mahe and woo, shit you know what I mean? I've got to make an effort with this one.

I had no ambition to be an illustrator, a famous illustrator or whatever. You know, I was just doing them. So, I wasn't worried about continuity and I wasn't worried about a "Dick Frizzell" style. I wasn't worried about evolving a look or a reputation or I was just doing them, you know.

Everything was new, especially that, that that colour thing. And the fact that I had little kids myself and I was using them as models a lot. But if I could get a tricky shot of a kid climbing up a ladder to get into those tree house, I'd get the kids to get up a step ladder.

And, you know, I had a Polaroid camera that I could take reference snaps with and things like that.

Without kind of realising it, I was learning a lot about that pragmatic approach to working rather than I mean, I never overlaid an aesthetic idea onto a story. The story was always the story.

If the story was a Japanese folk story, I would illustrate it in the style of a kind of Japanese folk story, you know what I mean? So, I was playing all the time.

No one said, they're all too messy, too different. No one gave a shit about that. They just want them to look good. I had certain illustrators that I felt it was like they were like alter egos.

There was one guy called Basso who did a lot of electric company stuff, so I would do some journals, some stories would come along, there would be comic strip journal stories. I'd go, that would be a Basso story. I think, you know. I'd adopt my Basso personality for that one.

I mean, quite seriously, I'd become Basso, really. And later, I could totally understand every trick that he used and I could become it, you know.

I heard one fantastic editorial. Well, it wasn't even editorial. It was bigger than that. There was a bloke — a writer called Sidney Melbourne, and he had this whiz bang idea that he was because the Māori language journals were starting to come in.

And the problem was getting the school kids, like at the Upper Hutt Intermediate or whatever, to read them, to bother.

He said, Let's do all the Māori legends in the Marvel Unknown comic style, which I thought was fantastic because I was a Marvel comic nut.

I'd been buying them ever since the first spider man came out.

So, Maui was like, you know, Thor, with all his sinews popping out of his body and everything else. And the Patu was like Thor's hammer, and everything was crash, bang, wallop, and there was blood, and you know and saliva coming out of the side of the Māori villains with the top knots and feathers and blood and vomit.

And it worked. These kids were reading this stuff like you wouldn't believe. They couldn't wait for the next one to come out.

And meanwhile the senior editors, the ones at the top in charge of everything were all sort of all retired headmasters and stuff who hated comics because had been confiscating them all their lives and they just couldn't. Oh I sort of like this with this was trying to cope with it.

And then we got to the end the part of the Māori legend where he walks back into his mother's vagina and they and they just put, they stopped it, they just pulled the plug of the whole thing.

And we had Sidney had it all written and I never, I never even got as far as researching or drawing it. They thought I'm not going to live, we're not going to have Frizell draw that.

As I said, even though they, we're just 'School Journals', you know, so to speak, there's no way to treat it lightly when you do it.

You know, every job, everything that's thrown at you that you decide that you're going to do, well, just do it well, you know, and the thing about.

In New Zealand there was no there's no comic book industry, you could go over there and be a comic book artist even if you wanted to be. I did want to be one!

Offered me that opportunity because a lot of it was comic strip style. And I got ooh good a comic strip. You know what I mean?

So, I just love all that. I still do. I mean, a comic strip in the newspaper or whatever is sufficient. It's the first thing I look at.

[Slide with a black background with text written ' archives.govt.nz/school-publications]

[Welcome slide with a dark background and a blurred repository image. Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga Archives New Zealand logo in white colour moves from the right of the video screen to the centre].

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'Author and illustrator Gavin Bishop reflects on his experiences as a contributor to the 'School Journal'.]

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'It was a long time ago...']

[Gavin Bishop is wearing glasses, seated in his house, facing the camera. Bright light enters the room through an open window on the right. There is a shelf behind with some bottles and a stack of CDs on the left of the shelf.]

Although, my association with the 'School Journal', it's a very long time ago.

You know, I did work for them, mainly in the 1980s and I was teaching full time at the time.

And so, and when I could, I would be squeezing in a picture book.

And, from time to time, I was approached by the 'School Journal' people, 'School Publications' they were called.

And asked if I had time to do a few illustrations for a short story.

And so I wasn't asked very often.

They didn't ask me very often, but I enjoyed, I enjoyed doing them because they

introduced something that I wouldn't have naturally done, you know, a story.

Because I illustrated stories that I wouldn't naturally have picked out to do.

It was all done by post, you see.

I would receive something in the post and I would receive a copy of the story and a layout, a sort of an idea of the sizes of the illustrations.

They might send a bit of paper with the actual dimension of the illustration drawn onto that piece of paper.

