Creative careers come in many guises. They definitely need not be confined to the fine arts, theatre, or any other of the traditionally accepted 'creative' careers. Far from it! A refreshing example of that came out of an experience I had today.
It was the 5 year anniversary of the death of my partner's beautiful son, Ben. I'd only met Ben twice, but through the many descriptions given by his father, I knew that Ben had been a gifted musician, a lover of life, highly sensitive to nature, a sea / dolphin / sand / sky person, a warmly loved and admired friend, brother, son and human being.
I wanted to find some simple flowers to commemorate this poignant anniversary, but I didn't want dull, traditional fare. I wanted something simple, evocative of joy, creativity, of life ever after.
Stopping at the tiny florist's in the local mall, I glanced at the flowers on show. Lilies. Orchids. Roses. More lilies. Nothing youthful. Nothing that 'felt' right. Suddenly I spotted some softly rounded, warm toned reddish-orange berries lying ripely on the counter. The berries were bursting with life and colour. They were exactly right.
As it happened, these berries were not strictly for sale, but the young girl serving was flexible and responsive to my needs. She decided to break up the bunch to fulfil my wishes. After selecting three berry-laden stems, I realised I needed just a little something else to compliment them. But what?
The florist thought for a moment, then selected two dramatic, dark, maroon-coloured leaves. She showed me how she could double one leaf over, and point the other upwards asymmetrically with flare. The result was striking...but somehow funerary...sad. Even depressing. Amazing how such a strong mood could be conjured up from the twist of two simple leaves!
Thinking I probably sounded like an idiot, I explained that the flowers now appeared sad, even tragic. I wanted some greenery that was gentler, softer, giving the effect of a celebration of a life, rather than loss.
The florist looked at me thoughtfully.
She disappeared, then reappeared some minutes later with a few stems of an unusual, velvety plant. Taking the bunched berries, she gently framed them with a few of the silvery sprigs. The transformation was extraordinary! Suddenly the berries sprang to life in a way that spoke of joy, warmth, love. The sensitive young florist had completely "got" the mood I was trying to express.
As she wrapped the flowers, I asked her about her work. "I've always been creative," she said. "At school, I did two days' work experience with a florist, and discovered I loved it. Now I'm studying floristry at TAFE college. I'm in my second year of a 3 year course. "
Did she enjoy it, though?
"I love it!" she exclaimed. " I knew I could never work in an office. I wanted to do something creative with my life, but I didn't want to go the traditional route. Now I can totally express myself...and make a living with what I do."
Amen to that!
Here's to a creative you!
Margot Wiburd
p.s. The following quote is a favourite of mine:
What would become of our souls
if they lacked the bread
of earthly reality to nourish them,
the wine of created beauty
to intoxicate them,
the discipline of human struggle
to make them strong?
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Thursday, April 15, 2010
CONTEMPORARY JEWELLERY THAT GROWS ON YOU
I hope any budding jewellery designers were inspired by my last post.
Have a look at this terrific jewellery concept.
Put on your thinking caps and...
create like the wind!
Margot Wiburd
Link to contemporary jewellery by Icelandic creative Hafsteinn Juliusson
"The Growing Jewelry Collection":
http://hafsteinnjuliusson.com/index.php?/projects/growing-jewelr
Have a look at this terrific jewellery concept.
Put on your thinking caps and...
create like the wind!
Margot Wiburd
Link to contemporary jewellery by Icelandic creative Hafsteinn Juliusson
"The Growing Jewelry Collection":
http://hafsteinnjuliusson.com/index.php?/projects/growing-jewelr
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF JEWELLERY DESIGN: MY FIRST CREATIVE CAREER IN THE ARTS!
With a year of foundation art studies under my belt, a healthy art folio and acceptance into both painting courses and the best jewellery design course around at the time - RMIT's Bachelor of Fine Art in Gold and Silversmithing - I was ready to launch into full time study for my first, real, creative career in the arts!
I was 34 years old, with a career as an advertising copywriter and executive behind me, as well as several years working in television as a production assistant. I had loved these careers very much, but eventually had to admit that I'd outgrown them.
Now I wanted to 'go inside' - to find out whether I actually had what it took to be that super creative person I very much hoped I was. I was beyond excited - and quietly terrified! There was always a chance I'd fall flat on my face. Now I had to walk the talk.
Everyone had warned me, when I left my prestigious advertising job at Saatchi and Saatchi Compton in Madrid, that I would NEVER survive the giddying pay drop from executive to student. Well, guess what? The more money I'd earned in advertising, the more I'd spent on designer-this and designer-that, on ski trips and trips to Paris and anything else that appealed to me at the time, so I had never really been ahead financially, even with my large salary. I was always at the limit of my smoking credit cards.
So dropping back to a student allowance didn't hurt so badly at all. Also, my mind was now focussed on learning rather than acquiring. Clothing was a no brainer: anything old would do, because I was going to get down and dirty with my hands-on creative career. As far as paying the rent, my student allowance covered the costs of living in a shared house, and I took on a part time job selling flowers at an all night florist's to accommodate any extra costs. (This was a fun job, as all kinds of people bought flowers in the middle of the night. I did, however, suffer terrible jet lag after the night shifts).
