Henri Teris

Member of the Armidale Men’s Shed
Woodworker
Artist
Sculptor

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In March 2021, we sat down for a quick chat with Henri…..

When did you first start coming along to the Men’s Shed?

My wife and I came to live in Armidale in 2012 to be close and see our grandsons growing up. During my first visit to the Markets in the Mall, I met a retired architect, just like me, selling Rotary tickets in aid of Polio. He suggested I might be interested in the activities of the Men’s Shed and meet some of the locals. So I did.

What do you enjoy spending time doing when you’re here?

I do many things. Build some furniture for the boys, work on a sculpture, talk to others about what they are doing, building a table top, repairing a chair. Just being there is nice, the smell of wood, the sounds of a busy workshop, the Thursday lunch.
It’s a place to relax, to be busy. To spend time away from home getting to know some people, away from working in your garage, alone.

What one thing would you like people to know about the Armidale Men’s Shed?

New people coming to Armidale who are interested in working with wood and other communal activities would find the Men’s Shed very rewarding.

AND A FEW GET-TO-KNOW-YOU QUESTIONS…

Is your name, Henri, short for anything?

I was christened Henrikas, the Lithuanian version.

Did you pursue a particular career path?

I was a refugee kid who came to Australia 1n 1949. I did all the usual things refugees kids do - go to school, learn English, discover girls, think about the future. But first we needed to own some things: a pair of shoes, a house. Three of us - my mother, my brother and I - got jobs for 6 years and saved to buy a house.
By then I was interested in art and architecture. I spent a year at the Julian Ashton Art school in Sydney, started painting, went to galleries etc. and eventually enrolled to study architecture at UNSW.
After graduating I worked a few years in Sydney, spent 6 years in London and West Africa and then set up my own practice in Australia in Balmain, Sydney. I spent the next thirty or so years working happily away until in the nineties, when my Elephant drawing board was superseded by a computer screen. It was then I decided to close my practice. Over the next ten or twelve years I got involved in Sydney’s art world. I joined societies, painted, exhibited, spend two years at the Tom Bass Sculpture School in Erskineville and then came to Armidale.

YOU ARE SKILLED IN DIFFERENT FORMS OF ART - DO YOU HAVE A SPECIALITY?

Sculpture. I did exhibit from time to time. I also attended the Tom Bass art school, learning of a sculpting method known as maquette, (French word for “scale model”). A maquette is a scale model or rough draft of an unfinished sculpture. (An equivalent term is bozzetto, from the Italian word for "sketch".) A maquette is used to visualize and test forms and ideas without incurring the expense and effort of producing a full-scale piece.
I have a specific reason for doing each sculpture and I create them for my own pleasure, not for market or to sell.

DO YOU HAVE HOBBIES or interests OUTSIDE OF THE ARTS?

I started painting when I was about fourteen or fifteen (the sculpture came later). I stopped painting about a year or so ago. In recent years I mainly do sculptures in wood.
A great part of my life has always been sculpture and art. I’ve been sculpting for many years.
I have many friends around Australia from the art world, we get together and attend galleries and exhibitions.
Also, the usual music (music is always playing in the background at home), reading, mainly history and biography and potboilers like John Grisham and Lee Childs.
Movies and soccer on TV and watching the boys play.
Visiting places like the Flinders Ranges in South Australia - I walked through the ranges with a group of friends and was later inspired to produce a number of paintings of the area.