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'How the 'School Journal fitted into Gavin's wider practice']

Because, you see, my own books required an enormous amount of time, enormous amount of time and thought and pondering and all that sort of stuff was.

Whereas the things I did for the 'School Journals' I did quite quickly.

There would be a couple of the first, the first stage as what I said before something would arrive in the post.

It would be the story, and an outline of the sizes of the illustrations and how many

and perhaps how much I was going to be paid.

So now my next, next thing would be to do some rough pencil drawings and post them back to Wellington.

And they would, they would sort of edit them if they needed to, and then they would post them back to me again.

And I'd do the original artwork and then send the artwork through to them.

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'Early influences']

As far as American illustrators, I was very keen on Maurice Sendak, and he used a lot of lines sometimes.

But there was a kind of a trend at the time amongst British illustrators to use

a lot of lines and coloured wash.

And I think that's what I was trying to do. I was trying to be one of them.

I was always hoping that maybe my work would be internationally accepted.

And I thought if I started working in a kind of international British sort of style, then people overseas might think, Oh yeah, yeah, well, let's publish his stuff as well.

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'The significance of illustrations in the 'School Journal']

Because really the illustrations in the 'School Journals' have always been

a really, really major part.

That's what has made them so significant, really

certainly in my life as a child, when we got them at school when the 'School Journal' arrived at school.

The old black and white editions that I remember in the 1950s, the illustrations were always a huge attraction for me, looking at those 'School Journals'.

I wanted desperately to be part of that world.

I wanted to be included in that world that I used to love as a kid.

[Slide with a purple background with text written ' archives.govt.nz/school-publications]

[Welcome slide with a dark background and a blurred repository image. Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga Archives New Zealand logo in white colour moves from the right of the video screen to the centre.]

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'Interview with Lizzie Bisley, Curator Modern Art, Te papa about the 'School Journals'.]

My name is Lizzie Bisley, I'm the curator of Modern Art at Te Papa. 

I look after the 20th century art collection both New Zealand art and international.

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'What do you remember about the 'School Journals'?]

I remember it always being quite exciting when the new 'School Journal' arrived, and I really remember loving the stories in them.

I actually don't remember the art that much, but then the 'School Journal' was definitely a kind of a big feature of being a primary school student in New Zealand in the 80s and the 90s. So, a big part of my life.

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'The early years of the 'School Journals']

In its early years and the 'School Journal' was very much focused on British stories and poems and not local content.

And then from about 1940, they started to employ local artists and local writers to produce stories and prints and drawings that was specific to here.

And it's a really interesting period because you get this really, kind of vibrant generation of young artists, who are working for the 'School Journal' sometimes on a kind of ad hoc basis, and sometimes they have a kind of more formal job, and they're producing quite large bodies of work.

And it's a very wonderful kind of flowering of a particular kind of art in New Zealand.

So, you get these amazing illustrations, people like E.Mervyn Taylor who produced these huge, beautiful bodies of work for children.

And I think there's something so ideologically wonderful about that this idea that you should be putting the best artists to work for small children, but also it creates this huge body of work that is kind of quite significant within New Zealand's art history.

I find that period around the end of the Second World War really, really interesting in terms of the 'School Journal' kind of being at the forefront of what was happening with contemporary art in New Zealand.

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'The importance of the 'School Journal']

One of the things that's amazing, I think about the 'School Journal' is that every child had access to it.

So, no matter where you lived in the country, no matter what kind of school you went to, you would be provided with the 'School Journal'.

And so, it does mean that kind of interesting contemporary artists, their work is being seen by children across the country. And I think that's a huge thing.

And there's also the sense with the 'School Journal' of a real value and weight being given to the importance of art, which I think can't but have had a big impact on those children.

You know that artwork is being presented to them as something that is an important part of their daily lives and something that should be valued and looked at and used as inspiration for their own kind of work that they're doing.

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'A network built around the 'School Journal']

I also think there's a kind of wonderful network that's built around the 'School Journal'.

So, you get artists who work together and kind of developed wonderful creative relationships through the 'School Journal'.

So, for example, Roy Cowan, who is an amazing potter and printmaker who worked as an art editor for the 'School Journal' from the late 40s.

He met his wife Juliet Peter, because she was working there as a staff artist and they got married.

But they also had this kind of wonderful artistic relationship for the rest of their lives.

You get the formation of these kind of communities of artists around the 'School Journal'.

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'Making children a priority']

I think in the kind of early period around the end of the Second World War, they were sort of two different strands that were playing into that work where you had a real interest in developing a national culture, which was something that the 1936 Labour government quite explicitly tried to do through their school curriculums and things to think about, you know, what is important and special about hearing, what are the stories of this place.

But then at the same time you have a lot of really deep connections with what's happening in the rest of the world.

