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Why I Made is a fortnightly feature in which artists and writers share the behind-the-scenes stories of their creations with listener.co.nz
Standing on the edge of the airfield at Kwethluk, Alaska, as the wind off the Bering Sea and Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta buffeted the temperature down to around -40°C, New Zealand artist Andrew Reid realised he shouldn’t have skimped on the gloves.
“I’d bought the $35 ones when I really should have got the $70 ones for us,” says Reid, from his barn home in North Waikato as he recalls the sensation of gloved fingers starting to freeze. “But it was a good lesson that up there, you really might find yourself in a position where you are on your own and have to rely on your own resourcefulness.”
Luckily for Reid, accompanied by his artist/film-maker son AJ and assistant Juan Rozas, even in the pitch dark and ice of a wintery Alaskan day, someone was at the airstrip, spotted them and had a vehicle that wasn’t too frozen to drive them into the village centre.
“We huddled together in the back of that truck cab likes bears.”
Reid and his team painted six largescale murals over five months at Ket’acik & Aapalluk Memorial School, likely to be one of the most remote places in which an NZ artist has worked. Born in Rotorua and raised in Borneo, Fiji, and on Auckland’s North Shore, Reid spent 40 years living in the US making huge public art works in police and fire stations, libraries and courthouses, subways, and on community and civic centre walls.
He returned to NZ about 18 months ago intending to work locally but was offered further opportunities in Alaska. He travelled back last month for a 14-day stint in Atmautluak to work alongside assistant Jacqueline Barrett to install murals that were fabricated in his Waikato studio.
Like Kwethluk, Atmautluak is a Yup’ik (indigenous) village in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, five aeroplane trips from Waikato. He’ll be back in Alaska, at a village called Eek, later this year but might try to reduce it to a three-plane trip.
Why do you make murals for schools in Alaska?
AR: In the United States, even with all its problems, there’s a tremendous public art programme. There are requirements for government or private developers to set aside a percentage of construction costs for public art. This means there are regular callouts for artists to design and create the artworks for these places and spaces.
In Alaska, a number of new schools have been built – multi-million-dollar buildings that function as community centres – so I put in proposals, and they were accepted, but I’ve been making public art in the US for a long time.
How long?
AR: Since the 1990s, when I moved from New York with my then wife, Karen, to South Florida. Maybe because I am tall and I like to draw, I was drawn to doing big art pieces, so I started looking at murals. Karen and I arrived in Miami at a time when the art deco district around us was reviving. My first mural was in the West Palm Beach Police Headquarters, and it just went from there.
My commercial work supported my family, and we had a good life, but I’ve never liked being stuck behind a desk and have always rebelled against that.
How did you end up in the US in the first place?
AR: I left NZ in my early 20s, around 1984, after working as an art director for a number of advertising agencies. I was freelancing at the time, and I’d come to a bit of a crossroads. I’d been DIC-ed and lost my driver’s licence then I got mugged in Auckland City. I found myself sitting in Victoria Park thinking, “what am I going to do with my life?”
Back then, everyone went to the UK for an OE but I didn’t want to go to the UK. There were some well-known art directors in New York City and I had this arrogant view that I’d just hop on a plane, go there and get work with them. I sold my car, got rid of all my things, paid off my debts and flew to NYC with about $500 in my pocket.
My sister was living there, working as a nurse on her way back from the UK, so I stayed with her for a month or two before she left. It gave me time to find my feet. In those days, especially if you were from NZ and had good trade skills – which I did through doing graphic design at [the then] Auckland Technical Institute – you could kind of work without too many questions being asked.
So, I found myself working in… I guess you could call it a design sweatshop.
What sort of work did you do?
AR: A bit of everything, alongside a mix of young emerging artists and really experienced illustrators and designers. They were happy with my work and asked, “Do you know any other Kiwis who can come and work for us?” So I got a couple of other Kiwis across, and the firm sorted out work visas for us.
