Dibble standards

A magnificent new book celebrates the achievements of pioneering sculptor Paul Dibble. Arts editor LINDA HERRICK talks to his partner in life and in the foundry, Fran Dibble.

First up, a clarification of why we're talking to Fran Dibble instead of her husband, Paul, on the eve of the publication of the superb new book Paul Dibble (David Bateman Ltd, $49.95). Several reasons: Fran has written the book's introduction and one of the six essays which offer a multifaceted insight into the life and creative impulses of the Palmerston North-based sculptor.

She is Paul's business partner and has worked alongside her 2m-tall husband in the foundry for many years. No one understands better than she the frustrations, dangers and triumphs of bronze casting. A lecturer in biochemistry and molecular biology, Fran is an expert in welding and ceramic shelling in the sculptural process.

She knows what makes Paul tick, writing in the book, "He is determined and clear thinking, often relentless about following an idea ... he is often passionate and excitable, yet sometimes fills a room with an agonised gloom that I refer to as his 'black cloud'."

But perhaps the simplest reason Fran is doing the interview is that Paul can't stand talking about himself.

"Paul is quite a private, modest man," says Fran. "He's actually a shy man. He's a very good speaker and does a lot of lecturing at Massey, he's a very good teacher. But at the same time, he's a quiet man. If he has to talk for the sake of it, he gets quite fed up. He doesn't mind lecturing on a certain topic but just prattling about himself, he gets very tired of that, drumming his own drum."

The book provides a substantial pictorial chronology of Paul's development as a sculptor over 30 years, with the strong visual element supported by six essays by Fran, artist-writer Gordon Brown, freelance curator Alexa Johnson, Canterbury University art lecturer Dorothea Pauli, Hocken Library curator Anna Petersen and former Manawatu Art Gallery curator Jane Vial.

"We decided it was time to put a book together because it's been a 30-year career and time it was written down and put on paper ... almost as a historic thing," Fran explains. "It seemed to make sense before the body of work got too unwieldy and huge. It covers a lot of ground, his career has gone through a lot.

"You can see it's the work of the same man and there are themes that come up again and again but it's a body of work that's constantly evolving. If we'd left the book any longer the task would be too huge."

With as many photos collected together as possible - photographer David Lupton has been shooting for the Dibbles since 1990 but there are a few from the 70s on - the couple arranged the book's chapters on the floor.

"We got literally every photo we could find and laid them out in this giant hall on the floor and sorted it into chapters. We chose the writers very carefully as well. We didn't want a writer who came along and had to look at something just through pictures, we wanted someone who'd known the work and was around at the time."

American-born Fran sets the tone for the book in the introduction, where she notes, "I still look back to our beginnings as bronze-casters and laugh as I remember Paul and I in the backyard of our property, standing either side of the crucible holder, pouring metal. In my memory it seems like a scene from a Laurel and Hardy silent movie: I am standing on tiptoes and Paul is bending his knees and crouching over (for I am as short as he is tall)."

Paul, born in 1943 near Thames, grew up in a time when modernist sculpture was virtually an unknown art in New Zealand. He went to Elam art school in Auckland in 1962, when he was 19, and studied painting and drawing under Colin McCahon, Garth Tapper (his second cousin) and Lois White, and sculpture under Jim Allen. Allen, who was a proponent of conceptual forms, did not approve of the traditional figurative approach admired by Paul. However, Paul went on to take an honours degree in sculpture and - with a job in a milk-bottling factory followed by a series of teaching stints - developed his craft by alternating between traditional bronze-casting and experimental figures, working in the mid-60s with McCahon on church sculptures.

His first solo exhibition at the Barry Lett Gallery in Auckland was in 1971. Paul married artist Patricia Burke the same year. As Anna Petersen writes in her chapter in the book, "The decade of the 1980s was a period of great emotional turmoil ... this needs to be taken into account when searching to understand the meaning behind his work. Dibble's first wife, Trish, had during the course of their marriage manifested a serious mental illness which ultimately resulted in her taking her own life. Dibble battled to care for their two young children while holding down a fulltime job."

Fran and Paul married in 1985. "In 1989 it was as if the sun came out in Dibble's art," writes Petersen, "a reflection of both his personal happiness and new-found freedom of expression."

The Dibbles had decided Paul should work as a sculptor full-time and he was at last coming to terms with the difficulties of casting bronze.

His figures, which reflected a style and interpretation specific to the New Zealand environment and history, were snapped up for private and public collections, and the monumental works beautify many a town's civic areas.

"It was difficult in the early days because money was tight and we also had young children," recalls Fran. "In some ways, that's why we always had the workshop at the back of the house. You could do things like put the baby down for a nap and run out and get things done. You could fit the work in with the home life. I like that anyway. I think it's quite sad to have kids who see their mum and dad go off to work and they have no sense of what that work is.

"They always had a sense of what our work was and they could wander into the workshop for help. We did have strict rules though because it was so dangerous. But it wasn't the scale then that it is now. We would be pouring once a month, whereas now we pour once or twice a week all day long. We have much bigger pots, crucibles and forklifts. The scale is different but it still has its roots in those little backyard industries."

The book notes that "Dibble is attracted to the humanism and wit of Matisse's sculpture, rather than to Henry Moore's solemnity and static calm." Nevertheless, the Dibbles, and their two foundry workers, travelled to Wellington to see Te Papa's Moore exhibition.

"We loved it. We took the workshop workers down because we wanted to have a good look at the technical side of things, see if they have the same problems we often do, and that was reassuring - you could see welding seams. The only people who are going to see that kind of stuff are people like us, who are looking for it.

"There are comparisons in the book between Henry Moore and Paul as regards their monumental work but Moore works in the round, while with Paul the works have very delicate edges, a very different flavour."

The Dibbles are off to Los Angeles this year with five large works (up to 3m high) for a show set up by dealer Gary Langsford, who has taken Dibble sculptures to Cologne, Korea and Australia.

The LA show is another step in a partnership which seems to have worked on many levels. "We work together virtually all day," says Fran. "Our working relationship has been building up the business for ever. I have a lot to do with the running of the foundry, and my responsibilities tend to be the shelling and the welding.

"During the day at the foundry, when you've got grinders and welders going all day, you just do the work. At night is when Paul will talk about ideas and stuff. It's a good life. It was often heart-breaking. There were periods when things were blowing up and we had to start all over again and again. We thought, 'Oh God, we're never going to get there', but you do learn and you have to keep at it. You get better and better but you are always learning."