Susi Heinze Dunsmore passes away
KUCHING: Former Batu Lintang Teachers College ( BLTC) senior art tutor, author and artist Susi Heinze Dunsmore passed away in England on Jan 20 after a short illness.
A press release from author Heidi Munan said Heinze Dunsmore’s passing would be sad news to the older generation of Kuching artists.
In her early years, Heinze Dunsmore studied Art at an English university, and while on teaching practice she met DC Goodson, who later became principal of BLTC.
After graduation, she had job offers in Australia and in Sarawak and – very fortunately for generations of teachers and students at BLTC – she chose the latter.
Heinze Dunsmore was senior tutor in the Art Education Department at BLTC from 1958 to 1966.
There she introduced integrated art courses with a strong emphasis on local content; encouraging her students to draw on the resources of their own heritage.
It was during her time that the art syllabus for the Sarawak Junior School Certificate prescribed that each candidate complete one piece of traditional craft be it weaving, plaiting, carving or beading.
She was also the author of a definitive work on art teaching with minimum material and maximum creativity, in three volumes namely, ‘Art Teaching for Upper Primary Schools’, Borneo Literature Bureau 1969; ‘Art Teaching for Secondary Schools’, Borneo Literature Bureau 1969; and ‘Art Teaching for Lower Primary Schools’, Borneo Literature Bureau 1972.
She often contributed articles on Sarawak crafts to relevant journals, periodicals and collections.
Heinze Dunsmore introduced the art of batik to her students, and to a wider circle of young Kuching artists.
Many well-known artists in this medium are in fact past graduates of BLTC.
After leaving Sarawak, Heinze Dunsmore and her husband John Dunsmore worked in Nepal; Dunsmore as an agricultural advisor, and Heinze Dunsmore as a handicrafts developer on an indigenous nettle fibre project.
After the death of her husband, Heinze Dunsmore spent the evening of her life in Coach House Cottage, Eastwick Road, Surrey UK.