Llew would have loved being the subject of a Watchdog obituary. On one occasion in recent years I asked him if he'd received his latest issue (he was a CAFCA member for the best part of 35 years). Without missing a beat, his immediate question was to ask: "Whose was the obituary in it?" Thus, proving what was his top priority when it came to reading Watchdog.

I knew Llew (short for Llewelyn) in many different capacities - as a famous artist; as a friend for decades; as a friend of an influential mutual friend and artist to whose Auckland funeral we travelled together to attend and to be pallbearers; as a neighbour in two different parts of Christchurch 40 years apart; as a very active political activist in all manner of campaigns; and as a very supportive and generous CAFCA member for decades.

He was a bloke who was absolutely full of life and vitality, so to learn that he was dying of a very rare auto-immune disease was one hell of a shock. Appropriately, I last saw him at a big protest against water bottling exports, in March 2019. I had no idea he was sick, let alone dying, so we only had the briefest of conversations. The next time I saw him he was his usual snappily dressed self, except that he was dead and laid out in his coffin at the vigil at his remarkable home, preceding his highly memorable funeral in August 2019. He was only 72, which was far too young for one so alive. But he didn't muck around, he packed an awful lot into that life.

So, where to start? Obviously, he was a famous artist, most famously as a sculptor of monumental public nudes. His output was phenomenal and he created a huge number of sculptures and carvings, big and small for half a century. We are the proud owner of one of his little sculptures, given to me for my 40th birthday. It depicts a loving naked couple in flagrante delicto and proved too much for one house guest, who pronounced it "scandalous" and threw a towel over it for the duration of her stay. Llew would have been delighted.

Llew was an artist for the people, he was a public artist. You can find his large works from one end of the country to the other. Obviously, they are all over Christchurch, his home town (we regularly pass two of them in our regular walks - in the Botanic Gardens and Church Square, Addington). But I've also encountered one in the Auckland Botanic Gardens and one in Kaitaia, when I was up there on my 2014 CAFCA speaking tour.

That was a reunion of sorts, because I'd last seen it a quarter of a century earlier. In my second and last Railways job, as a 1987-91 freight yard worker, I dealt with Llew when he brought in that particular work to be sent by train to Kaitaia, So, there's another capacity in which I knew him - as a customer of my then employer. That sculpture is called Front Row Forward, which is ironic because Llew was no rugby fan and repeatedly put his body on the line during the 1981 Springbok Tour protests.

Nudes, Glorious Nudes

He favoured public settings for his works, not hidden away in art galleries or private collections. If he thought that the Christchurch City Council wasn't taking the hint quickly enough, he'd simply set up one of his works in the Square and dare the Council to buy it or remove it. And when I say that these are large works, I'm not kidding - for example, his Joy of Eternal Spring, which is on public display near a major Christchurch road, is 13 tonnes of solid concrete.

The other defining characteristic of Llew's works, big or small, is that they are nudes. Great big, voluptuous, bare arses in your face nudes (quite literally, in the case of Family Circle, which was placed in a Christchurch complex of pensioners' flats. "One resident complained: 'I look out of the window into a man's bare backside'" [Listener, 18/6/90, Bruce Ansley, "Shock Of The Nude"]). Llew was unrepentant about the public uproar that attended every one of his monumental nudes, none more so than the naked Christ he portrayed when commissioned to do the Stations of the Cross series for Christchurch's Catholic Cathedral.

As a compromise, he added a flimsy and temporary loincloth (that Cathedral, like its' Anglican counterpart, was wrecked by the February 2011 earthquake and I have no idea if Llew's sculptures adorning the interior walls survived). He saw such criticism as hypocritical, coming in the context of a sexualised culture saturated in the display and commodification of bodies and body parts.

Llew said in that 1990 Listener feature: "When you use the word 'naked' it always implies there's something showing. There's nothing really. We've all got a behind. It's not as if they have phalluses hanging all over them. In the end, I think it's prudery" (ibid.). The only other place I've ever seen such a large-scale celebration of the naked human body in all its glorious variety is in Oslo's amazing Frogner Park, which features more than 200 sculptures by Gustav Vigeland (put it on your bucket list).

