Joan Morrell with the bronze bust of James K Baxter she modelled while he recited poetry at the Sarjeant Gallery.
Photo / File
Joan Morrell with the bronze bust of James K Baxter she modelled while he recited poetry at the Sarjeant Gallery.
Photo / File
Whanganui's Joan Bullock Morrell is probably best known as a New Zealand trailblazer in the art of bronze sculpture, although the artist and writer had many talents and was deeply loved by her family and friends.
She died peacefully at Kowhainui Home in Whanganui last Saturday. She was 92.
Morrell was awarded the New Zealand Commemorative Medal in 1990 and the Queen's Service Medal in 1995.
Born Joan Bullock in Whanganui on October 4, 1928, she had a life-long fascination with sculpture and discovered her talent for sculpting as a young mother attending night classes.
With encouragement from Whanganui author Joan Rosier Jones, Cowan spent more than two years interviewing the artist and enlisted the help of photographer Leigh Mitchell-Anyon to produce Joan Bullock Morrell Sculptor, published in 2013.
Much of Cowan's time was spent sitting in Morrell's garden with a cup of tea and notepad while the artist explained the processes of making moulds and bronzes.
"I am grateful for her patience in explaining the complicated procedure, which took me some time to grasp," says Cowan.
Joan Morrell with author Valerie Cowan and photographer Leigh Mitchell-Anyon at the launch of her biography in 2013.
Photo / File
Morrell's children - Jan, Ben and Willy- John - all helped their mother with her sculptures in the family garden as they were growing up.
"When the old gasworks closed, Mum was given a lot of the old firebricks," says Ben.
"We built kilns in the backyard to burn the wax from the moulds.
"There would be an inner circle of bricks around 800mm high and then we would build an outer circle around it and when the whole thing was lit, it would glow like a giant lantern."
Ben says he loved helping from the time he was "knee-high to a grasshopper" and later as a teenager, he helped to pour the molten metal into the moulds.
Family, friends and neighbours would gather around for a barbecue night and Jan remembers the joy of looking up at the stars from the garden.
"Mum made our beautiful garden in what used to be a horse paddock," says Jan.
"She designed our new house and demolished half of the original cottage and we lived there while the new house was being built.
"The other half was demolished when we moved to the new house. Mum always had a vision and she always saw everything through to completion."
Jan remembers a shortage of good towels in the house as her mother would wrap them around her clay sculptures to keep them moist.
Lesley Stead is Morrell's cousin and chairs the Guyton Group Trust, which commissioned the artist to make a life-sized statue of poet James K Baxter.
"Joan never seemed to experience stress," Stead said.
"It enabled her to do all the things she did and she instilled that feeling of calm in everyone around her."
Marton sculptor Ross Wilson has been Morrell's "right-hand man" in recent years, doing all the pouring for her work.
"I was an eager young pup when I first met Joan and I wanted to learn everything I could from her," Wilson said.
"I wanted to set up a backyard operation like the one she had and she was a brilliant teacher.
"We became great friends over many years and she was always poetic - always had that ability to lift people's spirits."
Morrell's final project was to complete the moulds for the Baxter statue and Wilson said he is ready to do the bronze-pouring when the Guyton Group Trust give the go-ahead.
Fundraising for the statue began in 2016 and Stead said the trust is now close to reaching the target of $100,000.
Morrell, who was friends with the poet, completed a bronze bust of Baxter in 1971 when he was living up the Whanganui River at Jerusalem.
He agreed to sit for her after he received her telegram sent to "James K Baxter, Whanganui River." She would eventually mould his likeness while he gave a poetry reading at the Sarjeant Gallery.
The statue will stand outside Paige's Book Gallery in Guyton St.
It will join Morrell's other well-known Whanganui sculptures located at Virginia Lake, Pakaitore, the Davis Library and Kowhai Park.
Although Morrell's work is internationally renowned and her sculptures are situated in many locations around the world, she always lived in Whanganui.
In 2019, Whanganui district councillors voted to name a new street in Tawhero "Morrell St" in her honour.
As a writer, she published seven poetry books and two short story collections.
Ben Morrell recalls that there is a quote from his mother in the Penguin book of New Zealand Verse which perhaps explains why she never felt the need to leave her home town.
"The world is full of little Whanganuis," she wrote.
And In his foreword for Cowan's book, art historian Edward Hanfling wrote that Whanganui offered Morrell "a certain kind freedom" for her work.
"It feels like a world of its own, devoid of many of the constraints and conventions that hold sway elsewhere," he wrote.
A service to celebrate Joan Morrell's life will be held in the Cleveland Chapel, 179 Ingestre St, Whanganui on Friday, January 8 at 10.30am, followed by interment in the Aramoho Lawn Cemetery.