Student fees were deferred until after I had graduated and was earning enough money to pay them back. I was set to go!
My particular course accepted just 12 students a year - making us chosen ones feel quite exclusive. By contrast, the painting course accepted 50 students a year, at the time.
I was way older than most of my colleagues, most of whom were straight out of secondary school. I'm here to tell you that it didn't make any difference. What mattered was a shared passion for what we were learning, a good sense of humour, and a willingness to share our thoughts, our troubles, our disasters (there were many!) and our breakthroughs.
The first year was magnificent! I guess we were indulged by our teachers, being the new creative team that might eventually bring glory to that institution. We received praise for our efforts and daily encouragement to be daring and think out of the box, while methodically learning and mastering the basic skills required for gold and silversmithing.
Our first excursion to the specialty jewellery tool supply shops and the metal sellers was beyond exciting. It was a whole new world of wonderful tools and gadgets and textured materials and gauges! We had to purchase a whole range of tools - fabulous files, both heavy duty and exquisite "needle files", measuring devices, a fine jeweller's saw and blades of varying thicknesses, pliers of every shape and size, soldering materials, sanding paper, and a host of other bizarre, new things. I still remember the buzz of buying a shiny new toolbox at the city hardware and carefully placing my cherished tools into each hallowed compartment. The tools cost over $500 new, and I was fortunate that my mum pitched in to help, despite her misgivings about my chosen career. Mum couldn't understand why I had thrown away a good, high paying job, but was happy to have me back in Australia after my 9 year stint in Europe.
That first year I shone! I loved every second of the course! I loved the smell of the sulphuric acid which we used for dunking our silver and copper pieces in after soldering, thus removing the black oxidisation. I loved the sound of hammering on metal; I loved the heat and roar of the bunsen burners. I loved the furious sound of filing - something we became adept at very quickly.
Each of us was assigned our own work area with a peg on which to file, cut and support our pieces as we worked, a bunsen burner for soldering, and room for our books and files.
We were shown slides of the work of contemporary designers from around the world. We were sent to amazing exhibitions and retrospectives by top jewellery designers. Our own teachers - Carlier Makigowa, Robert Baines, Marian Hosking and Ray Stebbins - were themselves stars within the contemporary jewellery world. We participated in workshops by such luminaries as Susan Cohn, who worked wonders with anodised aluminium and titanium, and had recently been commissioned to make pieces for the famous Alessi design house.
We learned to solder, to rivet, to saw, to repousse, to shape and form, to draw metal down, and so many other techniques. Some of our classes didn't go so well...drawing and perspective was a challenge, the result of a teacher-class mismatch. This can happen in any teaching institution and is largely a matter of luck. You just have to do the best with what you're got and keep your eye on the big goals.
I was a clumsy student, and frequently would be stirred by the cry, "Margot, your hair's on fire again!" I had a tendency to forget about my hair in relation to the bunsen burner flame.
I've mentioned before that I believe mature age students, far from being disadvantaged, can achieve more than students who go straight from school to university, sometimes without really knowing much about the real world or what they want. Mature age students KNOW what they want. They go after it and they know that the clock is ticking and they have to suck up as much knowledge as they can. Their maturity means they often relate better to their teachers than the younger students - understand the asides and references to life experiences the younger kids just haven't had yet.
By the end of the first year, I was awarded top student of the course, and it had been a breeze! This was not to continue...
Second year was my reality check. It was a study year, I later found out, notorious for putting students to the test. No more Mr Nice Guy or Gal. The teachers pushed us endlessly, and criticised us when we got it wrong. Shoddy first year work no longer hacked it. We had to shape up or ship out. There were tears and dramas all the way through. This was certainly no longer creative kindergarten.
Living up to its reputation, second year was highly productive. We learned to make mokume gane, a Japanese technique involving the fusion in a kiln of 9 layers or so of silver and copper, with many variations. We learned to colour metals with chemicals, a fascinating process with its own quirks, so there were many surprises when we at last pulled our pieces out of the sawdust and saw the effects the chosen chemical mix had produced.
We learned sophisticated finishing techniques - polishing, burnishing, and even sandblasting to obtain an elegant matt finish. Like most things in life, each technique had its downside and upside, so decision-making was a key part of every process.
Research was a big part of our course, and we used the library for that. The internet was pretty much unheard of in Australia at the time. Mobile phones and email did not yet exist, so we used that old fashioned institution: the library.
How I loved the smell of the books, the hushed atmosphere, the dimmed lighting! How anybody could walk into a room overflowing with books of every shape, colour, subject and size, and not be awed and humbled by the wealth of knowledge presented to the eager mind, I do not know. The feel of a heavy, well-dog-eared book is something the internet cannot yet duplicate... Libraries are hallowed spaces, a contrast to the pressures and roar of the outside world.
