SHE. DRAWS HER PUBLIC

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 37, 8 March 1940, Page 42

SHE. DRAWS HER PUBLIC

LU TROLLING through the Exhibition S General Exhibits you'll come upon a Stall decorated on all its available space with water-colour heads of young men and maidens, some few children, ‘and a scattering of." older" people. The half-disclosed " cubby-hole" behind all this is busy most of the day, and night, with their manufacture. The artist is an unusually normal one-a girl in her early twenties with rounded cheeks, heavy-lidded eyes, and a mouth that obviously takes life for the joke it is. "O, it just happened," she laughed, when I asked her how she got there. " Not suddenly, of course-the idea was in my mind for some time that I’d like to come up to Wellington and do this when the Exhibition opened. Before? Oh yes, I taught-at the two leading girls’ schools of my. town. But then I tired of teaching-it’s dull." . "Deadly dull, I should say," I agreed. "But what then?" Tent "O, well-I took a studio-a large one, with a dance floor, and did murals. Sort of ‘free lanced.’ Special jobs-whole wall strips for special Balls, you know-Racing, Medical, etc. It was rather a fashion. The best time, really, though, I believe, was sketching Ring Giants — wrestlers, boxers, sprinters-for a Sports Paper. I had to work racketty hours, of course. They arrived. at all sorts of odd times and had to be sketched quickly ‘at such odd places-like Railway Stations. It was fun." "Good training, too, I should say." "Yes. And then I came up here, and had a fortnight in the Miramar Film Studios to get the hang of the work they do there. At

the same time I made arrangements for this." "It tires you a bit, doesn’t it?" "Tires! I’m just dead weary -run down and depressed beyond words. It isn't the hours in this place-it’s the airlessness. It’s absolutely killing. I'm getting away, though, -this week-end. Three days in the. country: to just lie in the sun!" "And after the Exhibition-what, would you like to do then?" "Then? Well-do you know? Id give anything to get home to England and join the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. I just love tinkering with metal. A whistle screamed suddenly about usfilled the air with its piercing shriek. Ten o'clock. Yes, this girl was certainly run down. She clamped her hands over her ears and shut her eyes, shuddering from head to foot. For the full five minutes she stood there leaning against the wall while I examined odd photos’ of past achievements-one or two in clay. _ At last it stopped. "I just can’t stand it," she apologised, "I don’t know how you do." "It’s not really very different from an Air Raid warning," I said, and she looked at me quickly, thoughtfully revolving her ambition. " Now for the Cabaret," she said, collecting her gear. "I hope to heaven there are a few worth-while faces at the supper tables!" "What! There too? Apparently there’s no forty-hour week for you!" All about us the Exhibition was shutting up shop, and with a whirl and a wave she was gone.

Ann

Slade