John Parker

Artist, theatre production designer

I make a point of describing myself as an only child

because the buck stops with me is my mantra. As an only child I have learned to be self contained and not frightened of my own company. I have had to develop being resourceful and to think laterally. The great achievement, I guess, is that I have survived these 50 self-obsessed years as a ceramic artist, but I still have a wonderful group of close friends. The code I try to live by is: “Nothing mean, nothing false and nothing cruel”, to sort of quote Dickens. Be responsible.

I worked as an icecream boy at the Civic Theatre. At first, I sold 116 of them from a shoulder tray at interval. The worst aspect was being sent up to sell in the Circle where the stairs down go sequentially in wide and narrow intervals. You had to count “narrow, narrow, wide, narrow, narrow, wide” as you carefully found your footholds in the dark. Luckily, I never fell. Then I progressed to working on the candy bar and actually making the icecreams ahead of the pre-show and interval rush times.

I chose to study science because my parents encouraged me to go to university to study maths, chemistry and physics, and because as a kid I had a shed and a chemistry set, they thought I was interested in science. I was not successful. Later at training college, I changed to an arts degree in english, anthropology, psychology and art history, and succeeded. I finally got an MA from the Royal College of Art in London.

When I discovered Tony Birks’ book The Art of the Modern Potter, and Lucie [Rie] and Hans [Coper] in 1969, it was a revelation. I felt I belonged in the European tradition of Bauhaus and De Stihl. Lucie became a friend and Hans ended up as my tutor at the Royal College.

I get called a Renaissance man, which I have resisted, but seeing 50 years of my ceramic practice on show, putting myself out there for evaluation and criticism – un-zipping my fly as it were – has been humbling but also invigorating, and points to future explorations and new experimentation.

People are continually kind and generous to me; “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers”, as Tennessee Williams once wrote. I have only gotten this far because of the love, belief and support of my friends.

The most foolhardy thing I think I have ever done was going on a remote bus trip out of Kabul, with a group of friendly Afghan military on a stopover on my way to London in the 1970s. The implications still scare me, especially now with the current political situation. But they may have just been being sensitive hosts to a green little New Zealand boy. Will never know. In my theatre design I tend to really focus on the last production I have worked on, but each one has its own conundrum. This is what you have to solve so that the production flows effortlessly and fulfils the subtleties and intentions of the text. If the audience focuses on the design, you have failed.

JOHN PARKER: CAUSE AND EFFECT RUNS AT TE URU WAITAKERE CONTEMPORARY GALLERY UNTIL NOVEMBER 13, 2016, AS PART OF ARTWEEK AUCKLAND FROM 8-16 OCTOBER.