We had a very stringent art history teacher, who made us memorise hundreds of art slides - the names of the artists and the dates. I never saw the point in this, but was too scared of our no-nonsense teacher to rebel. In the end, I became expert at identifying each period of art, and soon felt more confident for it. Somehow there was method in this madness. Years later I discovered that this austere, multi-talented teacher had a fabulous sense of humour...only it clearly wasn't wasted on 2nd year students.
I am forgetting, of course, the essays. These were the bane of most students' lives. Many of the students were by nature highly visual, and crafting together a well-researched, well-written essay was a horrifying task, seemingly beyond their capabilities. I was fortunate to have always adored and handled English with ease, having an innate love of words and poetry, so essays were not a challenge to me. This said, pride goes before a fall! In my third year, I managed to completely miss the point of an essay on post-modernism, something I am embarrassed about to this day, and I received a fittingly low result for my tragic efforts.
There were supplementary classes to be taken throughout the degree course that had nothing to do with jewellery design. I took painting as an elective, and while I loved the act of painting, I received virtually no tuition. Unless you were a mainstream painter, the lecturers didn't appear to take you seriously - at least while I was there. I had fun with my paintings, but completed most of them without guidance and simply submitted them for a bland mark at the end of each year. Some of the other elective classes were known to be good, in contrast. Printmaking students were turning out some fabulous work, and had learned many skills in tandem with jewellery making.
One of my additional classes involved giving a talk to a group of students, and I chose to discuss the metaphysical and supernatural events I had experienced over the years. Without going into too much detail here (this is a whole chapter unto itself!), at the end of my talk I opened up the class to questions and was astounded by the number of extra terrestrial sightings and out of body experiences that had occurred to people just like you and me. Believe me, there's some wild stuff out there. Absolutely fascinating!
While second year was a tough year, I created some of my finest pieces. By year's end, when we were finishing everything up ready for evaluation, I was feeling stressed but confident. In the week preceding evaluation I worked around the clock, missing sleep three nights in a row, trying to tidy drawing folios and finish pieces that were not quite ready, requiring more fine sanding or cleaning up of solder stains. There were student journals to write up and hand in. These were supposed to contain progressive drawings of our pieces, from conception to completion, but most people made the pieces first and filled in the drawings later, working backwards, in effect. This was certainly the case for me. I was notoriously untidy and disorganised, usually scribbling my ideas on any scrap of paper I could find, including old grocery receipts and the back of tickets. Needless to say, this gave me grief when it came to present my journal. It's something I might approach differently if I could do it all over again.
Life intervenes when you least expect it to. On the last school day before end-of-year presentation of our work for evaluation, I received an urgent call to go to the hospital. Leaving my pieces in disarray on my desk, I dashed out of the room and took a taxi to the hospital. My mother had almost died, an indirect consequence of the suffering she was enduring as a result of both Parkinson's Disease and a stroke that left her dizzy and nauseous most of the time. My darling mum had wanted to check out of the world, but had not quite managed it.
My own world ground to a halt. When faced with the possible loss of a loved one, things fall sharply into perspective. I held mum's hand as she lay in the hospital bed, fighting to gain consciousness. When she came to, a single tear rolled down her cheek. "I'm so ashamed," she said - and in that moment, broke my heart. My darling mother had suffered for so long, and who was I to judge her actions? The last thing she deserved was to feel shame. She deserved to feel love, to know how loved she was, and I wondered if I had not done enough to help her be happy, to keep her thoughts focussed on this world. And yet...had she not abandoned me by her actions? Did that meant she didn't love me enough?
These are questions I will never know the answers to, and I feel a painful mixture of guilt and abandonment when I relive that time. But the important thing is that mum pulled through and quickly received some fabulous repatriation care. She regained some of the strength that had dwindled with the Parkinson's, and the years immediately following seemed to bring her, once more, some quality of life. Life goes on, of course.
Although I never did get to make those last important finishes to my jewellery pieces, I graduated from second year and was about to become one of the elite: a third and final year student!
Third year was unlike any of the preceding years. Now, we were given the freedom and luxury of time to create a cohesive body of work, drawing on all the skills of the previous two years. We were helped to learn new skills that were necessary for our individual visions. We were treated with more respect, somehow, and that, in turn, gave us more self respect and spurred us on to greater things.
I remember how in my job as an advertising executive in Spain, my boss, a North American, seemed to see something special in me. Quickly, he made it known, both personally and publicly, that he treasured my contribution to the agency. His faith in me had a powerful effect! I blossomed, became more confident, and morphed into the excellent executive he thought I was. I gave 110 per cent and was proud of the work I was doing. This situation later repeated itself when I worked as a writer for a mining company. The more skilled they believed I was, the more skilled I became - a win-win situation!
If there is any way to help a person in life, it is to honour them with respect and confidence in their abilities. Always speak to their highest part of them. There's a good chance they'll step up to the mark and surprise even themselves...