This interest in children as the kind of building blocks of the society and the importance of nourishing children's minds and allowed them to be free thinkers and creative thinkers. This is an idea that has a lot of currency around the world in the 40s and 50s.

So, the New Zealanders, the artists who were kind of contributing to the 'School Journal', they were aware of this bigger international kind of community for these ideas and felt themselves part of that kind of larger picture.

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'Treating children with respect']

It doesn't feel like it's kind of, too didactic or it's trying to teach children about the importance of art in a very serious way. It's fun. It's kind of beautiful, fun illustrations that they can engage with and have fun with. And great poems that they can read and spark their own imaginations.

It's all kind of quite joyful and it doesn't feel like you're trying to teach them things in a very serious way.

But at the same time, you're giving them access to this amazing body of writing and drawing and painting that they might not otherwise see.

And I think that thing about not talking down to children is really important in the sense of you know, the work that these artists and writers were doing was, you know, it's not in any way seen as lesser than the other work that they're doing.

It's kind of on a level playing field with everything else they're doing in their practice. And I think that's really important, you know, that kids can understand complicated things, can look at a beautiful print and see your world within it. And, you know, we should meet them at a higher place and let them explore English.

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'Find out more at: archives.govt.nz/school-publications]

[Welcome slide with a dark background and a blurred repository image. Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga Archives New Zealand logo in white colour moves from the right of the video screen to the centre.]

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'Interview with Dame Robin White on her work on the 'School Publications'.]

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'What attracted you to depicting the commercial area of Porirua for the 'School Publications' and as a screenprint?]

[Illustration of Porirua commercial area for an unknown 'School Publication' c.1970]

[Porirua Landscape 1, Porirua shops (1970), screenprint. Reproduction courtsey of Robin White.]

From a purely aesthetic point of view, contrast in terms of line and shape and colour.

So those hills, you know, the sort of voluptuous, sexy hills. Natural, organic and then getting carved up and then the buildings being these very abstract elements. Horizontal vertical lines, geometric patterns imposed on an otherwise organic landscape.

There was a lot of that behind the paintings. I was doing at the time, which in a sense is another way of saying of addressing the way in which we inhabit the land. Te impact that we have as human beings on the land, the structures. The interventions we bring to nature, how we interact with.

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'What came first? The illustration or the screenprint?]

I'm not sure, probably the drawing, to start with. Because the work that I do is preceded normally by drawings out in the field, taking photographs, doing drawings, and the two medium media working, working together.

They would have been some background images, that I do remember printing this in 1970.

I was using, I had taught myself to screen print in 1968 when I was at teachers college because the equipment was there. And it's not a difficult medium. It's very simple, actually.

I had taught myself and I fetch up in Bottle Creek teaching at Mana College. And I was able to use my room, my art room at Mana College in the school holidays, to print.

And there was one of the students who was a sixth form student who used to come and help because he was interested. And his name was Geoff Crombie. Otherwise Noel Crombie of Split Enz. And I remember us printing this, this print.

So, I guess what it was pure economy. There would have been drawings, there would have been photographs, and I use them for this. It's an extension of the drawing, the drawing book.

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'Was illustration a way for you to make your works more accessible?']

What was the main motivation? Really it was responding to a request. It's a job. It was a you know, it's a different from doing a painting. It's like a commission, I suppose. You're asked to do something, so, you know, you respond.

As a painter it's not like that. One responds to one's own ideas as they emerge. You know, you're driven to do something because you just feel you have to.

It's something that you really have to say. So you say it. Whereas with illustration, there's very much that sense of you're doing this for somebody. Different feeling the sense of responsibility that goes with it.

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'Any particular illustrative styles you used when working on the 'School Publications?']

No, I don't think so. I think I just aligned it with the approach that I took with my work anyway. And although, you know, taking into account the constraints of size and probably the need to, well also that the need to align up with the writing that it was accompanying it And certainly also allowing space for titles that kind of thing. There must have been an element of that, I suppose.

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'Did you learn anything from working on the 'School Publications?']

I learned stuff, though you know. You do. Mostly the learning was that my experience was the compromises and having to fit in with the constraints around the way in which the final work was going to be printed.

Because with screen printing, I do the printing myself. So there's a sort of a coherence in the design, the approach, the method and everything.

The final, the final outcome is everything is knitted together from beginning to end.

Whereas illustration, you sort of do it, hoping that it's going to work out okay and then you send it off. And then I think, oh gosh, is it going to work or not?

Because there was no way of knowing, because especially with work that was going to be two colours. And which two colours am I going to work together and how how were they going to look? What is the density of the paint and how does, what is the final colour when you overlay this one with that one, you don't really know any of that.

