Gippslandia Issue 4: Release the beast.

Illustrated BY Si Ballam

Do you make, move, do, dream, create, paint, sculpt, write, rub, press, watch, listen, design, illustrate, photograph or sing? Do you express creativity inwards or outwards? Is your brain constantly in a battle between the world you see and the world that could be? If you answered, “yes” to any of the above – you may be a ‘Creative Beast’.
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I threw the rulebook out the door when I started TOPshelf in 2016. I became a mentor with a goal to hunt out other creatives with artistic “soul goals” and equip them with the tools to realise their goal. A ‘soul goal’ is the thing you’d do if you were faced with dying tomorrow.

When hunting, I found and encouraged my creative beasts to be in a constant state of flux. They’re completely free to be their most authentic expression of themselves. Liberated to change themselves and their beliefs at any time. Society’s stereotypical outlook on gender, roles, responsibilities and labels don’t exist in our TOPshelf world. This way we encourage the creative beasts that roam Gippsland to roar for our right to create the best possible world.

Creative Beast: Ash Neill
Species: Graphic Designer
Description: Rigorous, organised, fluid, calm, big heart, condenser, autonomous
Soul Goal: Altering The Design
BIG win: Co-Director of TOPshelf

Ash is a graphic designer with a massive interest in visual branding and its psychological influence. He fell in love with design in high school after completing a project on creating a faux brand. Ever since, it’s become Ash’s passion to create well-executed brand identity designs for a large range of clients.

His soul goal was to rebuild his portfolio after feeling a bit chewed-up by the TAFE system. Ash developed the TOPself program branding and various other projects, and is now extrapolating that into creating intelligent designs for a small community group. He is further demonstrating that altering the design of a business can shift the cultural landscape of that community into a place of visually pleasing aesthetics.

Creative Beast: Jeremy Kasper
Species: Fine Art / Street Artist
Description: Dynamic, intentional, thorough, observant, builder, perpetual motion
Soul Goal: Reclaim Our Lanes
BIG Win: Regional Art Victoria $15k Community Art Grant 2017

Trained in classical French cuisine in Canada and qualified as a Red Seal Chef, Jeremy has had an extensive, 20-year, cheffing career, with his menus and dishes showcasing fresh, seasonal and colourful ingredients to create art on a plate. In 2015, Jeremy decided to change career to pursue his passion for the arts at RMIT, graduating with a Diploma Of Visual Arts and continuing into an Advanced Diploma.

Recently, Jeremy has been working on his solo exhibition, Inertia, which is an exploration of landscape in motion.

Since 2014, Jeremy has been producing commissioned street art murals on walls and private residences. The murals are illustrative and colourful – providing blank walls a new lease on life.

Through TOPshelf Jeremy introduces his Reclaim Our Lanes Project, which aims to connect the community and youth through art. The project creates murals in Wellington Shire inspired by local people, their stories and cultural history. The project aims to improve the vibrancy of the street, remove unwanted graffiti and tags, and replace it with works of art. TOPshelf has helped Jeremy in his bid to gain funding through grants and donations to assist in material and paint costs to realise this project.

Creative Beast: Abbey Tucker + Emma Hellings
Species: Performers
Description: Synchronicity, intuitive, fire and air, movement, curious, daring, wonder
Soul Goal: Silent Soulful Sounds
BIG Win: Booking two workshops

Abbey and Emma are two groovy sunshine bringers, near to emerge from the other side of VCE. Their life aim is to touch souls, effect change, and make this world a more beautiful place. Abbey and Emma love people and are totally intrigued by the ways in which people connect and the psychology of human connections. Their hope is to allow people the opportunity to be one with each other in the beautiful realm of creativity and inspire. ‘Communication’ is so overused these days that we find people ‘bubble’ over the top of shallow, insignificant small talk.

Abbey and Emma’s exhibition connects people amongst the depths in a beautifully raw, authentic silence. They’ll gather a range of people, from all different walks of life, and ask them to communicate about an
indicated topic without the use of sound. They’ll push the barriers of body language and expression and demolish the predisposed stereotypes of ‘vibing’ with a total stranger. In short, they don’t play in the rock pools of communication, but dive in the depths.