In my third year I fell in love with an industrial metal called monel, now widely used in the jewellery world. I found its deep grey colouring provided a wonderful contrast when combined with gold, and I used it to create bowls, bracelets and rings. Some of this work was photographed in a well known jewellery design magazine, and I was pretty proud of that. I also worked in silver, and my pieces were minimalist and clunky. I later sold, traded or gave away these rings, and to this day regret I didn't keep them. They are my lost children!
Learning to give away your creative children is a real and necessary part of a creative career.
Third year brought with it a major end-of-year award, presented to me by the state's Minister for the Arts at a sophisticated end of year exhibition held in the foyer of a major Melbourne bank. For once, I'd left my hole-filled, stained t-shirts behind. I wore a black designer suit, with black tights and high heels, in my ears, a pair of Georgian mourning earrings made from gold and woven human hair. I had found these at an antique fair years before, and they continue to be a prized possession - although I've often been tempted to sell them when times were tough...
The only thing marring the night was a falling out with my on-again, off-again boyfriend. That night was definitely "off" - but I had so many good things happening that I refused to dwell on it.
Now I was an award winning Gold and Silversmithing Graduate! The world was my oyster. But what was I to do now, exactly? How was I to earn a living, with a student debt hanging over my head and no experience of my newly forged creative career in the real world?
What was to come, was not at all what I expected...
Create like the wind!
Margot Wiburd
p.s. Fast forward to the future: Visit my website at http://www.margotwiburd.com
I was 34 years old, with a career as an advertising copywriter and executive behind me, as well as several years working in television as a production assistant. I had loved these careers very much, but eventually had to admit that I'd outgrown them.
Now I wanted to 'go inside' - to find out whether I actually had what it took to be that super creative person I very much hoped I was. I was beyond excited - and quietly terrified! There was always a chance I'd fall flat on my face. Now I had to walk the talk.
Everyone had warned me, when I left my prestigious advertising job at Saatchi and Saatchi Compton in Madrid, that I would NEVER survive the giddying pay drop from executive to student. Well, guess what? The more money I'd earned in advertising, the more I'd spent on designer-this and designer-that, on ski trips and trips to Paris and anything else that appealed to me at the time, so I had never really been ahead financially, even with my large salary. I was always at the limit of my smoking credit cards.
So dropping back to a student allowance didn't hurt so badly at all. Also, my mind was now focussed on learning rather than acquiring. Clothing was a no brainer: anything old would do, because I was going to get down and dirty with my hands-on creative career. As far as paying the rent, my student allowance covered the costs of living in a shared house, and I took on a part time job selling flowers at an all night florist's to accommodate any extra costs. (This was a fun job, as all kinds of people bought flowers in the middle of the night. I did, however, suffer terrible jet lag after the night shifts).
Student fees were deferred until after I had graduated and was earning enough money to pay them back. I was set to go!
My particular course accepted just 12 students a year - making us chosen ones feel quite exclusive. By contrast, the painting course accepted 50 students a year, at the time.
I was way older than most of my colleagues, most of whom were straight out of secondary school. I'm here to tell you that it didn't make any difference. What mattered was a shared passion for what we were learning, a good sense of humour, and a willingness to share our thoughts, our troubles, our disasters (there were many!) and our breakthroughs.
The first year was magnificent! I guess we were indulged by our teachers, being the new creative team that might eventually bring glory to that institution. We received praise for our efforts and daily encouragement to be daring and think out of the box, while methodically learning and mastering the basic skills required for gold and silversmithing.
Our first excursion to the specialty jewellery tool supply shops and the metal sellers was beyond exciting. It was a whole new world of wonderful tools and gadgets and textured materials and gauges! We had to purchase a whole range of tools - fabulous files, both heavy duty and exquisite "needle files", measuring devices, a fine jeweller's saw and blades of varying thicknesses, pliers of every shape and size, soldering materials, sanding paper, and a host of other bizarre, new things. I still remember the buzz of buying a shiny new toolbox at the city hardware and carefully placing my cherished tools into each hallowed compartment. The tools cost over $500 new, and I was fortunate that my mum pitched in to help, despite her misgivings about my chosen career. Mum couldn't understand why I had thrown away a good, high paying job, but was happy to have me back in Australia after my 9 year stint in Europe.
That first year I shone! I loved every second of the course! I loved the smell of the sulphuric acid which we used for dunking our silver and copper pieces in after soldering, thus removing the black oxidisation. I loved the sound of hammering on metal; I loved the heat and roar of the bunsen burners. I loved the furious sound of filing - something we became adept at very quickly.
Each of us was assigned our own work area with a peg on which to file, cut and support our pieces as we worked, a bunsen burner for soldering, and room for our books and files.
We were shown slides of the work of contemporary designers from around the world. We were sent to amazing exhibitions and retrospectives by top jewellery designers. Our own teachers - Carlier Makigowa, Robert Baines, Marian Hosking and Ray Stebbins - were themselves stars within the contemporary jewellery world. We participated in workshops by such luminaries as Susan Cohn, who worked wonders with anodised aluminium and titanium, and had recently been commissioned to make pieces for the famous Alessi design house.