But with the screen printing there is a familiarity with the whole process from beginning to end. And so there is a sense of confidence. I don’t think I felt the same confidence and maybe the sense that there's some tentative in these drawings. I think why didn’t I let loose a bit more, I don’t know, now, looking back on them.

[Slide with text written 'Find out more at: archives.govt.nz/school-publications']

[Welcome slide with a dark background and a blurred repository image. Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga Archives New Zealand logo in white colour moves from the right of the video screen to the centre.]

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'Interview with Gregory O'Brien about the 'School Publications'.]

I'm Gregory O'Brien and I write books. I wrote a book about the New Zealand 'School Journal' — ‘A Nest of Singing Birds’ in 2007, which was published to coincide with the 100th birthday of the Journal.

I’ve been an art curator. I’ve illustrated books. I've written books I think of myself mostly as being a poet, poet artist, maybe. And for the most part of my life, self-employed and working very much on projects.

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'How did you come to write a book about the 'School Journals'?]

I was approached by some people from Learning Media it was at the time. They were planning to do this publication to mark the 100th birthday.

The reason I did it was, I mean, in some ways I don't think I was the logical person to get to do this kind of book. But in the years leading up to that, I've done a number of projects which had involved the 'School Journal', or elements of the 'School Journal'.

I wrote a book on John Drawbridge in which I remember being quite amazed. We reproduced old 'School Publications' that he'd illustrated and he talked about the 'School Journal' as being quite a major sort of influence in his life.

Also, we knew Margaret Mahy pretty well. You know, his 'School Journal' had been a huge thing for her, and she had a fierce loyalty to the 'School Journal'.

So, just across the whole sphere. James K Baxter's poems written for the 'School Journal'. He was an editor. We knew Alistair Campbell. We knew so many people that had actually been involved in it. I'd meet Juliet Peter, who was a picture editor there.

So, kind of like, some kind of through happen stance and through working as a curator at the City Gallery, you know.

Curated shows by people like Juliet Peter and Janet Paul and John Drawbridge. And I think they must have lined me up and thought, well, here's someone with a foot in the door. But also as someone who's from outside the organisation, because I think would have been a very hard book to get written, if you do someone in the organisation and also someone who was in a way answerable to the whole history, you know, it would be it would have been a ten year research job, you know, would have been an impossible thing to do.

I had about 18 months to do it, as I recall. And so, it was the job wasn't to go in there and talk about it. You know, the committee meetings and the evolution of the Journal and its changing roles in the society at large and all these things are touched on in my book.

But in the end, it was really just they wanted the curator just to come in and see what he saw and so and, you know, and also read obviously, and respond to the text.

For me, it was great. It was a great learning experience. It was, you know, a lot of trawling through archives, but finding remarkable things all the time.

Finding great work by people I'd never heard of at all. So, you know, very importantly, I think also finding all this work by, you know, by people like Colin McCahon, Gordon Walters, Robin White, Graham Percy, Roderick Finlayson, James K. Baxter, Peter Bland and Margaret Mahy, Janet Frame, you know, all this sort of stuff.

It was a real it was like you're letting a genie out of a bottle really. I think the brief for the book was to make it a celebration of the Journal.

That's sort of what I did. I presented the book which included samples and lots of the writing. It was meant to be like a little bit of an organic reenactment of moments in the history of the Journal, brought back lots of the artworks.

And I'd like to think the book really was the start of some kind of longer term kind of investigation really into the history of the Journal, which I guess is what you guys are doing today, which is fantastic because I was aware that the book that I did have some 160, 170 pages was really the tip of the iceberg.

And there's so much more to be sort of talked about and be found out about, but a great project and a great feeling.

And it was launched at the National Library in 2007 with an exhibition alongside. And I recall Helen Clark launched the book and she waved it around above her head, sort of threatening to bash anyone on the head who didn't buy a copy.

And then Margaret Mahy, made a great speech and cut the cake, a 100th birthday cake, as I recall.

And the exhibition went for about six months. And it really felt like a real milestone, actually.

We're looking forward to birthdays to come in the future from now. I guess 125th to be the next big one, I guess.

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'What are your main takeways working on the book?']

Well, I think there was a kind of a shared idealism and at times an optimism. And a lot of the contributors, I think people contributed to the Journal and I believe they were actually working on something that was worth doing in terms of providing this kind of material. And this was different material from different decades.

But actually, there was a sense of belief that this was that New Zealand was getting better and going places and becoming fairer and more alive than it was before.

So do think perhaps the big takeaway here was that thing it was about it was idealistic, it wasn't a work-a-day place. They obviously had deadlines and schedules and also, they did some Journals that were terrible, and others that were stunningly brilliant.

You know, it wasn't, that’s part of the game. It's part of any creative enterprise. I think you almost need to be willing to fall over to stand up properly. You know, it's part of the deal.