Llew's was unashamedly an art of the heart, not of the head. "I think it's amazing the way intelligence is split up between academic and practical. I don't know anyone who is more practical than me. But I'm not academic. Not at all. What the hell's intelligence got to do with art? Just nothing. Compassion, feeling ... these things have got to be worth everything compared to intelligence" (ibid.).

Tony Fomison Major Influence

Llew did not do art at school, he didn't go to art school, or to university at all. He was entirely self-taught, an autodidact (I'd always wondered what that word meant). But he was heavily influenced and encouraged by another famous artist, Tony Fomison, who was both a friend and a neighbour. Unlike Llew, Tony had gone to art school. More importantly, he was from the working class, which is not the usual class origin of artists.

Tony was a friend of mine for a couple of decades, up until his death in 1990, aged only 50. And he was a very supportive member of CAFCA for years, right up until his death (my obituary of him is in Watchdog 63, April 1990). In 2017 I was invited to write a short piece about one of his paintings for the Christchurch Art Gallery's Bulletin. Here's an extract:

"And I chose it because it reminds me of Tony, who was a good friend for years (precisely because we lived in different worlds). For a brief period, I was a near neighbour at his Linwood family home and I kept in touch with his mother for decades. I knew Tony the artist - I had some fun with him and his partners in crime, Phil Clairmont and Allen Maddox (all three of them dead long before their time; Tony only made it to 50). I attended one of the painful Auckland sessions whereby Tony got his full body traditional Samoan tattoo, turning himself into a living Pacific artwork (the tattooist described the process to me as feeling like 'a hot iron up the arse')".

"I've kept the letters he wrote me, in his unique spidery hand and they form the most vivid record of the 'life of the artist'. My favourite is his description of the events which led to him being stripped of the residency at the Rita Angus Cottage in Wellington in the 80s. It was accompanied by a newspaper clipping headed "Man Hit With Machete" (guess who?). And I was there at the end - Llew Summers and I were among the pallbearers at his extraordinary three-day long Auckland funeral".

"Mainly, I knew Tony the political man (up until his 1990 death he was a member of the organisation that I have fronted for many decades). The man who got his ribs broken in a 1981 Springbok Tour protest in Auckland. The man who came on a 1970s' Christchurch protest against US bases with a homemade placard reading: 'Gay Liberation Front supports this march - so look out, us camps say 'No' to US camps'. Tony brought his own unique style to everything he did. 'I decided my best way to protest was through my painting'".

Tony Fomison was a very important person in Llew's life. He encouraged the young Llew, who was then a fulltime worker with a young family, to become an artist. Tony set up Llew's very first exhibition, in Christchurch, in the early 1970s. Christchurch is a small world. When I first met Llew, I spent the year 1979 living with Bill Rosenberg and Dianne Paine in their Linwood home. Llew and his partner Rose and their kids lived across the street. Tony, whom I'd known for several years by that stage, had permanently moved to Auckland earlier that decade - but his mother lived just along from Bill and Dianne and across the street from Llew and Rose.

So, Tony was a regular visitor to Linwood. I bought my current Addington home in the early 80s but still saw plenty of both Tony and Llew throughout that decade. I have a particularly vivid memory of a party I hosted here where Llew struggled, mainly successfully, to keep under control both Tony and his equally blotto artist mate, the formidable Allen Maddox (whom I'd never encountered before and whom I always subsequently referred to as the Mad Ox). It saddens me to realise that all three of them are now dead, long ago in the case of Fomison and Maddox.

Not Your Conventional Kiwi Family

The other major early influence in Llew's life was his family. His father, John Summers, was a writer and ran Christchurch's most famous bookshop for decades. Like son, like father - John was a CAFCA member for years (my obituary of him is in Watchdog 75, April 1994). His mother, Connie Summers, was the only woman imprisoned in New Zealand in World War 2 for the "crime" of being a pacifist and was also, albeit briefly, a CAFCA member decades later (my obituary of her is in Watchdog 120, May 2009).