We learned to solder, to rivet, to saw, to repousse, to shape and form, to draw metal down, and so many other techniques. Some of our classes didn't go so well...drawing and perspective was a challenge, the result of a teacher-class mismatch. This can happen in any teaching institution and is largely a matter of luck. You just have to do the best with what you're got and keep your eye on the big goals.
I was a clumsy student, and frequently would be stirred by the cry, "Margot, your hair's on fire again!" I had a tendency to forget about my hair in relation to the bunsen burner flame.
I've mentioned before that I believe mature age students, far from being disadvantaged, can achieve more than students who go straight from school to university, sometimes without really knowing much about the real world or what they want. Mature age students KNOW what they want. They go after it and they know that the clock is ticking and they have to suck up as much knowledge as they can. Their maturity means they often relate better to their teachers than the younger students - understand the asides and references to life experiences the younger kids just haven't had yet.
By the end of the first year, I was awarded top student of the course, and it had been a breeze! This was not to continue...
Second year was my reality check. It was a study year, I later found out, notorious for putting students to the test. No more Mr Nice Guy or Gal. The teachers pushed us endlessly, and criticised us when we got it wrong. Shoddy first year work no longer hacked it. We had to shape up or ship out. There were tears and dramas all the way through. This was certainly no longer creative kindergarten.
Living up to its reputation, second year was highly productive. We learned to make mokume gane, a Japanese technique involving the fusion in a kiln of 9 layers or so of silver and copper, with many variations. We learned to colour metals with chemicals, a fascinating process with its own quirks, so there were many surprises when we at last pulled our pieces out of the sawdust and saw the effects the chosen chemical mix had produced.
We learned sophisticated finishing techniques - polishing, burnishing, and even sandblasting to obtain an elegant matt finish. Like most things in life, each technique had its downside and upside, so decision-making was a key part of every process.
Research was a big part of our course, and we used the library for that. The internet was pretty much unheard of in Australia at the time. Mobile phones and email did not yet exist, so we used that old fashioned institution: the library.
How I loved the smell of the books, the hushed atmosphere, the dimmed lighting! How anybody could walk into a room overflowing with books of every shape, colour, subject and size, and not be awed and humbled by the wealth of knowledge presented to the eager mind, I do not know. The feel of a heavy, well-dog-eared book is something the internet cannot yet duplicate... Libraries are hallowed spaces, a contrast to the pressures and roar of the outside world.
We had a very stringent art history teacher, who made us memorise hundreds of art slides - the names of the artists and the dates. I never saw the point in this, but was too scared of our no-nonsense teacher to rebel. In the end, I became expert at identifying each period of art, and soon felt more confident for it. Somehow there was method in this madness. Years later I discovered that this austere, multi-talented teacher had a fabulous sense of humour...only it clearly wasn't wasted on 2nd year students.
I am forgetting, of course, the essays. These were the bane of most students' lives. Many of the students were by nature highly visual, and crafting together a well-researched, well-written essay was a horrifying task, seemingly beyond their capabilities. I was fortunate to have always adored and handled English with ease, having an innate love of words and poetry, so essays were not a challenge to me. This said, pride goes before a fall! In my third year, I managed to completely miss the point of an essay on post-modernism, something I am embarrassed about to this day, and I received a fittingly low result for my tragic efforts.
There were supplementary classes to be taken throughout the degree course that had nothing to do with jewellery design. I took painting as an elective, and while I loved the act of painting, I received virtually no tuition. Unless you were a mainstream painter, the lecturers didn't appear to take you seriously - at least while I was there. I had fun with my paintings, but completed most of them without guidance and simply submitted them for a bland mark at the end of each year. Some of the other elective classes were known to be good, in contrast. Printmaking students were turning out some fabulous work, and had learned many skills in tandem with jewellery making.
One of my additional classes involved giving a talk to a group of students, and I chose to discuss the metaphysical and supernatural events I had experienced over the years. Without going into too much detail here (this is a whole chapter unto itself!), at the end of my talk I opened up the class to questions and was astounded by the number of extra terrestrial sightings and out of body experiences that had occurred to people just like you and me. Believe me, there's some wild stuff out there. Absolutely fascinating!
While second year was a tough year, I created some of my finest pieces. By year's end, when we were finishing everything up ready for evaluation, I was feeling stressed but confident. In the week preceding evaluation I worked around the clock, missing sleep three nights in a row, trying to tidy drawing folios and finish pieces that were not quite ready, requiring more fine sanding or cleaning up of solder stains. There were student journals to write up and hand in. These were supposed to contain progressive drawings of our pieces, from conception to completion, but most people made the pieces first and filled in the drawings later, working backwards, in effect. This was certainly the case for me. I was notoriously untidy and disorganised, usually scribbling my ideas on any scrap of paper I could find, including old grocery receipts and the back of tickets. Needless to say, this gave me grief when it came to present my journal. It's something I might approach differently if I could do it all over again.