But do you think there's that underlying sense of and even up to the point in government that it was being administered.

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'Do you think they are a reflection of New Zealand society at the time?']

They're probably not, not a mirror to New Zealand society. No, because as I said, I think this probably more aspiration. And, you know, and it was it did have a mission, which was to get people to read.

It was based on various ideas about learning. And the way learning empowers people. So in a way, it wasn't trying to reflect people back exactly as they are but was trying to sort of open them up and maybe energise them a bit.

It sort of it was part of a process that was ongoing rather than being seen as sort of real steps along the way.

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'Māori and Pasifika contributors']

Alistair Campbell was appointed, you know, who was a Cook Island Māori in the late 1950s, and Roy Cowan was the art director. and he was at Ngā Puhi you know.

You ended up having some pretty key powerful people. Not overtly ostentatiously so but you had a number of Māori people working in there and also there were other forms of government publishing. There was Te Ahu going alongside, the Māori Journal, there was.

There was a in a of the people who were writing for the same journals to sort of 'School Journals', school pubs wasn’t totally in isolation to what else was going on. But I think you could see it becoming moving from being a kind of a peripheral concern to being at the heart of it.

Certainly I think by the 60s and 70s and also increasingly the whole Pasifika or Polynesian thing, which has been a huge thing in the last few decades.

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'Have you written for the 'School Journals?']

Well, having said that, I was asked to write about Robin White a while ago haven’t got around to doing it yet and I did do a journal on Jeff Thomson.

I wrote a 'School Journal' about him about ten years ago. I wrote about a half a journal on John Pule. So, I actually have written. I wrote to Jill McDonald.

There is I like the way I like the way they might be thinking of their past is something that's worth hanging onto because it certainly is.

Yeah it's, it's probably those worlds aren't quite as close as they used to be. But then the world is a different place, there's different energy, you know, it does seem when you look back at the old journals, they do reflect a world where people could take things a bit quieter.

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'Do you have a favourite 'School Publication?']

That's tricky. No, because there are some ah...Oh, no, no.I.. I couldn’t go there You know I’ve got about a hundred that I think I've got, like, my A-list and there's a whole lot of them.

But when I look back, I there are certain works I find really moving. I find, Roy Cowan and Juliet Peter who are a married couple. both of whom worked as editors at the Journal as well as contributors to the Journal. I do find there's something very affecting about their life's work together and they work for the Journal and they're art together.

And interestingly, both Roy Cowan and Juliet Peter now in terms of their paintings and their ceramics to are being collected a lot more. I sort of think they're probably I'm sure there'll be some art historians out there that as well as this bigger picture to the 'School Journal' there are people in the story, that there's a lot more to say about too.

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'What kinds of 'School Publications were available?']

In terms of yes. Okay. I said I don't know. It's also it's very complicated, this whole thing. It was a little bit of a Rubik's cube, you know these part one journals and they do four parts a year and they’d also did readers that also do poetry readers, you know once a year for a while.

And then there would be these public school bulletins coming out of the side towns delivered. You actually had it was actually a lot of publishing and they do remedial things and you know, that. But the extent to which some of the reading is done online, then again, I'm not sure about that.

Does that mean that today can you get this 'School Journal' as a PDF that you can read on your screen. Yeah. Your Kindle, or whatever you’ve got.

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'School Publications' now]

There are other things that changed because originally the 'School Journal' was given to kids to keep so it meant the adults read it a lot. Then for a time it was given to kids for a week and then they took them back and they used to keep them at school.

But I’m not quite sure what they're doing now and it was a class these are class sets. But prior to that each kid, the kids used to get them to keep. Which meant that they became part of people's home libraries, which is pretty amazing.

But now I don’t know if it exists as a PDF. I really don’t know. Stuff like that sort of Mervyn Taylor, you know, done beautifully.

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'Find out more at archives.govt.nz/school-publications']

[Welcome slide with a dark background and a blurred repository image. Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga Archives New Zealand logo in white colour moves from the right of the video screen to the centre.]

[Slide with a purple background with text written 'Conversation between Greg O'Brien and Dame Robin White about the 'School Journals'.]

[Dame Robin White]

Ko Mātaatua te waka

Ko Ngāti Awa te iwi

Ko Ngā Maihi, Rangihouhiri, Te Tāwera ngā hapū Ko Pūtauaki te maunga and there are several rivers in that area.

Whakatāne, Te Tāwera.

Ko Robin White tōku ingoa. That's me.

[Gregory O'Brien] I imagine when you were young. So, this was in the 1950s.The 'School Journals' were at that stage, more kind of part of, I guess, the kind of orthodox, kind of part of the school system.

