Laurel Bigg (née Lane)

I was a student at the Girls Central Art School from 1946 to 1948. I was a junior teacher there also in 1949 before going on to Teachers College in 1950. I was sent back to the GCAS in 1952, only having done two years at the Adelaide Teachers College because the three year course had not been gazetted long enough to grab me and I had a number of art subjects way beyond the norm of a student coming from a high school or a tech. This specialised type of education was a boon for students wishing to take art as a profession as in my case. I went into Teachers College with 17 art subjects gained over the three years at the GCAS. I just had to do Leaving English while junior teaching and that, and my art subjects, was the equivalent for Leaving qualifications.

I taught at the GCAS from 1952 to April 1953. Gladys Casely had replaced Gladys Good as senior mistress in August 1950 and was in charge in my last year there. The Superintendent of Technical Schools at that time, a Mr McDonald, closed the GCAS because he didn’t believe in specialist schools, feeling that the curriculum was too narrow and not broad enough for a general education. It was a devastating loss.

Gladys Good was headmistress from the school’s inception to her retirement in August 1950, when Gladys Casely took over until 1953. When the school was closed I was sent to Croydon Girls Tech. Gladys Casely had taken over when I returned from Teachers College. She was a lovely soft-hearted woman but not headmistress material, probably another reason for the school closing. Miss Good was ideal and would have never seen the school closed over her dead body: it was her vision and her baby.

The subjects we did as students were creative English, plant drawing I and II, object drawing I and II, freehand drawing I and II, design and colour I and II, clay modelling, still life painting, antique drawing I, needlework I, craftwork I, history of art I and II, lettering I and II, botany I and sport and leatherwork.

We were encouraged to write plays and ballets which were performed at break-ups. We had sports days and swimming carnivals and Colleen Dennehy always won the prize for floating! We also had the odd picnic day to the hills or to the beach.

There was a flow of staff as in all schools but the main stayers were Mary P. Harris, Jessamine Buxton, Bette Dixon, Helen Haseldine and Joyce Oliver with an average of 60 students. There was a fourth year course which offered life drawing and painting, dimensioned sketching, oil and water colour II, design III, antique drawing III and a varied choice of other subjects. Fourth year students were paying students, I think, and spent all their time working with the private students of the School of Art. I did the junior teaching year instead of fourth year but, of course, I continued also to do subjects.

The school had a few different locations over the years. Firstly at the old Exhibition Building on North Terrace in the east wing of the SA School of Art. The war came and the airforce took over the building and the school was moved to a warehouse type building in Twin Street then later, still during the war, to the John Martins building on North Terrace. I had attended Saturday morning junior classes at all of these sites, then began my GCAS time in John Martins building, next door to the main shop. By my third year we had moved back to the Exhibition Building after the airforce vacated it.

Gladys Good was my mentor as she was for many students who passed through her teaching years. She taught Ivor Hele when he was a Saturday morning junior. Her versatility was remarkable and she ran a truly unique school, probably never to be seen again in such a form. Gladys Good died, aged 84, in a retirement lodge at Rose Park.

Without the GCAS I would never have been able to be an art teacher. Instead it would have been a basic education in a girls’ tech school and then off to work somewhere to help my widowed mother. It was free, as were the tech and the high schools, and I came through with enough qualifications to avail me of a lifetime profession.

Return to contents Buy A Broader Vision	© Erica Jolly and individual authors