"Summers was born into a large family under the authoritarian - dictatorial, he says - rule of his mother Connie and his father, John Summers. Both were fierce and fiercely independent, courting a Methodist faith rooted not in Sunday group worship but a staunch humanism, a strict, at times violent approach to parenting, and an open home to the alternative thinkers of the day" (Press, Your Weekend, 10/4/10, Sally Blundell, "Figuratively Speaking"). Llew grew up in a home full of art and books, and real live artists and writers. "The family dinner table was regularly shared with visiting writers and artists - Gordon Brown, Colin McCahon, Doris Lusk, Theo Schoon, John Coley, Tony Fomison" (ibid.).

The rift with his unbending mother was never healed - Llew and his partner Rose lived together but never got married. Mum didn't approve and wouldn't have Rose or her kids in the family home. Rose changed her surname to Summers by deed poll but that wasn't good enough for Mum. I remember my surprise when Llew turned up at a party at my place, because I knew that it clashed with a regular Summers' family gathering. He told me that Rose wasn't invited, so he didn't go, and came to my party instead. Connie Summers' reaction was seriously extreme and years out of date. I "lived in sin" with my first partner for 18 years and we encountered some of that sort of prejudice, but never from within our own families.

"When Uncle Llew began living with his partner Rose in 1977, Grandma refused to let her or her children into the house because they weren't married. She set this rule and she stuck to it until Rose's death. 'I think I would have been treated better if I was a criminal', Llew told me, 'if I'd been in prison or something like that, than living my own personal life'. He saw very little of his mother from that point on, and she never saw the home he and Rose built together. Officially, this rule was hers and Grandad's both, but he would sometimes sneak away to visit Llew and Rose. 'It says to me he had more warmth and more compassion than my mother', Llew said".

"Although he acknowledges her pacifism and politics as a major influence on his life - he was beaten in custody during the Springbok Tour - it's fair to say he still regards her with some cynicism to this day" (North & South, January 2018, John Summers, "Connie Summers: The Only NZ Woman To Be Jailed For Speaking Out Against WWII").

Fulltime Artist

Llew was a self-taught, self-supporting artist. When he started out, he held regular manual jobs and had a young family. He really did become a struggling artist when his wife left him with two very young kids to look after (one was only a few months old). For a time, he tried to make do with a series of housekeepers to look after the kids while he worked.

But after an increasing series of domestic disasters he took the plunge and went on the benefit as a solo father, which was a very rare thing in the 70s. But it gave him the chance to get more work done as an artist. In 1977, Rose and her daughter - who were neighbours of Llew's - moved in with him and his kids (he went off the benefit and back to the world of jobs). That was the period when I first met them.

In 1981 Llew decided to make his living as a fulltime sculptor. It was hard at first - when he won a major national prize and took the family to Wellington with him to accept it, they couldn't afford to fly, so they drove to Picton, sleeping on the beach at Kaikoura, and took the ferry. But he steadily developed a major reputation, his work rate was formidable and he spent nearly 40 years making a fulltime living as an artist, which is no mean feat in this country.

"In 1990 Llew and Rose bought a bargain section, cut in two by a paper road in McCormack's Bay. He built a large building for his bohemian woman, Rose, which was their home for several years while the house was being built, and which then became his workshop. To get to bed they went up a ladder and into the rafters where the bed, still remains" (family eulogy by Llew's three sisters, Faith Wright, Bronwen Summers & Ursula Ryan; delivered at the funeral by Bronwen).

To call it a "house" is not doing it justice - Llew's father, John, called it a "fairy castle". I've been there several times over the last few decades, for gatherings ranging from parties to exhibitions and, most recently, for Llew's funeral, and it has never ceased to amaze me. It sustained tens of thousands of dollars of damage in the 2010/11 quakes (mainly windows and roof tiles), all of which Llew fixed himself. In the scale of things in that seismic catastrophe, the damage to Llew's place was relatively minor.

Things took a tragic turn in the late 90s when Rose was diagnosed with brain cancer (it started as a sore shoulder). Becky and I visited her in the "fairy castle" in her very last few days - it remains one of the most harrowing of memories for both of us. She just made it to 49 before dying, in 1998. They had been together for 20 years.