Creative Beast: Kaitlyn Francis
Species: Photographer
Description: Unstoppable force, old soul, academic, self-taught, sponge, co-creator
Soul Goal: A Bag Of Skittles
BIG Win: Nailing two solo exhibitions and Winner of Wellington Youth Art Prize

A contemporary artist, Kaitlyn explores the nature of not only her own, but others identities, and the impact that has on their relationships. Currently completing her VCE certificate, Kaitlyn’s work reflects the way a teenager’s mind works. Exploring the experiences of today’s youth, including the pressures of schooling, relationships (platonic and romantic) and the looming fear of the future once school is completed.

Adopted as a six-month-old, her biological mother passed away in 2007, leaving Kaitlyn to navigate complicated relationships, fears of abandonment and quite strange coping mechanisms. A Bag Of Skittles, Kaitlyn’s first solo show at Briagolong Art Gallery, explored what it meant to live rurally, the idolisation of the ‘city’, and the lifestyles and architecture of the people that live in juxtaposed regions.
The show marked a stepping stone in Kaitlyn’s fine art photography career, giving her a confidence boost that photography is a possible career, not just a hobby.

Her recent solo exhibition, Zenskost, at Brunswick Street Gallery, explored how most of the people she surrounds herself with are feminine appearing or female identifying and how their surroundings reflect their personalities. Every photograph is a subconscious reflection of her life and the people she chooses to associate with.

Creative Beast: Grace Ware
Species: Artist
Description: Ephemeral, rebel, firecracker, problem solver, inventor, bold, badass
Soul Goal: Finding The Lion
BIG Win: Featured on Instagram, @dopelemonmusic

Grace is a self-taught artist from Traralgon, who displays a surrealist and quirky flair in her illustrations. Her artwork explodes with bold detail, through line work and tone, giving life to her offbeat and eccentric
characters. Grace paints how she feels using her distinct band of characters and symbolism. Grace’s surf punk-inspired style and thought-evoking graphics make her a distinctive young artist emerging from the Valley.

Grace stands by the Frida Kahlo quote, “Surrealism is the magical surprise of finding a lion in a wardrobe, where you were ‘sure’ of finding shirts”. Grace consistently strives to create a lion in my wardrobe – one that will disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. The dream is to bring a mighty lion to my wardrobe of wearable denim art. With the help of the Alt_Art collective community and mentors Grace has a strong force behind her to learn, experiment and bloom as a young regional artist.

Creative Beast: Tara Cornell
Species: Watercolor artist
Description: Healer, entrepreneur, hunter and gatherer, survival, inspirer, obsessive
Soul Goal: Adventures Of Tara’s Art
BIG Win: Nailing a residency at the Foundry

Adventures Of Tara’s Art is a Sale-based watercolourist that promotes healing via therapeutic artworks. After pursuing many different careers, Tara has finally begun chasing her passion in art through her business and selling works through various stores in Gippsland, including the Foundry in Bairnsdale and the Yinnar General Store.

Growing up, Tara was always told that she couldn’t be a successful artist and had to choose a ‘proper career’. Now, she’s defying the naysayers having started her business; selling her cards and art. For Tara star constellations and galaxies are integral to her being. Tara’s Aunt taught her art therapy and to heal from life’s troubles through art. Tara now uses this for herself, as well as healing others. The manipulation and flow of the watercolour on paper is one of the most calming things to watch and do.

Colours also help Tara self-reflect her moods, whether she’s angry (red) or calm (blue/purple) or happy (turquoise). Reflecting emotions through art conveys that emotion to others. Tara’s art describes beauty and healing, and needs to be shared.

