Geoff Wilson

At the beginning of 1957 I started at Thebarton Boys Technical School. The senior art teacher was Fred Carlier. The head was Syd Harvey, deputy, Max Green and Allan Sierp was the art inspector. There was a shortage of teachers and prospective art teachers were sent down for a probationary period. One was an ex-Serbian army captain. Most did not last long. Michael Atchison (present day Advertiser cartoonist) came for a term or so until he went off to England. Doug Hardie (ex Scotland) arrived, I think, in 1958 and stayed on after I left, eventually becoming a librarian at the Art School in Stanley Street, North Adelaide and was later sent back to the secondary schools until he retired.

My art room was in the old original block fronting Ashley Street. It still contained a low daïs platform two steps high on which sat a teacher’s table and chair – another classroom adapted for another purpose. In London we had a craze for brightening up our bed-sitters – some hectic combinations from current House & Garden magazines. Possibly nostalgia prompted me to paint the walls of the art room so it became, over a few week ends, a pale lilac. I made some wooden shelves that hung off the walls with white ropes and I bought various pot plants to stand on them.

Allan Sierp rang me one lunch time wanting me to go to Whyalla. I said I would resign if they sent me. Eventually Kingsley Marks, who was wanting a job back in the Education Department, was kind of bribed into going.

The courses were much the same as the Croydon days and I began to do some part-time teaching at the Art School on North Terrace. Some of the teachers joined the night woodworking classes under Viv Veale and I made a dining room table, a side- board buffet and a bed – the bed survives.

From Thebarton, the first of the departmental technical schools, to Mitchell Park, the first of the new wave of technical high schools

In 1960 I was transferred to Mitchell Park Boys Technical High School where Bert Mitchell was head. I think the school opened in 1958, Alb Smith being the art teacher. Peter Schulz, straight from College, joined him in 1959. Alb Smith left at the end of ’59 to become a lecturer at the School of Art.

I think all the buildings at the school then were prefabs with the building of more permanent blocks beginning in 1961. Peter Schulz’s and my room were back to back with a store room in between. Heinfried Heyer had a room in an adjacent block. Ted Scott made a foursome, straight from College in 1961. I was in charge though I had no senior qualifications. I remember doing a kind of bound mini-thesis while there as part of the requirements for a senior teacher.

Before the 1960s, in some of the techs there was strict control where ‘art’ production, especially in design pattern making, was allowed to proceed by close checking of every stage; the work favoured in the annual Royal Show, and singing the praises of dated historic ornament. A student in those days needed an unerring eye and a most unshaking hand.

With the ’60s, more rapid communication, books, magazines, exhibitions and visiting lecturers things opened up rapidly. ‘Rock’ and ‘pop’ and the rest lay comfortably with the new young teachers who went to schools with big art departments – excitement and fun – all, alas, dying away in this clime of economic rationalism.

I enjoyed a good two years at Mitchell Park before I went to Stanley Street. We experimented more, even introducing more creative projects into the formalities of technical drawing. We also did the drawing content for the woodworking section under Jack Peake. Seeing some of the work being done by John Baily at Wattle Park Teachers College, we introduced 3D work – concrete casting and sculptural forms made from scrap. Soldering irons were bought for wire work. Bert Mitchell was most pleased when some of us created a besser block wall indoor plant garden in the entrance foyer. His enthusiasm rapidly declined when we added a rather heavy abstract concrete bas relief, à la Ben Nicholson, into the garden setting. It didn’t last too long.

The lads were in those days a pretty good lot and the art rooms were lively-looking places. They were open during lunch time and boys could come and work. One section of the porch we closed off and it became a kind of meeting club house for senior boys.

Eventually from those early days at Mitchell Park, Peter Schulz and Ted Scott became lecturers (now retired). Vic Adolffson followed me as senior master in charge at Mitchell Park and the art department grew rapidly in size. Bob Boynes, Lyn Collins, Ron Rowe are some of the people who worked at the school. All later worked in tertiary institutions.

Teaching future art teachers

While I had been enjoying those two rewarding years, the demand for more secondary art teachers was accelerating. At the end of 1962 I applied for a lectureship at the SA School of Art. In 1963 I joined its secondary art teaching department. Its head was Doug Roberts; the principal was Allan Sierp. I worked mainly with Helen McIntosh in the area of basic design. For a number of years the secondary art teaching students were the largest student body at the Art School. First year intakes were up to 90 students.

As a lecturer I marked both Intermediate and Leaving exams – lettering, pictorial composition. I can remember Graham Gunn, Barbara Robertson and Peg Roderick as co-examiners. Usually the team was three. I wrote reports that were published in the PEB handbook. I should say the lads in the techs who partook in the PEB exams were equally successful but I have no figures to prove it.

In the secondary art teaching department at Stanley Street I was solely involved with the students’ art training in various art subjects. Ron Bell and his staff had closer contact with teaching practice and the activities going on in the schools. I can remember that, in the early ’70s students’ attitudes were changing. ‘Doing your own thing’ was a catch phrase and perhaps there was a more general freedom in all of education and society. The art training proportions of the course were being lessened and I think some young teachers were being asked to teach in areas in which they had no experience. You had to be very versatile to work in an area school.

There were always arguments about the best course for art teachers. Fine art training with an end-on course in teaching practice was favoured by the fine art department and now that’s what it has come to. I still think the ’60s courses were the best. They were flexible and wide-ranging in art practice. The best students thrived. There was, of course, at any given time, pubescent ‘mickey mouses’ that became mature ‘Mickey Mouses’ in the less demanding ‘cheese and nibbles’ days of the ’70s.

Cheese is more expensive these days and the cracks in the skirtings of the art rooms are covered over. Instead of a brief case you need now a computer, an MA and a bullet-proof vest. Bless all those who dare to try!

As you read my words, any ghostly stains you find on the pages would be tear-based. They contain the visual and audible memories of youth passing, of varicose veins, chalk dust in the hair, ten years of bisecting a straight line on a blackboard and the faint mutterings of hundreds of boys.

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