Life intervenes when you least expect it to. On the last school day before end-of-year presentation of our work for evaluation, I received an urgent call to go to the hospital. Leaving my pieces in disarray on my desk, I dashed out of the room and took a taxi to the hospital. My mother had almost died, an indirect consequence of the suffering she was enduring as a result of both Parkinson's Disease and a stroke that left her dizzy and nauseous most of the time. My darling mum had wanted to check out of the world, but had not quite managed it.
My own world ground to a halt. When faced with the possible loss of a loved one, things fall sharply into perspective. I held mum's hand as she lay in the hospital bed, fighting to gain consciousness. When she came to, a single tear rolled down her cheek. "I'm so ashamed," she said - and in that moment, broke my heart. My darling mother had suffered for so long, and who was I to judge her actions? The last thing she deserved was to feel shame. She deserved to feel love, to know how loved she was, and I wondered if I had not done enough to help her be happy, to keep her thoughts focussed on this world. And yet...had she not abandoned me by her actions? Did that meant she didn't love me enough?
These are questions I will never know the answers to, and I feel a painful mixture of guilt and abandonment when I relive that time. But the important thing is that mum pulled through and quickly received some fabulous repatriation care. She regained some of the strength that had dwindled with the Parkinson's, and the years immediately following seemed to bring her, once more, some quality of life. Life goes on, of course.
Although I never did get to make those last important finishes to my jewellery pieces, I graduated from second year and was about to become one of the elite: a third and final year student!
Third year was unlike any of the preceding years. Now, we were given the freedom and luxury of time to create a cohesive body of work, drawing on all the skills of the previous two years. We were helped to learn new skills that were necessary for our individual visions. We were treated with more respect, somehow, and that, in turn, gave us more self respect and spurred us on to greater things.
I remember how in my job as an advertising executive in Spain, my boss, a North American, seemed to see something special in me. Quickly, he made it known, both personally and publicly, that he treasured my contribution to the agency. His faith in me had a powerful effect! I blossomed, became more confident, and morphed into the excellent executive he thought I was. I gave 110 per cent and was proud of the work I was doing. This situation later repeated itself when I worked as a writer for a mining company. The more skilled they believed I was, the more skilled I became - a win-win situation!
If there is any way to help a person in life, it is to honour them with respect and confidence in their abilities. Always speak to their highest part of them. There's a good chance they'll step up to the mark and surprise even themselves...
In my third year I fell in love with an industrial metal called monel, now widely used in the jewellery world. I found its deep grey colouring provided a wonderful contrast when combined with gold, and I used it to create bowls, bracelets and rings. Some of this work was photographed in a well known jewellery design magazine, and I was pretty proud of that. I also worked in silver, and my pieces were minimalist and clunky. I later sold, traded or gave away these rings, and to this day regret I didn't keep them. They are my lost children!
Learning to give away your creative children is a real and necessary part of a creative career.
Third year brought with it a major end-of-year award, presented to me by the state's Minister for the Arts at a sophisticated end of year exhibition held in the foyer of a major Melbourne bank. For once, I'd left my hole-filled, stained t-shirts behind. I wore a black designer suit, with black tights and high heels, in my ears, a pair of Georgian mourning earrings made from gold and woven human hair. I had found these at an antique fair years before, and they continue to be a prized possession - although I've often been tempted to sell them when times were tough...
The only thing marring the night was a falling out with my on-again, off-again boyfriend. That night was definitely "off" - but I had so many good things happening that I refused to dwell on it.
Now I was an award winning Gold and Silversmithing Graduate! The world was my oyster. But what was I to do now, exactly? How was I to earn a living, with a student debt hanging over my head and no experience of my newly forged creative career in the real world?
What was to come, was not at all what I expected...
Create like the wind!
Margot Wiburd
p.s. Fast forward to the future: Visit my website at http://www.margotwiburd.com
Saturday, April 10, 2010
CREATIVE NEWBIE DECIDES TO STUDY JEWELLERY DESIGN
Okay, so there I was back in Melbourne after living in glorious Spain for the last 8 years. Culture shock? You bet! I especially remember going from feeling "special" - the blue-eyed blond foreigner always standing out in a crowd - to being a complete "nothing" back in Melbourne, suddenly and completely invisible, with hardly anyone giving me a second glance. Quite a shock to my ego!
The other big thing was my career change. I had just left my highly paid, prestigious job as an advertising executive with Saatchi & Saatchi Compton in Madrid to study art in my homeland Australia. In particular, I wanted to be a jewellery designer - and a damned good one! I had devoured jewellery design books and visited designer jewellery studios for years.
My advertising job had been fabulous, yes, but with the downside of enormous stress. One day, while agonizing over a TV commercial for a new Reach toothbrush, I figured that if I was going to be stressed, I may as well be stressed over something that really MEANT something to me. That was the day I decided to return to Australia to study art.