So probably they do maybe they do blur a little bit into everything else that was going on. And a lot of the visual style of them was very like English publishing,

but actually, very a very good example that I think when you look at people like Russell Clark and Mervyn Taylor.

But by the time you came along in the 70s, there was a very definitely different thing going on in the 'School Publications' office.

And that was to do with your generation.

[Dame Robin White] Right. Okay. Yeah. I think that must have kicked in.

After I left primary school, I Mm. Yeah. Because I had a pretty rich life of books. Birkenhead Library was huge. Friday night. Yeah. Friday night shopping.

You go to up Highbury and you go to the library and I got my weeks' worth of books. It was fantastic.

[Gregory O'Brien] I remember doing some interesting reading around the history of the Journal and like during the Depression in a lot of rural areas in New Zealand.

They were many instances where the 'School Journal' was the only publishing that came into small town or into settlements.

So actually everybody would read it. So, you’d all like adults would read the 'School Journal' because it was state funded and it was distributed. So, it was the only thing that really had any umph behind the distribution.

So do they actually go everywhere. So in lieu of there being a kind of an active book trade or public libraries like you had in the 60s and 70s, the Journal was sort of filling quite a big role at that point.

[Dame Robin White] My awareness of the Journal doesn't really kick in until I got to Bottle Creek, which was at the end of '68. I finished art school in '67, 1968 I had to I was obliged to do a year at teachers' college.

Epsom teachers' college. Oh, because I was bonded. What do they call it? Studentships Yeah, yeah. Student I had a studentship, so I had to do this year at secondary school, teachers training college.

And I did use that year to bone up on certain things that I had kind of arrogantly dismissed at art school, such as screen printing and anything to do with printmaking.

I thought the printmaking was just a bit was a chaotic in there. And my focus was on painting.

So, yeah, that was an interesting year. And then I that's the year I met Sam Hunt, and he said, come, why don't you leave Auckland? I'll find you a place to live where I live, which is on the Paremata harbour. And he had called that patch of beach, ‘Bottle Creek’.

So indeed, he found me this little corrugated iron shack. I go down there and so through Sam, I met people like Jack Lazenby and Alistair Campbell, a few others, you know, Michael King and so on.

And Bob Anderson, who was brother-in-law of Alistair Campbell, and Bob Anderson was and was a school teacher.

But he later got into publishing and he was sort of vaguely into publishing. And so it was through these connections that I kind of almost it was almost like, oh, a mate asks you to do something. And so, you know, they they're your mates. So you I'll give it a go.

And I my memory is that that's what, how I came to do the, the few bits and pieces that I did for 'School Journals' was really like Alistair Campbell.

[Gregory O'Brien] Did you take it very seriously as a commission or did you just think of it as a money job?

[Dame Robin White] Well, it was a little bit of both. A bit of both. It was interesting. It was difficult. I mean, I didn't when it came to studio equipment and facilities and all that, it was pretty basic.

I'm in this tiny shack and, you know, no access to photocopiers or any of the stuff that you can use these days to make life a little easier.

You know those tables, light tables where you can, yeah, do tracing and all that fancy stuff and digital photography now, you know, it's so easy to sort of bang stuff together, take shortcuts.

So it was, it was difficult and there were there were kind of constraints on because just because of the, you had to meet the printing methods I guess you'd call of 'School Journal' which was pretty much wasn't full colour. Definitely not full colour.

It was sort of letter-press approach where you had to if you did a drawing, it had to be black and white.

You couldn't do sorry call, you couldn't do a gray wash or something like that because you had to be able to be read by as black and white.

So, I ended up doing all these drawings that now I look at them and they look kind of clunky and very grainy, but that's me trying to get tone without doing, you know, line ink, line.

[Gregory O'Brien] When I was doing the book about 'School Journal‘ — A Nest of Singing Birds’ quite a lot of the time in that book, I talk about, you know, the story I suppose the mission of the 'School Journal', particularly after the Second World War, was to really make people aware of the local, the specific, being in a place, being a landscape, being in buildings, being in a community.

To me, that as a mission for the journal is actually not that dissimilar from perhaps your mission as a kind of a as an artist.

[Dame Robin White] Yeah, that's interesting. I was thinking that along those lines too, because my approach when I was asked or invited to do something for the 'School Journals' was to go back to things that I was working on anyway.

You know, the places I'm familiar with. And if I didn't already have working drawings or something along those lines to get, you know, that I could start working with. I'd go out to a place, or I'd find out about a place and then go and visit it.

So that the Red Rocks one, for example, my memory is that I was asked to do drawings around a story.

I think it was some kids who were watching seals. And so, I was I was I was asking around, where are the seals? I need to see seals and rocks. And somebody might have been, Sam himself might have said, oh Red Rocks you go to Red Rocks. So Sam and I got on my little car and, you know, off we went, and we drove to Red Rocks from Bottle Creek.