Gippslandia Issue 3: Rising again

Illistration by Joel Berend & Si Billam

To turn your occupation into “art” is the highest compliment you can earn, but to have “art” as an occupation is one of the dirtiest things you can utter.
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Why do we turn art into a dirty word just as our children start their metamorphosis into adulthood and begin exploring identity and sexuality through art? You may remember the moment you stopped doing something that made you really happy. It may have gone something like this: “You can’t sing”, “You can’t paint”, “You can’t dance” or “You shouldn’t talk so loud”. When you see someone expressing themselves and they kind of suck, you cringe and feel embarrassed for them. Not because they’re embarrassing, but as you feel insecure by the idea of you in their place. This moment is called, “I could never do that. What would people think?!”

The haunting pain caused by society clipping our fledgling artists, as they start to spread their wings, often comes from the most beautifully complicated place – protecting the people we love. Our primal herd mentality has told us that standing out can get you killed. Moving away from the pack makes you vulnerable. It’s real basic ‘fight or flight’ stuff. Artists don’t stay with the pack – we stray. We hunt different perspectives on the world, ourselves and our existence. It begins as “instinctual”, but soon we roam knowingly. We are observers and the people that ask questions. Society, I believe, instinctively hurts or hinders young artists in an effort to protect them from what could cause temporary isolation from the group. We think we are “saving” our little wildebeest from getting mauled by a lion or worse, exposing a weakness in the herd, or even worse, challenging the status quo or leaders of the pack. But this unconscious thought process is based on the assumption that the artist feels the same embarrassment others do when faced with being uncomfortable or being vulnerable in society’s eye.

My friend, the difference is that we artist’s “practice”. We condition ourselves to the pain of humiliation and failure, because like an athlete needs to repeatedly damage their muscles so they repair stronger, so do we too get stronger. I don’t believe in failure anymore. Doing something different and sucking in a public way is the fastest way to improve. The lion can come at me and I’ll kick him in the balls. As an artist, I have increase how uncomfortable my expression makes you feel. Moving up the scale we become more comfortable with ourselves and our battles with the demons in our mind become less obvious. Transforming shit art into the complete suspension of reality. Accessing and activating the deepest levels of emotions makes our art unforgettable. We can show and inspire the herd to new or greener pastures.

Writing for this paper has changed my life. It’s connected me to you, my readers, and made space in my mind as I am purging my soul onto this page. Tim and John from Gippslandia had the power to clip my wings, but instead they’ve held my hand, making sure I didn’t slip and fall through the cracks. I write for Gippslandia as a volunteer, just like 95% of my work here in my native lands. I choose to write because I believe what this paper stands for is important. As a bonus I get 10 hours of writing practice every couple of months. I know I’ll be able to nail paid gigs in the future now that I’ve tested the waters and not died. Getting paid to write is what, my friends, I call a “soul goal”. If you’d asked me, what was the lion that stalked me six months ago, I would’ve said having my writing published for the world to judge. Now in my third outing, I’m totes chill about it.

I know my biggest fear as an artist is asking to be paid to do my art – knowing I’ve chosen to live life apart from the safety of the herd. It’s this fear, combined with my “do or die trying” attitude, that cost me my studio.

As much as I loved my Main Street life, I can’t grieve about its failure as a business model as its death provided the fertiliser to grow something truly beautiful – TOPshelf. Just after Gippslandia was first published I opened my studio doors to the wandering creative beasts that roam Gippsland in search of their own kind. I started a not-for-profit, The BIG Picture Space Inc., to take them in at no cost, like Gippslandia took me in. I shared openly with them, as I share with you. I passed on the learnings of my 10 years worth of survival skills for life on the fringe.

What began as six artists in Sale has now spread to over 30 in a region roaming from Traralgon to Lake Tyres in only a couple of months, with more joining every week. The badge system I first developed was based around simple to-do lists of how not to get eaten by lions, has now evolved into a tool to lead the fight for a full-blown art education revolution.

Gippsland is huge, but unless you have grown to fit the frequently conservative country mould, there isn’t a lot of room for you to express and explore your identity, sexuality, ideas, value system and goals. We know our regional people have incredible creativity and a solid work ethic, but from the New South Wales border to Melbourne there’s a desert of creative education opportunities and artistic pathways. Until now. Now you can be TOPshelfed by me.

