Derek has reminded me of the leisure classes and Anne, the life model's role in them, I have mentioned her in a previous post and at some time will get back to her, but Derek has also included an image which sums up her appearence during the last ten years of her tenure.
This is the text from Derek:
Leisure classes
I’ll always be grateful for the way Anne stage-managed the life classes. With a new intake of students embarking on their first life class and instinctively adopting that hushed, reverential aura that always seems to accompany such a class, Anne would strip off her dressing gown and out would come a bag of sweets and she'd make her way from easel to easel handing them out to blushing students. Nerves would vanish.
She was also a good timekeeper, especially when working the evening "Leisure" classes, where the breaks for tea and biscuits were an important part of the social ritual. I really miss those classes - it was a chance to unwind with a nice group of people who didn't take the work too seriously, who in the main were intelligent and ready to accept a challenge and be philosophical and good humoured about the odd disaster. I taught some life classes standing in for Pam Rex, and regular ceramics classes and enjoyed the mix from housewives and shop girls out for a giggle to doctors and university professors who were intellectually curious enough to have a go at drawing or wanting to apply their knowledge of geology or physics to the making and glazing of ceramics. I think Leisure classes were a useful addition to the college. Pam Rex had a bunch of stalwarts who had been coming for years and were totally loyal ambassadors for the college. It was a sad day when some bright spark thought the only study worth doing was in order to gain a qualification. When Dave Graham arrived from Cumbria and started his pottery day classes he was able to build up some really skilled craftspeople - Eric Taylor (ex-Principal) Anthony Wells-Cole (Temple Newsam furniture specialist) and several PHD university students and others who went on to set up businesses as potters (Leonie?, Mike Wheeler, Charles Bound). An interaction took place between them and the full-time foundation students - our students finding themselves having to explain their work to motherly housewives was always going to be a hoot - but other professional people were able to broaden the students ideas through their own experiences. Eric Bainbridge produced some pristinely engineered plaster unit structures in that time, proof that plaster could be worked with precision despite the muck and dust in that room, and went on to fame and fortune in America.
Following your plea for Foundation drawings, this was the only slide I have found.
Anne Baxter taking a break; Anwyn Beier 1993/4.
This image always cracks me up and brings back a lot of art college memories.
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