Violence & Spirituality

It had not all been easy going. In 2002, Llew went public about his own domestic violence. "His partners and children were his victims, suffering black eyes and burst eardrums... Mr Summers told the Press the cycle of violence began early in his life and he found it a hard habit to shake. He lost one marriage because of it, and almost lost another loved partner with whom he shared many years (Rose). They were violent towards each other for half of that time before they sought help..." .

"'There was one time where I had hurt (her) and she went to the doctor. The doctor said: 'It can't go on like this'. 'There is nothing worse than the guilt and shame of hurting people who you love. But sometimes people don't see any other way of solving their problems. No-one wants to talk about it'. Mr Summers was initially reluctant to go to counselling or anger management but, in hindsight, he knows it saved him. For about 15 years, he has lived his life free of violence and he now enjoys a good relationship with his children" (Press, 22/11/02, Jarrod Booker, "Exhibition Tells Stories Of Violence").

Alone again, Llew travelled overseas for the first time in his life, looking at the work of other great sculptors and artists across Europe. It was after Rose's death and his European trip that his work became more overtly spiritual. He never resorted to violence again, and his spiritual beliefs were reflected in his wonderfully artistic funeral, which combined several renditions of "Amazing Grace" along with one of the South Island's very few cremations outside of a crematorium.

It was done on a family farm; the dying Llew had played a key role in every step of things like kiln construction. Llew was spiritual his entire life. "Llew's Christian faith, whilst not a church goer, remained strong with him throughout his life, a meal was never started without grace being said - a custom begun in our early lives" (family eulogy, ibid.).

For the last 12 years of his life, Llew's partner was fellow artist, Robyn Webster. And that's where things come full circle for me. Robyn is a neighbour of ours in our little one-block long Addington street. While she was living with Llew her house was rented out and Llew was her live-in maintenance man. In recent summers I regularly saw him at work, both inside and outside her house.

He once very proudly took me on a tour through it to show me his workmanship. Our relationship as friends and political comrades started as Linwood neighbours in 1979 and ended as Addington neighbours in 2019. Once Llew's estate is settled, the "fairy castle" is to be sold and Becky and I are expecting Robyn back in our little street as a neighbour.

Social Justice & Political Activism

"The other side of that rich upbringing was the big emphasis on social justice, something that was particularly strong on our mother's pacifist side of the family. This was a constant in Llew's life. Llew was a Lefty - a socialist - he strongly believed in pacifism and took part in numerous marches against numerous wars".

"He marched against the Vietnam War in the sixties, the 1981 Springbok Tour where he was arrested for obstruction of a carriageway and later for gluing the locks at Air NZ in the Square, who were carrying the teams. He was taken to the Police Station and assaulted by the Police; a court case ensued where the officer was ticked off! He and Rose were part of what became known as 'tent city' during the tour, setting their tent up in Latimer Square along with others as part of the protest. He marched against genetic engineering, against the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), against selling our water and he was a long-time supporter of the Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa".

"He also supported the Keep Our Assets (KOA) movement and the bid to get the (Christchurch City) Council to build Council housing before building a covered stadium. More recently he has become a strong supporter of the Palestinian people's struggle. Llew was immensely generous and many organisations benefited from donations or the gifting of sculptures for various auctions and raffles to raise money for causes he supported" (family eulogy, ibid.).

Which brings me to Llew the political activist. He hurled himself into the 1981 Springbok Tour protests with reckless disregard for his personal safety (all of the Summers family were involved, including his parents who were each arrested on several occasions). Llew was always keen to confront the powers that be in that particularly dark time in recent NZ history - after one arrest with umpteen others for blocking a road ("obstruction of a carriageway"), Llew didn't do what the rest of us did on such occasions and go home (I remember the cops winding up a holding cell full of classic 1980s' stroppy sheilas by telling them they were being released before us men so "that you can get home to cook Dad's tea").

No, he went straight to Cathedral Square and glued up the locks of the building housing Air New Zealand, which was transporting the Springboks. The cops were wise to him and had followed him and re-arrested him, bashing him up back at the cop shop for good measure. For a long time afterwards, I always addressed him as Glue Summers.