We went on an excursion. And I did drawings there. Then I took photographs and I did drawings. And one of the photographs I took was of Sam. And I think that's one has turned up here.

I think that was at Red Rocks I took that photo, but it might have become part of another story because I can't remember what was this story?

Because obviously what I've done here is whatever the story is, I've used Paremata images, these boats moored out on the harbour.

And I look at look at them now and I think what a wonderful resource it would have been for kids at that time.

[Gregory O'Brien] Yeah, well I think you were part of that movement though that I do think, basically this is the big shift in the book is that in the 50s it's a bit tenuous whether it's the 'School Journal' there's a whole lot of adults telling a lot of children what to think and how to behave and how to draw. So really imposing you could say this even about Russell Clarke and Mervyn Taylor that they did actually. It's very sophisticated.

It's like adult. A lot of the writing was almost written in the style. It was a bit more like Jane Austen wasn't quite formal and quite elevated.

And then in the 60s, I think that was when Graham Percy came along into that office and then Jill McDonald and suddenly you had this completely different feeling. Which was it was about, let's try and get young people excited about where they live and what their communities like and if they're Māori, about that reality.

And so, you can kind of see that really firing up around the time you were there. And also I guess bringing in artists like you, you know, in a way on the fringes. But you know, you know, you're living in that semi-rural situation, very in touch with the realities that weren't mainstream New Zealand realities at the time.

Counter-culture and multicultural things I don't know.

[Dame Robin White] Bit of both.

[Gregory O'Brien] The other artists I know when I was writing the book said to me that they, in terms of what you might learn from the 'School Journal', was that thing to do with the pictures had to be very clearly articulated.

They had to in a way, they have to have a subject. They have to kind of some of the virtues of art of it.

Colin McCahon actually used to talk about early on anyway with, you know, the very, you know, dramatic expressions of a scenario of the content has to be quite apparent and strong.

[Dame Robin White] They have to communicate.

[Gregory O'Brien] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well that's the word, communicate, right. So I guess that's not something you would say you learned from the journal, but certainly a movement at that time.

You, the art you were making was part of that right? Does that make sense? I mean, not because in a way I find E. Mervyn Taylor and Russell Clarke communicate too. But they do it is slightly it is more formal and a bit English in a bit, you know. A bit ahh as I say, you know, I see it and but the reality was far more gutsier earthier, more emotive, more personable, more subjective in a way too.

And I have to what do you reckon when you look at a cover like that one for the seal journal, which has that kind of almost out of control, hyper blue sort of screen put in, because that was all its time too. Was quite extreme.

Not quite psychedelic But actually the 'School Journal' did do psychedelia ‘cause Vanya Lowry in the 70s was actually doing stuff that was very, you know, like post-Beatles kind of Sgt Pepper's kind of crazy stuff.

But it was it's the technology of the time, but used quite playfully or just quite, almost over the top. Y

Not quite your feeling. It’s like the design’s gone a bit crazy

[Dame Robin White] It’s out of keeping with the, the approach that's been taken to the drawing.

It's weird. It's a bit jarring. Yeah.

[Gregory O'Brien] I think I quite like that with the Journal though the way they did Yeah I think they did.

They did experiment. I mean, you know, the people that work, they said that, you know, they did try out things that didn't work.

There are terrible 'School Journal' covers they were, they were inventing and making it up as they go along, you know. A slightly psychedelic Captain Cook from 1969, you know.

So anyway they were taking classic 'School Journal' kind of subjects like Captain Cook and seeing what sort of screen printing techniques and you know what offset printing can do with it, and oval overlaying was what happened.

There is a style, I mean there is a style, I think that Graham Percy did it. Don Binney did it too wonder if it's because you all went to Elam Art School doing quite strong three dimensional. Erm drawing.

[Dame Robin White] Yeah. Yeah that's right.

[Gregory O'Brien] You know you all learned how to draw using a grayscale. There was a sense of form and pictorial structure things were quite strong and quite packed.

It's definitely not a house style but I think it's a visual style that you do see in the 'School Journal' in the 60s and 70s and then it sort of gets eclipsed a bit by, I think probably when Dick Frizzell comes along, things get a bit more cartoony and a bit flatter again and a bit more, a bit different.

[Gregory O'Brien] Yeah, they're very grounded. It's not like, it wasn't as if there were clear instructions given to us. It wasn't like that.

It was more like an attitude that was encouraged to sort of lead one to respond more to something that's got a sense of form, of weight.

It's that sense of being an alchemist in a way, you know, when you're making, you're working in the two dimensions, but you're making something three dimensional.

Which is sort of impossible, but it, you're attempting to do it, give it weight, give it reality.