The best Gold and Silversmithing course available in Melbourne at the time was at RMIT - the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, as it was called at the time.
I gathered together the odd little smattering of drawings I had made over the years and made an appointment to see the Head of Department. Ray Stebbins looked with a faint expression of horror at my drawings (I shudder now to think how REALLY, REALLY BAD they were; one even had rose petals stuck onto a page to look like a butterfly!). Then he turned to me, cleared his throat, and kindly suggested I do a year's art foundation study before attempting to enter university.
I admit I felt a little discouraged but, absolutely determined to succeed, I followed his advice. I was going to do whatever it took; I hadn't thrown away a first class job for nothing! So I did my research and discovered that one of the best foundation courses available was the "Tertiary Orientation Program - Art and Design" course in a lovely Melbourne suburb called Brighton.
To gain entry into this course, I was asked to go home and draw a teddy bear and a transistor radio. The drawings I did were certainly nothing special, and I believe it was my total and unbridled enthusiasm about jewellery design that actually got me through the door.
To cut a long story short, this full-time year studying all the mainstream aspects of fine art was the beginning of a HUGE change in my life. As a mature age student who really WANTED to be there, I did not waste a minute of my time, unlike some of the younger, talented students. I learned a little about many things: ceramics (which I sucked at!), graphic design, printing, drawing, art history (opening up a magnificent world to me), sculpture and finally, painting. I pushed and pushed and pushed myself.
Painting proved to be a surprise. I had not considered this as a career, but the work I did in that subject took on a life of its own and I knew my teacher was surprised and happy for me. I was beginning to be quietly hooked on painting, but still dreamed of becoming a jewellery designer.
By the end of the year, with the guidance of my tough but fabulous course leader, I had crafted together a first class art folio ready to take to interviews at the tertiary institutions. Not only that, but I was awarded DUX of Brighton Technical School for my efforts.
In that one year I had gone from being a complete newbie (as green as they come) with no art folio, to having a great art folio and a really good overview of the options available to study.
I applied for not only the RMIT jewellery design course, but for several painting courses at the various art colleges.
One of the four college interviews was a nightmare! From the moment I set foot in the door, I felt acutely uncomfortable, made worse when I was confronted by a strangely aggressive interviewer (a well known artist of the day). This man barely glanced at my portfolio, preferring instead to make pointed comments about my mature age. Had I not been accepted by three terrific art schools, I would have been crushed by the experience and might easily have fallen to pieces. Instead, I walked out of there with my head held high. I'm so glad I did!
Three out of the four college interviews had gone brilliantly, and I had emerged confident and with the promise of a place should I choose any one of those particular institutions. Ray Stebbins of RMIT actually tried to talk me into joining his course - which accepted just 12 people - a tremendous change from our interview of a year ago! A lot had changed in that one art foundation year.
I opted to study at RMIT and will talk about those amazing three years in my next blog post...
Meanwhile, create like the wind!
Margot Wiburd
p.s. Another great quote from JEANETTE WINTERSON:
“When you take time to read a book or listen to music or look at a picture, the first thing you are doing is turning your attention inwards. As you withdraw your energy from the world, the work of art begins to reach you with energies of its own.”
Mmmmm.
The other big thing was my career change. I had just left my highly paid, prestigious job as an advertising executive with Saatchi & Saatchi Compton in Madrid to study art in my homeland Australia. In particular, I wanted to be a jewellery designer - and a damned good one! I had devoured jewellery design books and visited designer jewellery studios for years.
My advertising job had been fabulous, yes, but with the downside of enormous stress. One day, while agonizing over a TV commercial for a new Reach toothbrush, I figured that if I was going to be stressed, I may as well be stressed over something that really MEANT something to me. That was the day I decided to return to Australia to study art.
The best Gold and Silversmithing course available in Melbourne at the time was at RMIT - the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, as it was called at the time.
I gathered together the odd little smattering of drawings I had made over the years and made an appointment to see the Head of Department. Ray Stebbins looked with a faint expression of horror at my drawings (I shudder now to think how REALLY, REALLY BAD they were; one even had rose petals stuck onto a page to look like a butterfly!). Then he turned to me, cleared his throat, and kindly suggested I do a year's art foundation study before attempting to enter university.
I admit I felt a little discouraged but, absolutely determined to succeed, I followed his advice. I was going to do whatever it took; I hadn't thrown away a first class job for nothing! So I did my research and discovered that one of the best foundation courses available was the "Tertiary Orientation Program - Art and Design" course in a lovely Melbourne suburb called Brighton.
To gain entry into this course, I was asked to go home and draw a teddy bear and a transistor radio. The drawings I did were certainly nothing special, and I believe it was my total and unbridled enthusiasm about jewellery design that actually got me through the door.
To cut a long story short, this full-time year studying all the mainstream aspects of fine art was the beginning of a HUGE change in my life. As a mature age student who really WANTED to be there, I did not waste a minute of my time, unlike some of the younger, talented students. I learned a little about many things: ceramics (which I sucked at!), graphic design, printing, drawing, art history (opening up a magnificent world to me), sculpture and finally, painting. I pushed and pushed and pushed myself.