John Minto was the leader of the anti-tour campaign; decades later he married Llew's sister, Bronwen, meaning that Llew and John ended up as brothers-in-law. Much more recently John was a leading light in the former Mana Party - Becky and I went to a major post-quakes' exhibition of Llew's work at the "fairy castle". Flying proudly above all the sculptures and other art works was the Mana flag.

Most recently of all, Llew was a regular participant at various activities of Keep Our Assets (KOA) - from sitting through tedious City Council meetings; picketing inside those same meetings; picketing on the streets to protest the Council's plan to sell City Care, its works' department (KOA won that battle) to helping out in the 2016 Mayoral campaign of brother-in-law John, on behalf of KOA (Llew was too sick to be involved with John's 2019 Mayoral campaign and died before the election. John's report on that election campaign is elsewhere in this issue).

Veteran CAFCA Member

The already cited family eulogy mentions Llew as being a "long-time supporter" of CAFCA. He was much more than that - he was a paid-up member for the best part of 35 years, pretty much continuously from 1984 until his 2019 death. The family eulogy also emphasised his generosity - both CAFCA and me personally benefitted from that. Llew was a regular and very generous donor, not only to CAFCA but also to the CAFCA/ABC Organiser Account, which provides my income. Every year in the decade ending in 2014 he gave a generous donation to the Organiser Account.

When I say "he gave", I mean it literally. Llew didn't pay by cheque or online banking. He did it the real old school way - in cash, in person. And he was literally a big noter, invariably handing over a $100 note (which remained the only time I ever saw that particular denomination of bill). And he was prone to do so wherever he saw me, without warning or prompting. He handed me cash in public places ranging from the Cardboard Cathedral to the City Council Building's café.

He was one of a handful of CAFCA members who would turn up at the back door at home, without warning, to pay his sub in person (there are none of them left now). He turned up on a motorbike and a sports car on different occasions, usually wearing one of his eye-catching hats. He'd always stay for a chat and/or shake some oranges off our big orange tree (a much remarked upon rarity in Christchurch).

If he couldn't deliver the cash himself, he'd delegate - poor Robyn turned up at the back door one day, in pouring rain, and handed me the cash, saying "Llew said to give you this". It was always rather arbitrary what the donation was for - I'd ask him if it was for CAFCA or the Organiser Account, he'd always reply: "You decide". If he was feeling mischievous, he'd say: "Do what you like with it. Have a piss-up!" (I hasten to add that I never did).

Force Of Nature

I'll leave it to the family eulogy to sum him up, both negative and positive. "...Llew was not a saint - he was opinionated, argumentative, belligerent, judgemental, with a fierce anger and, in earlier times, violent, until he went to anger management in the 1990s. He could be frustrating, he could get very involved in other people's projects which he usually wanted to happen tomorrow and he found it hard to let go, sometimes it was 'my way or the highway'" (ibid.). I have to say that I never experienced any of that side of Llew, all my dealings with him in the 40 years I knew him were completely positive.

Back to the family eulogy. "He was a great supportive brother, brother-in-law and friend, and Faith, Ursula and I (Bronwen) have enjoyed many meals in the wonderful house and garden, and many, many, conversations about music, art, literature, gardens, gardening, politics and tramping. Many of those conversations were around the coffee table that he'd made that was almost always covered six high with books ... Our brother was, of course, a marvellous sculptor and creator, energetic, and pushy... He was a loving and caring father... He also had enormous compassion for those not as fortunate in life as he was".

"Llew was warm and welcoming, gregarious, and a great tease, he used to say 'I had grandchildren so that I could tease them'... Llew's energy was legendary. He was immensely driven and passionate about life and, most importantly, he lived it to the full and that is how we will remember him" (ibid.). And that's exactly how I remember Llew in all the capacities that I knew him: artist, friend, neighbour, activist, CAFCA member. He was a force of Nature, who lived life very much to the full and achieved so much.

