Art & Design
Graphic Artist
Before I decided I wanted to be a writer, I was a graphic artist on a comfortable wage at Mambo Graphics in Sydney. When I moved to Brisbane in 1994 with my partner, Smash, I was six months pregnant and without an income. Smash site managed the music festival Livid that year, and after that, he had no income either. We were renting a house from a friend of a friend, had no car, little furniture and a baby on the way. In desperation, Smash got some work driving an event hire truck. He hated it, but while driving all over South East Queensland, he had an idea that we could start an event management company! Yay!
In Brisbane, I did some freelance work for Mambo, trotted out the odd business card or two, but really, I was more interested in looking after our big, bouncing baby, Henry. With my first son, Jackson, I hadn’t had the chance to be a stay at home mum, and I realised we’d both missed out on something good. Along with all the bonding, there were periods of intense boredom and monotony, a lot less money, but it was way less stressful, and I loved not having to stick to a schedule: Who cared if it took me six hours to pack up and leave the house to do the grocery shopping? It wasn’t like I had anything pressing to do (other than make sure there was a hot meal on the table for my trucker hubby).
Fabric Designs
Inevitably, I got the itch to be creative again, in ways other than rearranging the furniture or making sure the tea towels were colour co-ordinated. I wrote and illustrated a children’s book, as one does; it got rejected by one publisher, which I read as a clear sign I should give up immediately. Next up, I thought I’d try some fabric designs. It was exciting being creative again; I put a lot of time and effort into the designs, but for some bizarre reason, no-one came knocking on the door asking to buy them. Fair to say, ‘Putting myself out there’ has never been a strong suit. Sales, marketing, promotion– ugh. Some of my fabric designs currently in a box under the house:
Tile Painting
Then I tried my hand at painting tiles – unique feature tiles, different to anything I’d seen in a tile shop. A shop in Paddington, Brisbane happily took them, and one day, when I popped in to see how things were going, I noticed four of my tiles were missing from the shelf. Huzzah! Sales! My excitement was short-lived, however. It turned out, they’d mysteriously disappeared from the shop. Wasn’t the owner’s fault. Some ‘robber’ must have taken them. The owner refused to meet my eye and also to compensate me. I had no contract. Soon after, I gave up on hand painting tiles.
Some of my tile designs that mysteriously disappeared from a shop:
Wall Hangings
Then I got into the idea for Wall Hangings, hand-painted designs on canvas in large format. Rather than see another load of my arty stuff build up downstairs, I decided to bite the bullet and have an exhibition; then I’d take orders and sell all the hangings and rub my hands together with glee. I got a grant from Arts Queensland and hired a publicist and got cracking. The exhibition went well, in a party sense, we all got shickered on bubbly wine (thank you Arts Qld). I’d made up an Order Form in Excel to cope with the sales rush, my friend, Jen was looking, after all, that; she had a clipboard and everything. At the end of the night, I remembered to ask Jen how things had gone (somewhere in the course of the evening, my focus had segued from sales to dancing). Jen rummaged around the couch cushions and pulled out her clipboard.
‘One,’ she said hiccupping.
One.
Better than none. Oh, so much better than none. (And thank you so much lovely, kind brother, of Meg).
By this point in my trajectory, I was getting an inkling that self-promotion might have a place. I steeled myself to work on sales. I’d invested a lot of time and materials in the wall hangings and couldn’t bear to see another project flop. About a month later, I was standing in a mid-century furniture store in Woolloongabba when the idea hit me. I could sell the wall hangings on commission through the store! The owner of Addvintage agreed to take most of the designs because they fitted in with their vibe. I was pumped. A month later, the owner rang me to tell me that the store had burned down overnight, and all my hangings were gone. I am not making this up. This time, however, I was offered the full price for the art out of the insurance money. So yeah, I sold my artwork, but it doesn’t exist. Some of my wall hanging designs that burned to a crisp in a showroom in Woolloongabba.