I have tested my ideas and connected the unexpected, focused minds and kick started careers. Proving the gamification of learning works. Helping regional emerging, established and elite artists has totally consumed my life and their stories of completely surrendering to the arts, after years of fighting to stay in line has only fuelled the fire burning in my heart.

Over the last six months I’ve helped my creative creatures develop concepts, build exhibitions, gain grants and even full-time employment in their creative fields, and self-publish entire bodies of work. Now, my dear reader, the time has come for me to face my lion head on. I’m coming back to the safety of my herd to ask for help.

I’ve hunted and gathered a tribe of locally-sourced creatives, graphic designers, coders and artists to birth a totally new badass TOPshelf system. Our next phase is to take this bad boy online to the people. Users will be able to subscribe to our compassionate, but intense, step-by-step badge system to help them get from concept to realisation of their desired soul goal. We will arm you with a mean set of tools, sweet hookups to local resources, networks and grant opportunities.

Luckily, I was able to be fed and be watered by Regional Arts Victoria and Pozible, Australia’s largest crowdfunding platform, sheltered by Federation Uni, Churchill, in their new creative village and loved by The VRI and FLOAT as I have worked to create a campaign to raise the $35,000 needed to launch a new breed of art education for Gippslanders. If you have ever taken comfort in my words, have been inspired to create more art or understand a friend or family member a little better, you now have a chance to really help me to help others. To take your hand, leave the herd and chase your soul goal as we face the lions together.

Regardless of whether you donate or not, for the short time we’ve had together I’d love for you to fold this paper and walk away knowing you’re an artist, constantly working on the greatest masterpiece ever created – you.

Every day we make decisions on how we look, feel and see the world. To be a “practicing” artist you just have to add a simple question in front of every decision – have I lived my life in fear? Once every action has a conscious thought behind it we start actively choosing the life we want. Will you continue to follow the person in front or stray?

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Gippslandia loves having PollyannaR’s passionate and personal contributions in our newspaper every issue. We want the most vibrant Gippsland creative community possible, to see Gippslandians pursuing their artistic ambitions, so we implore you to support the TOPshelf Pozible campaign at rav.pozible.com/project/topshelf-1 before it closes on July 2nd.

Gippslandia Issue 2: Climbing Mount Elite.

Illistration Si Billam

I’m new to this art thing. I’ve studied photography for 10 years, but that largely meant learning how to use Photoshop to digitally manipulate photos of women to fulfil unrealistic expectations.
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There are elite retouchers who specialise on manipulating every element of the human body. I’ve met a lady whose one role was perfecting the ‘silky wave’ look for hair commercials. She’d work over 50 hours on getting the right amount of shine to each strand of hair. I didn’t have the skills or motivation to progress past being an average re-toucher, let alone an elite one. My motivation is making photos that help change perceptions of the world into something more understandable and kinder.

At the start of this year, I launched two programmes: #TOPshelf17 at The BIG Picture Studio and Fire Stokers at VRI. Over the next six months, I‘m taking a bunch of artists of different levels and mediums on the hike of their lives, while also helping them realise a body of work. We’ll be using a system that includes knock-off Scout badges to guide them through the steps required – from concept to exhibition. They’ll be equipped with the Swiss Army knife of knowledge that I’ve acquired over past five years of being lost while mountaineering the art world.

As someone that previously had no knowledge of art, I can tell you, it seems very complicated. Art, the scene not the practice, appears to have some very rigid hierarchies. I feel that most artists can be sorted into five categories: emerging, established, elite, academic and underground. If you don’t agree with me, cool, let’s meet at a coffee shop, discuss it and you can convince me otherwise.

The Emerging artist is the hiker who announces on Facebook that they’re quitting their job to climb Mt Everest. With enthusiasm, they raise a donation for the local village and then travel to Base Camp, where they get hypothermia and have to travel home while wondering what went wrong.