LLOYD WHITTEN

- Murray Horton

Lloyd was a CAFCA member from 1995-2010. He invariably included a donation with his sub. Plus, he was a regular donor to the CAFCA/ABC Organiser Account, which provides my income. He was a member jointly with his long-time partner, Bertha Allison and they were among the hardy few that attend CAFCA Annual General Meetings. They had known each other since the 1940s and became partners in the 70s, after both their respective spouses had died. This is an extract from my obituary of Bertha in Watchdog 124, (August 2010):

"By the mid-1970s Lloyd Whitten was both a widower and retired. 'Bertha suggested to Lloyd that he had productive years left, and might enjoy applying for another appointment. He followed this up and was appointed to the Veterinary Department of the Pertanian University of Malaya at Kuala Lumpur. In his turn, Lloyd suggested to Bertha that, as her retirement from (the University of) Canterbury was imminent, and there was a need for a lecturer in histology over there, she might join him in Kuala Lumpur'.

'Bertha did a crash course in histology... and was eventually accepted for the position and spent the first two years of her retirement in a new field. She and Lloyd were active in the Malay Nature Society and made field trips into the surrounding jungle looking at the local fauna and flora, including looking for tigers, before returning to New Zealand by 1983. This was the beginning of the 30 years when Lloyd and Bertha were together in their retirement years' (Val Wisely eulogy for Bertha Allison)". It was an incredibly active retirement for both.

Lloyd was good friends with another couple of veteran CAFCA members, Norman and Betty Roberts. They had all been young together in Sydney (all three of them were Aussies) before work brought them to Christchurch, where they were all to spend the rest of their lives. Here's an extract from my obituary of Betty Roberts, in Watchdog 119 (February 2009):

"At her memorial meeting a 92-year-old friend from those days told us how he and Betty had 'danced, danced, danced all night' at one of those (Sydney University) Balls. In his eulogy, Norman brought the house down when he replied: 'As you can see, I had my rivals'" (Lloyd was the "rival". Kate Dewes' obituary of Norman Roberts is in Watchdog 126, May 2011).

I only ever knew Lloyd as an old man (his first retirement was in the 1970s, when I was in my 20s) and he didn't join CAFCA until he was nearly 80. In recent years, I used to see him at functions organised by leading Christchurch peace activist Kate Dewes, which I attended in my Anti-Bases Campaign capacity. We always used to have a chat at those. He was in his late 90s when I last saw him (he lived to 102, making him the oldest person ever commemorated in Watchdog). He actually died in 2018 but I didn't find that out until a year later. He was the last of that circle of remarkable old CAFCA members - Bertha Allison, Norman and Betty Roberts - to go. Vale, Lloyd.

LLOYD WHITTEN

1916 - 2018

- Nick Whitten & Mary Grant

Lloyd was born in Kempsey, New South Wales and graduated with a degree in Veterinary Science from the University of Sydney. He came to New Zealand in 1941 to join the staff of the Wallaceville Animal Research Station as a parisitologist. In particular, he was associated with research into hydatid disease, then a serious problem but now effectively eradicated.

Lloyd spent most of his career at Wallaceville apart from a two-year period in Canada where he obtained his PhD studying parasites in reindeer, and a United Nations secondment to Turkey in 1965-67 to establish a Sheep and Goat Disease Laboratory. After his formal retirement he taught at a University in Kuala Lumpur.

Lloyd was closely associated with the New Zealand Veterinary Journal at its inception and was Assistant Editor from 1952 to 1969 and Editor from 1970 to 76. He also edited the 1971 edition of Diseases of Domestic Animals in New Zealand, essential car glove box literature for all New Zealand veterinarians until the advent of the Internet and social media. In recognition of his work he was made a Life Member of the New Zealand Veterinary Association in 2007.

After his final retirement he moved to Christchurch to be with Bertha Allison, another parasite expert, whom he had known before either were first married. He joined CAFCA at that time. He was also closely associated with other active CAFCA members he had known for a long time, Norm and Betty Roberts, and Kate Dewes, whose father Harry was a long-time veterinary colleague of his. Lloyd was fit and healthy all his long life. He was living in his own home except for the last ten months when he moved to Wesley Care. He died peacefully there a few weeks after his 102nd birthday.