I got a chance to work on album covers and ended up designing Bryan Ferry’s Bête Noire. I got nominated for a Grammy Award and was interviewed by Paul Holmes! I was young and arrogant and I really thought I’d win but I didn’t. I did find myself at the Warner Music party hosted by Quincy Jones and some of The Traveling Wilburys - Bob Dylan, George Harrison and Roy Orbison.
Warner wanted to hire me as an art director but we didn’t want to move to California. I just wanted to stay in New York. I got to design four album covers for the jazz guitarist Pat Metheny who’s won a heap of Grammy Awards, though.
What influences your work?
AR: In the Depression, then President Franklin D Roosevelt set up the WPA – Works Projects Administration – to give work to those who were unemployed. It was a massive public works programme that included federal art projects, so the murals made through that in this very heroic style influenced me. Coincidentally, the first restaurant mural I did in Florida was for a place called WPA. Propaganda style, showing people working and reflecting “positive things”, I like those techniques, too. Coming from New Zealand, there are also Pacific influences.
What’s your process?
AR: I think of myself as a research person who can draw. I don’t start until I’ve gone into a community, sat down with people and listened to their stories. I take pictures, I write and I listen; there’s no drawing, absolutely no drawing. Then I print out all the photos, put them on the walls around me and start drawing. Then comes the design.
Digital rendering is now an option. I use an artist’s tablet to create full-sized buildings and structures and the art for them. I then have them printed on vinyl wrap which, using a heat process, can then be stuck on to buildings. Taking digital renders that weigh no more than 20kg makes it a lot easier to work in Alaska.
Speaking of Alaska, should a white guy from NZ be making murals for their schools?
AR: That is an interesting question and a relevant point. In the US, they tend to focus on the work you’re proposing to make rather than who you are. Anyone can put in a proposal, and I know the contracts managers do try to reach out to indigenous artists and artists of colour. That said – and indigenous artists have pointed this out – it is a complex colonial system that goes beyond the talent of the artist.
There’s a whole lot of stuff behind the scenes that can make it more difficult – like having the right liability insurance (I carry massive liability insurance for each job). I always employ local Yup’ik people to work alongside me and try to act as a mentor.
I spend a lot of time in the villages just listening and not being the gusak (pākehā) who’s arrived to tell them what I am going to do for them. People want to see that you are going to represent them appropriately, that you’re not faking things or taking shortcuts, that you’re not presuming anything, that you’re actually listening, and that you’re doing the work.
What are Yup’ik villages like?
AR: They’re remote. To get to Atmautluak, I took five planes and was then picked up on a Snow-Go to get to the school where I was working. The villages are on the Alaskan tundra, where it’s treeless – just grasslands – as far as you can see. In winter, it’s cold and dark for 24 hours; in summer, it’s warmer and light for 24 hours.
There are about 400 - 800 people living in each village, and the young have deep respect for their elders. It is a subsistence lifestyle of hunting and fishing, and from a young age, the kids learn to hunt – mainly moose, caribou, bear and birds – and salmon. Apart from berries, there aren’t a lot of vegetables, so meals are based around meat.
Someone asked me if I ever go out hunting and fishing with villagers. I’d love to, but they’re concerned I would hurt myself and not get the job I’m employed to do done! So, really I just keep working.
Because it’s so remote, you have to be really well prepared and bring everything you need – and think you’re going to need – with you. It would cost huge money and time if you suddenly realised you needed something and had to fly it in, and that would break your budget.
What brought you back to New Zealand?
AR: Even when I was in the US, every year we came back to NZ – sometimes twice a year – and my sons joked that I was always talking about “when I go back to live in NZ” and my connection with Aotearoa grew stronger the longer I was away. I was divorced, the boys had left home – AJ moved to Auckland during Covid – and I’m not getting any younger, so it just felt like time to come home.
I never imagined landing in Auckland and that very same day getting a call to say I had work in Atmautluak. Now I’ve finished that job, I’m going back to a village called Eek to start research for a mural project there. I’ll have to find work here, though, and I’d love to collaborate with local artists, but I’ve been self-employed for 38 years and know I’m not a sit-behind-a-desk kind of person.