Established is the emerging hiker who decides to absorb that initial loss, learns from the mistakes and then creates a massive blog showcasing their new training strategy. Two years later, they’re back at Everest, revisiting the villagers, only to make it halfway up the mountain.

The Elite hiker finally reaches the summit after 10 years of training and then turns their blog into a bestselling book, which outlines how awesome they are.

The Academic hiker will never set a toe on the mountain, but studies everything about the mountain and knows every inch of the map they‘ve carefully crafted after the years of research. They write guidebooks for the elite to study to be successful hikers.

The Underground hiker is the Sherpa that carries all three hiker’s gear and tells the academic everything they know after living a life on the mountain.

I consider myself an emerging, borderline established, artist, as I know what I’m doing most of the time, yet my modesty in my lack of skill and confidence can be endearing. People invest in my work, motivated by a mix of desire, love and wanting to see me fight the fight. Being an emerging photographer is the most painful thing I’ve ever done. Well, it’s actually all I’ve ever done. Yet, I feel I’ve climbed part of the mountain and am on the downward slope, my burning carves a distant memory.

As an emerging artist in Gippsland, you have, few teachers, no money, no idea, no one to talk to and nowhere to really exhibit anything (though big things are happening in 2017). Those close to you kind of want you to fail because they’re sick of seeing you hurting for a seemingly impossible goal, and you can’t sufficiently express to them why the goal is so important to you. Regardless, you’re rapidly learning
tough lessons and discovering the processes and ideas that presented you the best result.

To transition from an emerging to established artist, you’ve hopefully found a guide or two, maybe a first aid officer or someone to carry you over the really hairy bits. Whatever life throws at you, you’ll only trip but never fall, as it’s much more manageable compared to the shit show you’ve previously overcome. You don’t make the same mistakes twice in the art world.

Once becoming an established artist you can continue to maintain your position on the plateau and have a totally badass career. It’s a considerable achievement, yet some artists will continue to push to improve, to be elite, preferring to live off trail mix, than feast at the table of mediocracy.

For elite artists, there are no brush strokes that are not considered. No thoughts go un-thought. They know where to start a piece and when the piece is finished. I know an elite artist the moment they open their mouths, ‘cause when they talk my world stops still. You alternate between wanting to suck their wise brain dry and punching them in the face due to their complicated language. Simply, they can challenge everything you believe in.

Here’s how I think I can turn my big, cumbersome log of an emerging art career into the finest toothpick of elite art. There’s a microscopic gap between thoughts in our extremely active brains, and I believe that’s the sliver of space elite art lives in. You only ever get the smallest glimpses of it and spend your whole career trying to stretch that space just enough to squeeze into it and then hope like hell that people believe you belong there.

I think the only shitty thing about the elite artists in this region is that they seem so out of reach. When I talk about art in my community I have a lion’s roar, but when I talk about art in an elite art space it comes out as a mouse’s squeak of self-doubt. I don’t go to our fancy galleries because I’m as intimidated as hell. In my heart though, I know I have to brave these spaces as it’s how the emerging artist graduates to established.

Of course, elitism, when fostered in different ways, isn’t always bad. When my Dad was dying of cancer, he needed a life-saving operation. He chose to travel to Los Angeles to a 60-year-old surgeon, who was the elite of his profession. As the surgeon was operating on my Dad, he was training up his replacement, and his replacement was providing training for more surgeons that had the potential to be elite too. In this scenario elitism is comforting. I felt better knowing that the surgeon had dedicated his life to being the best.

It’s important that Gippsland continues to develop passionate artists, including elite artists, but surely we can foster the transitions through the hierarchy of the art world in a more inclusive way? We should aim to be better at guiding the climb, save having our creative talents blindly stumble forwards and hoping that they don’t fall off the cliff.

Gippslandia Issue 1: Meet my friend, art.

“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comforted,” quoted by someone important I’m sure, but I’m a dyslexic photographer, not a writer, so I really don’t care about the typical rules – ‘cause, I’m someone that finds art comforting.

