AN ex-girlfriend from Penang recently sent me her photo taken in front of my nine-foot tall wooden sculpture (done in 1978) placed at the entrance to USM’s Library.
It must have been taken circa 1985 and a bit grainy. Now at 62, she used the photo to reconnect and reminisce our fine moments together.
Yes I recall the iconic sculpture that was copied into bronze by my former lecturer the late Prof. Dr Redza Piyadasa in the mid-80s.
Then it was ascertained that doing a Fine Arts major in Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) during our time (1975 – 1978) was the most difficult hurdle compared to getting admitted to other majors.
Yes, it was but I considered myself one of the eight lucky few. We did have some privileges not enjoyed by other undergraduates, thanks to the small number.
But then, getting to be accepted as one was not easy. One had to get the minimum of a B or upon appeal at least a strong C grade in the First Year final exam to get acceptance. Each undergraduate applying to be a Fine Arts major also had to submit a portfolio containing an art background, possibly a list of exhibitions, contests or prizes won and better still some photos of recent works.
I was lucky to have kept a few photos of my artworks (batik paintings) from group exhibition of 1971 (Kuching) and those from my one-man show of 1974 (Methodist Secondary School, Sibu).
Furthermore those photos boosted my lecturers’ confidence in me as I discovered later that mine was the only one with such contents in our submitted portfolios. Others probably sent the list of art contests they won which I had only one, a statewide drawing contest in 1972.
Due to the stringent requirements, there were only eight people selected to major in Fine Arts for the 1976/77 session (second year).
I was the sole Sarawakian doing Fine Arts and also the first son of the Land of Hornbill to major in Fine Arts in a local university. The others included a Chinese girl surnamed Chong just fresh from school and the rest Malay men, mostly in their 30s who went to varsity after having taught for a number of years in school as teachers’ college graduates – and most were weak in the English language.
Chong and I were the only ones who had attended two years of Form Six and were both multilingual. That gave us great advantage when it came to lectures which were mostly in English as were the reference books.
Our group was therefore an exclusive few and having free access to the Painting and Drawing Studio, Photography Studio and Darkroom, Printing Studio as well as the Sculpture Studio.
Because of my Sarawak origin, I was asked by our sculpture lecturer Dr Peter Gelenser, a Hungarian, to join his team doing the bust of Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Alhaj, as it was commissioned by the Sarawak government to do so. So I was part of the team doing a Plaster of paris molding of Malaysia’s first Prime Minister’s face at his home in Tanjung Bungah in Penang. The affable Tunku in his white round neck China made T-shirt and a checked sarong had a short conversation with us over tea and cream crackers before we did the molding.
“Dari mana?” he asked me.
“Dari Sarawak Tunku,” I replied to which he said, “Tak jauh.” His typical logat utara or northern accent was “tak juh”. Dr Gelenser, who also did a bust of JFK in marble (1964), did the final touch-up of the Tunku’s bust in marble which was put up at the Bangunan Tunku Abdul Rahman also known as Bangunan Bapa Malaysia in Petra Jaya, Kuching that was opened in August, 1976 – I went inside the building once long time ago and had a peek at the bust, a small reminder of our rendezvous at Tunku’s residence at Tanjung Bungah