[Gregory O'Brien] Yeah, one idea I had I was quite interested when I was doing the book. I remember when I discovered all these pictures that Rita Angus had done and how they weren’t ever part of the Rita Angus story.

I kind of wondered, was there a sense that back in the day that people were a little bit embarrassed if you did drawings for the 'School Journal' because, you know, it wasn't a high art vehicle.

It wasn't, well Art New Zealand It wasn't ascent you know, it wasn't Art New Zealand, it was a kind of a seen as a slightly well, maybe it was seen as an opportunistic money gig or something like that.

But I wonder if there's a little bit of a case of people not wanting to say they're in the Journal because it made them feel a little bit too ordinary.

And I do know when I was doing the book, there was one artist who we reproduced a picture of who denies having done the picture.

[Dame Robin White] Oh, really?

[Gregory O'Brien] Until I actually got the docket was she was paid, you know, out of the archive and seen the photocopy of it and said, you will see, if you didn’t do it you were actually paid for it.

So you probably should give the money back. At which point she said it was quite a funny exchange. It wasn’t a grim thing. But she said, Oh boy, I probably did do it then. Wow. Yeah, no recollection of that at all.

[Dame Robin White] I think there's very, you know, I you've hit on something quite possibly, but the idea was it was a thing, you know, there's a bit of elitism around being a painter.

And so as an illustrator. What's an illustrator? That's a sort of silly, really. But there is, there's an element that we need. It's not a brag point on your CV.

Did I ever put it on my CV, no. But I'm not going to say that it wasn't.

[Gregory O'Brien] But I think it's quite interesting these days when you find people like Ann McCahon you know, who did, you know, dozens and dozens and dozens of Yeah drawings for the 'School Journal'.

But now in the 21st century she's been quite acknowledged and they’re great drawings and there are lots of them. It's a body of work it's a oeuvre Yeah and a lot of it existed in the 'School Publications' archive.

But also Louise, Louise Henderson, you know, who's now being reappraised as a painter. And looked at far more extensively and she did entire issues of the school journal including the issue devoted to the story of knitting by Louise Henderson.

[Dame Robin White] Right. Yeah, yeah. Because the thing about doing illustration is you very much aware that you're not just doing this as a, as a one-off thing of your own.

There's, there's somebody's written something. You have you really do have to take that into account and complement it shall we say. You know.

[Gregory O'Brien] There were, you could sort of see points of almost in the Journal seem to light up as if there'd been some kind of, you know, epiphany after the Second World War, you know, suddenly Mervyn Taylor and Russell Clarke doing a lot of drawings to do with New Zealand.

And by the end of the 1950s, they’re doing entire Journals devoted to Māori culture, you know, things like that.

And then the 60s you have the arrival of Patricia Grace and Whiti Ihimaera and that's sort of like a light going. Ralph Hotere’s doing some pictures for them, and there’s sort of like lights going on. Quite neat.

And you certainly around that period when you were there. To me that and Margret Mahy It arrived in the 60s.

So, you know, by 1970 the thing was flying very high. And then it sort of things always constantly shifting around.

At what stage of your career would you say you were at then Robin? So this was, oh, like 19. circa 1970, 70.

[Dame Robin White] '69 Well, I was, I was in Bottle Creek '69, '70, '71. Let's say it would have been roughly in the middle of that period.

By the time by that time, I got to meet these various people who you know, contacts of Sam’s. So that's when my first one person exhibition was 1970.

It was very early in my career, very early. This felt like a little bit of a privilege doing this at that time, you know?

[Gregory O'Brien] But then you probably were quite prodigious as a young person too., you were I or you just popped your head up.

[Dame Robin White] No, I was hard working. I was teaching full time,1969. 1970, I was teaching four days a week and I had a three day weekend.

And I would have been doing these drawings, sitting at a table. And my one little room that I had into a living room. Pretty poor lighting, very limited materials, not much money.

[Gregory O'Brien] So when you left teaching, which would have been a year or two later, you didn't think of something like 'School Journal' or illustration being something you would need to do to absolutely not to bankroll yourself or, you know.

[Dame Robing White] Not at all. Not at all. No, never. It never developed into anything that I pursued.

[Gregory O'Brien] But it sort of did though, didn’t it? I know I mean, it's part of the story.

[Dame Robin White] It's part of the story but being an illustrator.

[Gregory O'Brien] It wasn't a career path it was more of an element in your carrying on.

[Dame Robin White] I think it was really more. Oh yeah. Well, you know, these are people I know, and they've asked me to do something and I, you know, I was young.

You say you say yes. All right. To people who are older than you know, they will look up to and admire, you know, you’re not going to say no. Thank you.

[Slide with text written 'Find out more at: archives.govt.nz/school-publications']