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With the tone of the column set, I want you to know that if you’re feeling frustrated at all, I advise you to pull out this page and follow the folding instructions to fancy yourself a new hat – then post it on Facebook. By doing so you’ll be signalling to the social network that you’re partaking in a cultural revolution.

Still with me? Great! Now we’ve gotten rid of the boring people by infiltrating their logical minds with a creative activity to remind their inner child of the joys of making something with only the materials presently available and creating art for art’s sake.

In undertaking the basic task of making the hat, you’ll be exposed to the seven-step process of making art:
Step 1: This will be awesome
Step 2: This is hard
Step 3: This is shit
Step 4: I’m shit
Step 5: This might be ok!
Step 6: This is awesome!
Step 7: I’m bored. I wonder if… (repeat steps ad infinium)

Okay, I’ve been given power to wield over the arts in this column – or hat – if you will. Make no mistake; the power has gone to my head, so let’s dive in.

I believe, now more than ever, that art in Gippsland is important. A simple statement, but one I never said aloud growing up here. Unless you were that one kid who ran away and became uber successful in New York, art was a waste of your life or worse, a ‘bludge’ until you woke up in the real world and got a real job. But a career in art was never an option if you couldn’t paint or your art teacher said you were ‘crap’. Explore art and you’ll find that there are an unlimited array of mediums, and that being ‘good’ or ‘talented’ doesn’t even come into equation to your success. It’s all about the process, baby.

Here’s the thing about artists, if we could be anything else except an artist, we would be, but we can’t. We tried to once, but it’s just like a jar of Nutella: once it’s open there’s no going back.

Just like accountants need numbers for their world to work, artists need art and the best part is that unlike completing my BAS (Business Activity Statement) for the ATO (Australian Taxation Office) – there isn’t one ‘correct’ way to make art.

In the real word, I’m a dyslexic chick who struggles to read, spell or understand basic math’s. My place is more likely to be on a farm, pulling cows tits for a minimum wage ‘til I find a husband to support me. But in the art world, I’m a pioneer. I’m PollyannaR, The BIG Picture Photographer. I create the world’s longest photographs that are seen by millions and I have my own business on Raymond Street, Sale. I spend my days making family portraits and developing community art projects. I’ve achieved all this by the time I was 26-years old, while living in Gippsland, and now I’m writing for an amazing paper. In the real world I’m a total dropout, but in the art world I’m kicking ass. But I fear that I’ve gone too deep too fast. After all, this is our first time together. I’ll go slowly, I promise.

What is art? — Art is space. It’s silence, like the end of a sentence – just maybe not my sentences. It’s a moment that can create hours. It’s a sound that’ll echo throughout lifetimes. It’s the good stuff. It’s the bad stuff. It takes your breath away or outright enrages you. At it’s best it makes you react and at it’s worst it makes you think. We all make art every minute of the day. Your handwriting is a ballet and washing the dishes can be a symphony. Quieten your mind and focus on the present action, you can create art and then the world will never look the same again.

You can now make a living as an artist from Gippsland. It’s the most amazing life ever – trust me. It’s not easy, but nothing worth doing ever is. I like to think this paper and my creative tribe is proof that times have changed. So step up, create some noise and make your mark. There’s never been more excitement or more opportunity in the Gippsland art world than right now.

2016 featured the massive (!) announcement of not one, but two Small Town Transformations grants for Gippsland. In August, Regional Arts Victoria selected Lake Tyers Beach and The Western Port Township of Pioneers Bay to receive $350,000 in funding – besting 71 other towns. The grant will be dished out over the next 18 months to local and imported artists, as they reinvent these towns as thriving culture hubs. Plus, you’ll benefit from nation-wide promotion. Hopefully making funding for your future projects easier to garner.

Let me spell it out for you, if you’re an artist and want to make cool stuff – there’s now money for you to do it! There’s your introduction to the current state of art in Gippsland.

Please take time for art this summer. Do it, see it, buy it, enjoy it, question it and LIVE IT! Take it from me, however it ends up, it will be a masterpiece and, just like your new hat, it won’t matter at all, but will mean everything.

Illistration by Shane Gavin