Campbell Smith

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Sydney Campbell Smith (born February 25, 1925 in Masterton , New Zealand , † July 13, 2015 in Tairua , New Zealand) was a New Zealand playwright, poet, wood cutter , artist, teacher and mentor.

Career

Campbell Smith was born in 1925 to Annie and Syd Smith, a signwriter , in Masterton, a town in the south of the North Island of New Zealand. His childhood was overshadowed by the Great Depression and the following years by World War II . Smith was tutored by his father and did his military service in 1945. Then he did a commercial apprenticeship. He graduated from Canterbury University College School of Art in 1952 with a diploma in fine arts , especially painting , and then attended Auckland Teachers College for a year.

In 1953 he married the nurse Esme Dunbar. The couple lived for a time in London ( United Kingdom ), but returned in 1956 back to New Zealand.

Smith taught wood engraving , poetry and full-length dramaturgy at Waihi College from 1956 . In the following period he wrote his book The Journey in 1958 , which was only published in 2010, illustrated with his wood engravings. In 1961 he moved to Fairfield College in Hamilton as an art teacher .

From 1965 to 1966 he was President of the New Zealand Federation of Film Societies and from 1965 to 1967 President of the Waikato Society of Arts , where he was granted a life membership in 1994. Smith was a co-founder of the Waihi Arts Center and Museum. In 1971 he became director of the Waikato Art Gallery (now the Waikato Museum Te Whare Taonga o Waikato ).

He wrote numerous plays, including plays for children, and made wood engravings. Smith has won numerous national awards, including several times the competition of Playwrights Association of New Zealand (PANZ): 1982 for his play Mabel on the former Labor - Cabinet Minister Mabel Howard , in 1983 for his play Transit, 1991 for his play Luck of the Game over the Australian pilot Charles Kingsford-Smith and in 1986 for his play Soldiers Song, a one-act play set in the First World War . In 1999 he took third place in the PANZ competition with his design Light from Colored Windows . Smith was a lifetime member of Hamilton's Theatreview (theater company). In 2003 he was inducted into the New Zealand Order of Merit for his services in the arts . Smith received an honorary doctorate from Waikato University in 2012 .

Smith lived on River Road with his wife Esme for many years, but their deteriorating health forced them to move to Tairua Residential Care on Tui Terrace in Tairua. Esme died there in 2014, six days before Smith's latest play, Ida and I. It was about the well-known Waikato artist Ida Carey . Smith died at Tairua Residential Care a year later, aged 90. Esme and Campbell Smith had two sons.

Plays (selection)

  • 1964: Jubilee
  • 1980: Sunnybrae
  • 1982: Mabel (via Mabel Howard)
  • 1983: transit
  • 1986: Soldier's Song (played during World War I)
  • 1991: Luck of the Game (via Charles Kingsford-Smith)
  • 1999: Light from Colored Windows
  • 2002: This Green Land (via Margot Philips)
  • 2014: Ida and I (via Ida Carey)
  • Blighty (plays in World War I)
  • Frances Hodgkins, painter
  • Magpies
  • Quite a woman! (via Ida Carey)
  • Sapper Moore-Jones (plays in World War I)
  • The Fame Game
  • The Legends of Maui
  • The Miners of Waihi (played in World War I)
  • Three Women (via Frances Hodgkins, her mother, and her sister)

Trivia

Seddon Bennington , who was director of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa from 2003 until his death in 2009 , wrote the following about Smith's work and life in a foreword to Lines of Light :

"Campbell, the poet, playwright, and wood engraver all expressing different but complementary talents - a sharp eye for the sensuous curve, an ear tuned to language and a good narrative, and a sharp chisel in a gifted hand."

The Waikato Times columnist Richard Swainson wrote of Smith:

"For all that the cinema was a genuine interest, it paled into insignificance next to his wider contributions to the Hamilton arts scene."

After his death, his sons found in his records a verse written in 1948 that described it well:

"Teach me to see not with my eyes, but with my heart, and to paint not with my hands but with my soul."

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Center for Australian Art , accessed August 9, 2016.
  2. ↑ Campbell Smith , playmarket.org.nz
  3. ^ NZ University Graduates 1870-1961 - Sydney Campbell Smith
  4. ↑ a b Artist, playwright and poet to receive honorary doctorate , The University of Waikato, October 5, 2012
  5. ^ Queen's Birthday honors list 2003 , Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, June 2, 2003
  6. ^ Honorary Doctors of the University of Waikato , The University of Waikato
personal data
SURNAME Smith, Campbell
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Smith, Sydney Campbell (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION New Zealand playwright, poet, wood cutter, artist, teacher and mentor
DATE OF BIRTH February 25, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Masterton , New Zealand
DATE OF DEATH July 13, 2015
Place of death Tairua , New Zealand