Painting proved to be a surprise. I had not considered this as a career, but the work I did in that subject took on a life of its own and I knew my teacher was surprised and happy for me. I was beginning to be quietly hooked on painting, but still dreamed of becoming a jewellery designer.
By the end of the year, with the guidance of my tough but fabulous course leader, I had crafted together a first class art folio ready to take to interviews at the tertiary institutions. Not only that, but I was awarded DUX of Brighton Technical School for my efforts.
In that one year I had gone from being a complete newbie (as green as they come) with no art folio, to having a great art folio and a really good overview of the options available to study.
I applied for not only the RMIT jewellery design course, but for several painting courses at the various art colleges.
One of the four college interviews was a nightmare! From the moment I set foot in the door, I felt acutely uncomfortable, made worse when I was confronted by a strangely aggressive interviewer (a well known artist of the day). This man barely glanced at my portfolio, preferring instead to make pointed comments about my mature age. Had I not been accepted by three terrific art schools, I would have been crushed by the experience and might easily have fallen to pieces. Instead, I walked out of there with my head held high. I'm so glad I did!
Three out of the four college interviews had gone brilliantly, and I had emerged confident and with the promise of a place should I choose any one of those particular institutions. Ray Stebbins of RMIT actually tried to talk me into joining his course - which accepted just 12 people - a tremendous change from our interview of a year ago! A lot had changed in that one art foundation year.
I opted to study at RMIT and will talk about those amazing three years in my next blog post...
Meanwhile, create like the wind!
Margot Wiburd
p.s. Another great quote from JEANETTE WINTERSON:
“When you take time to read a book or listen to music or look at a picture, the first thing you are doing is turning your attention inwards. As you withdraw your energy from the world, the work of art begins to reach you with energies of its own.”
Mmmmm.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
WELCOME TO ALL THE FANTASTIC CREATIVE WOMEN WHO MAKE THEIR WAY HERE
Hi. My name is Margot Wiburd and I'm a visual artist (oil paintings, pastels on paper, giclee prints), a frequent film crew member (working with a highly original film director and mentor, Paul Cox), and an author (non fiction and soon, hopefully, a children's book).
I want to welcome to anyone with a strongly beating creative heart who is now reading this blog. I aim to make this a place for you to stop by and get motivated, share woes and hopes and breakthroughs and questions, and get great info to help keep your creative career going from strength to strength. I know from experience that working in the creative arts is not always the easiest thing to do - even though I believe this is truly the most satisfying and life-changing career a person can have, if you are so inclined.
I switched to fine art at mid life when I was not even in a career crisis. I was doing brilliantly in a top advertising job with Saatchi and Saatchi in Madrid, Spain (a country I adore!) but for a long, long time I had nursed a secret urge to study jewellery design, spread my creative wings and especially, be my own boss. This urge finally grew so strong that I felt compelled to return to Melbourne, Australia, where I naively attempted to get into the best jewellery design program available...more about that later. (I was so green!)
Now I not only have a fine art degree in Gold and Silversmithing under my belt, but 9 months of intensive classical oil painting training from France, masterclasses in oil painting from the U.S., creative art residencies in Canada and Malaysia, and I have worked on some amazing feature films and documentaries all around the world.
I hope to share some of my experiences with you in the weeks to come.
Meanwhile, be well, fellow creatives and stay positive in all that you do.
Margot
p.s. Isn't this a great art quote?
"Art is like a green space in a city filling with concrete."
- Jeanette Winterson
I want to welcome to anyone with a strongly beating creative heart who is now reading this blog. I aim to make this a place for you to stop by and get motivated, share woes and hopes and breakthroughs and questions, and get great info to help keep your creative career going from strength to strength. I know from experience that working in the creative arts is not always the easiest thing to do - even though I believe this is truly the most satisfying and life-changing career a person can have, if you are so inclined.
I switched to fine art at mid life when I was not even in a career crisis. I was doing brilliantly in a top advertising job with Saatchi and Saatchi in Madrid, Spain (a country I adore!) but for a long, long time I had nursed a secret urge to study jewellery design, spread my creative wings and especially, be my own boss. This urge finally grew so strong that I felt compelled to return to Melbourne, Australia, where I naively attempted to get into the best jewellery design program available...more about that later. (I was so green!)
Now I not only have a fine art degree in Gold and Silversmithing under my belt, but 9 months of intensive classical oil painting training from France, masterclasses in oil painting from the U.S., creative art residencies in Canada and Malaysia, and I have worked on some amazing feature films and documentaries all around the world.
I hope to share some of my experiences with you in the weeks to come.
Meanwhile, be well, fellow creatives and stay positive in all that you do.
Margot
p.s. Isn't this a great art quote?
"Art is like a green space in a city filling with concrete."
- Jeanette Winterson
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)