Arts centre grows

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34106, 19 March 1976, Page 14

Arts centre grows

The Artists’ Quarter in Christchurch was one of the places which generated a lot of interest during the Arts Festival. People who wanted to see the craftsmen at work were able to wander through the 20 or so studios, and talk with them.

The studios are usually open to the public, but it takes an emphasis on the arts like the Arts Festival to attract the number who have toured the centre during the festival fortnight.

The artists have made their crafts their vocation and they support their families on them. There are blacksmiths, weavers, potters, leatherworkers, painters, wood sculptors and carvers, engravers, fabric printers.

stained-glass artists and photographers. They have settled into the quarter since it opened five years ago, and changed their workshops to suit themselves. The owners — Noel Gregg and Jim Slater — who are also artists there, have renovated the exterior.

The purpose of the quarter, Mr Slater, the managing director, said yesterday, was to give artists workshop space at a nominal rental — actually $lO a week — and to create an artists’ environment where they could talk about their craft and swap ideas. Already there are more than 21 craftsmen in the 70-year-old buildings that were formerly a petrol station, car sales yard, and milk treatment plant. Space has been made on a second storey for seven more craftsmen, and two of these rooms, which were

made available only a few days ago, have been taken.

“Within the month,” Mr Slater said, “we expect all the rooms to be taken.” He is busy himself, setting up a photographer’s gallery, the first in New Zealand, where amateurs and professionals will be able to display prints. The quarter was different in its emphasis on workshops, he said. Usually artists’ quarters of this nature were also residential. However, artists were also labourers who appreciated laying down tools at the end of the day, and going home. The quarter takes nothing from the artists except a weekly rent. The profits they make' from the retail shop opened a year ago on the premises are their own. A large amount of the artists’ work is sold outside the quarter, and some of them have found overseas markets. i