Obituary: Yvonne Rust

Potter. Died aged 79.

Yvonne Rust's ashes will be divided and scattered in the two places that claimed her heart for most of her adult life - Northland and the West Coast.

The influential potter and teacher once said: "The South Island is full of space - Northland is filled with spirits."

Rust died in Greymouth on Wednesday night after several years of ill health.

Her enduring legacy in the north is the Northland Craft Trust's unique craft centre, The Quarry.

It was established in the disused Waldron's quarry in Whangarei in the early 1980s as an experiment in skills development and use of local raw materials in pottery.

It has since become an important nursery for craft skills, with resident artists, a co-operative retail outlet, an art gallery, kilns and workshops. It is also the home of a nationally known summer school which attracts leading New Zealand artists and craftspeople as tutors.

Artist Jenny Bennett, a former trustee, said Rust had mentored an enormous number of people.

She was very much "mother of The Quarry", both to the project and the people.

Ms Bennett said Rust was a visionary with exceptional mental and physical energy. She had the ability to make things happen - typically in a very hands-on way.

"I remember working with her on the concrete and mosaic statue at the entrance to The Quarry when she was in her late sixties and she insisted on shovelling great barrow-loads of builders' mix for hours on end."

Rust's remarkable teaching career began in the mid-1940s after she gained a diploma in fine arts in Canterbury.

She taught art in secondary schools for 30 years, mainly in the South Island.

She played a leading role in developing pottery skills in the communities in which she lived, starting eight studios and apprenticing many potters. She also organised and directed the first national pottery workshop/school and started her own art school in 1959.

Her interest in clay took her to the West Coast in 1967, where she taught at Greymouth High School and started the West Coast pottery movement.

After retiring from teaching in 1972, she returned to Northland to build a home and become a professional potter at Parua Bay.

She was asked to start the Northland Craft Trust in 1976 and, in 1980, acquired Waldron's quarry with the help of grants from the Department of Internal Affairs and the Whangarei City Council.

A few years later she surprised many by giving up pottery to dedicate herself to painting. Within a few years her painting had earned her an award from the Academy Of New Zealand in Wellington.

Her other awards included a Queen's Service Medal for services to art, a QEII Fellowship, life memberships of the Potters' Association and the Craft Council, and the Canterbury Society of Arts' silver medal, its highest award.

Rust ended her mentoring in 1997 and subsequently returned to Greymouth, where she remained until her death.

"I am busy dying," she said before leaving Whangarei. "That's a quote I read once, but it describes me - I am going on to the next stage."

- NZPA