Muriel Moody

Muriel Carrick Moody (nee Wilson) was a New Zealand commercial artist, welfare worker, sculptor and potter.

She was born in Whangārei, the second of six children to John Wilson and Mildred Carrick Proude. Her mother was a talented pianist and loved to sketch, and encouraged her children to develop their talents.

Moody attended Palmerston North Girls’ High School, and after finishing school, worked in the city as a commercial artist while studying art. In the mid-1930s, Moody moved to Christchurch and became head of advertising for Ballantynes department store. There she met other artists such as Rita Angus and Louise Henderson, and took lessons in etching from Dorothy Turner.

In 1941, Moody joined the British YMCA War Service and spent seven years in England, Egypt, Sri Lanka and India setting up residential, recreation and welfare clubs for servicewomen. In 1946 she worked in Japan to open clubs for women of the Occupation Forces, contributing to the establishment of the Muriel Wilson hostel. While there, she took the opportunity to travel extensively, observing craftspeople at work–and potters in particular.

Contracting tuberculosis, she lived in Sydney for a year receiving treatment. Returning to New Zealand in 1948, she met public servant Clive Robert (Bob) Moody whom she married the following year. They settled in Days Bay, Eastbourne, where Moody set up kilns and began to specialise in pottery. In the 1950s she attended ceramics classes at the Petone Technical College along with ceramicists such as June Black, Mary Hardwick-Smith, Lee Thompson, Roy Cowan and Juliet Peter.

Moody explored ceramics as an alternate way to produce sculpture, as opposed to cast metals. Few people were producing ceramic sculptures at the time and many of her techniques, particularly with the larger pieces, she invented herself, building her figures around a series of steel rods or armatures which were removed when the clay was able to stand up by itself.

Aside from ceramics, Moody also cast bronze sculptures, and in her later years painted and decorated the pottery of others; just before her death, she also began to experiment with batik methods on silk fabric.

Moody's organisational skills led her to the position of the inaugural president of the New Zealand Society of Potters. In addition, in the late 1960s and early 1970s she was an executive member of the New Zealand Crafts Council, and for many years was involved with setting up exhibitions for the Society of Potters, the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts and the Crafts Council.

Moody died at the Lower Hutt Hospital in 1991. Her works of art are held in various private collections in New Zealand, Britain, Switzerland and the United States, as well as in several New Zealand galleries and institutions such as the Dowse Art Museum and the Suter Art Gallery.

See also:

• Moody, Muriel Carrick | Dictionary of New Zealand Biography | Te Ara