Christchurch’s own nude sculpture king
Llew Summers‘ feet kicked up a cloud of clay dust as he stepped into his Christchurch workshop, radio blaring from the kind of stereo you see piles of at the dump.
‘‘Don’t touch anything, you’ll get filthy,’’ he said with a laugh as he walked past discarded sculptures and barrels of liquid clay.
Without really intending it to happen, Summers has become one of the city’s most prolific sculptors. His nude figures are recognisable in public spaces across the city.
‘‘I consider that I brought the nude to Christchurch, and for a conservative city I’ve done pretty well out of it really,’’ he said.
Raised in ‘‘quite an arty family’’, Summers started sculpting in his late teens while working on farms in the early 1960s. With creative friends and painters present throughout his life, Summers developed a style and a mind for aesthetic art.
‘‘One of my big bug bears is that for a lot of works it’s all about the head, the intellect.
‘‘Like my mate Tony Fomison said once, when you go to sleep at night, you don’t dream about abstract sculptures, you dream about life, you dream about human beings – thats what we are.’’
In 1977, Summers decided to become a full-time artist. From a workshop filled with machinery, including a mechanical drill from the early 1900s, Summers lets his creativity free.
‘‘I make a lot of work out of different materials [but] predominantly I am actually a wood carver,’’ he said.
‘‘I might make a work in clay first, then if I think it is a good shape and I like what it’s about I might carve it in wood.’’
The window sills of the warehouse hold evidence of his love, heavy with years of saw dust and wood chips.
‘‘The city owns a few works now, about four I think, but they’ve all been bought by default. I’ve made [bronze] works and then put them in a public spot. Then after a time they’ve sort of said, well, what do you want for it.
‘‘The bronze in Colombo St at the moment, the four birds, weighs two tonnes, so it’s a lot of material and a very expensive work to make actually.’’
Summers’ works can be seen on Ensors Rd, near Ferry Rd, in Addington’s Church Square and at the intersection of Memorial Ave and Ilam Rd.
‘‘It all celebrates humanity. Somebody said to me one day, the figure has had its day, like, stuff off, the figure has never had its day, so long as humanity is alive and couples are getting together and all that, it is still relevant.’’
"I consider that I brought the nude to Christchurch, and for a conservative city I've done pretty well out of it really."
Llew Summers, sculptor