[dropcap style=”color: #a02f2f;”] I[/dropcap]t is one year exactly since we named Warrnambool artist Megan (‘Megsie’) Nicolson as our very first Quiet Hero and promised to tell you more about her … boy, is she one hard artist to catch!

Like everybody we chat to for Bluestone, Megan was determined to leave the limelight to others, but we are nothing if not persistent, particularly when it comes to someone who has been a quiet but energetic force in reviving the local community arts scene.

It is three years since Megan returned to Warrnambool, where she graduated in Fine Art at Deakin University as a young student straight from her home town of Macarthur, and the reunion between the city and the artist has been one of enriching, mutual benefit.

“When I returned here, I started doing my art again: I was surrounded by artistic people doing amazing things and it was just wonderful,” she says.

It had been a 10-year hiatus from visual art for Megan, not because she didn’t love it, but because the momentum of her earlier years had been lost.

[dropcap style=”color: #a02f2f;”] I[/dropcap]n her student days, working under the guidance of artists such as Bruce Vinall and Ron Quick, Megan developed her talent as an oil painter who loved to work on big portraits and murals. One of her earliest works, a mural with Gareth Colliton, is still at South West Healthcare.

She later completed a teaching degree and worked as a relief art teacher at Hawkesdale High School (her old school) before embarking on a 10-year “tour” with her husband, Lachlan, an ecologist and academic, to various work opportunities in Canberra, Adelaide and Mt Gambier.

While in Canberra, Megan secured a position with the Canberra Museum and Art Gallery which sounds like the dream job for an artist and it was, except for one small problem.

“It was amazing. I got to talk about art all day and to listen to great artists, but I stopped painting,” Megan says.

Why?

“Because after hearing and seeing all of these great artists, I thought ‘gee, I’m no good compared to them’ and I had no confidence.”

[dropcap style=”color: #a02f2f;”] A[/dropcap] crisis of confidence, a lack of a studio space and, eventually, a lack of time from having four children (now aged 3 – 10) kept Megan’s visual art firmly in the background, but she maintained the sewing skills that came with her genes.

“I have always been a good sewer and come from a family of sewers, so that became my creative outlet when I was a Mum. I get bored really quickly, so I needed to be doing something,” she explains.

Megan began to make – and sell online – unique soft toys, known as “softies” or Babbits that are designed to have their ears sucked, their legs pulled, and to be crushed, squashed, washed, and spun around with joy.

All of the materials are recycled, including the filling, and, if you look closely at those she makes today, you might spot pieces of original screen-printed fabrics by Ruby Richardson or Danielle O’Brien, or offcuts from Fletcher Jones and the Warrnambool Woollen Mill.

“When people ask me what I do, I say I am a toy maker,” Megan laughs.

But, of course, this is now only one layer to her creativity.

[dropcap style=”color: #a02f2f;”] M[/dropcap] egan returned to Warrnambool in 2011 to find the art scene emerging from somewhat of a slump. The highly successful The F Project art collective was just establishing itself and Megan became its vice-president for the next three years (she only recently stepped down).

Inspired by the creative energy around her, Megan began to “practice” visual art again and now moves between printmaking, oils, watercolours, textiles and her softies.

“As I say, I get bored really easily and so I keep moving on – I want to try it all!”

Her timing has proven to be perfect.

“They say that cultural activity rises in a politically charged environment and we are seeing that with The Artery, Art Four, what’s happening at the Warrnambool Art Gallery and Scope, etc: that culture is coming to the fore and is being embraced by a footy mad town.

“It’s an exciting time”.

[box] You can see more of Megan’s work on her Facebook page, Pint and at The Artery, 218 Timor St, Warrnambool. One of Megan’s Babbits will be given away as part of our birthday celebration prizes – stay tuned for details via our Facebook page.[/box]

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[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] M [/dropcap]ark Rashleigh is the last man standing at what was once a flourishing School of Art and Design at Sherwood Park, Warrnambool, and, come mid next year, he too will be gone.

It is indicative of how much things have changed that Mark, a lecturer in graphic designer and illustration, now has an office in the Faculty of Business and Law at the Deakin University campus because the former visual arts studios are closed due to various structural concerns.

A similar, if metaphorical, corrosion has also claimed the art school that will officially end next year after starting life under the former Warrnambool Institute of Advanced Education in Timor St (now South-West TAFE) in the late ’60s, before relocating to the Sherwood Park campus in the 1980s. There, as a university degree, it became part of the Deakin merger.

“When I first started here, in 1985, there were about 13 staff teaching a very broad visual arts degree that included painting, sculpture, art history, photography, print making, graphic design and ceramics,” Mark, who will retire in June, said.

At that time, the teachers – most of whom were established artists – would mount joint exhibitions, maintaining a tradition that began when the school first started.

A document held by the National Libraries of Australia, for example, records some of the names in a joint staff/student exhibition held at the City of Hamilton Art Gallery in November 1970 and it reads as a virtual who’s who of the early South-West Victorian arts scene: Ken Daniel** (lecturer), Ron Quick (lecturer), Graeme Birt (lecturer), David Wormald, John Elphick, Jill Fitzgerald, Jennifer McConnell, Christine Taylor, Ken Saddler, John Rogers, Trevor Morrison, Peter Bond, Lilian Baxter, Alan Murdoch, Frank O’Brien, Chris Carroll, Gary Sparks, Judith Lovell, Gary Heath, Lorrain Callow, Michele Hill.

 

 

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] I [/dropcap]n its prime, the airy studio space at Sherwood Park was alive with the sound, movement and colour of artists in action and gave the campus its energetic heart, usually to the beat of a paint-splattered cassette player set up in a corner.

Students pursuing somewhat more subdued degrees in economics, marine biology or primary school teaching could wander over and see what the “hippies” of the campus were up to.

The halcyon days of the 70s, 80s and 90s, however, crashed into the economic rationalism of the 2000’s when university degrees around Australia were no longer about providing knowledge and skills, but also a financial return.

In this new climate, art schools were in a hopeless position.

And while Mark can’t speak about Deakin directly, he can reflect on the challenge facing all visual art degrees.

“A visual arts degree is a quasi-industrial process: they cost a lot to run. There is the high cost of the studio spaces, and the high cost of running courses for small groups of students, because that is how the learning happens, in small groups, not in a large lecture theatre,” he said.

Skilled staff who leave or retire are not replaced, and, suddenly, painting is no longer available, or sculpture, or perhaps print making, and the degree is reduced to a husk.

 

 

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] A [/dropcap]t the same time, Australians love art: according to the ABS, more than a quarter of us visit a gallery or museum at least once a year.

“The returns on the investment in art schools and courses cannot be measured in dollars, but in what we get back – as a culture – from the artist,” Mark said.

Yet Mark remains optimistic. As he closes the door on his career, and that of the school, South-West TAFE is refocussing its visual arts courses at its new location in the Timor St complex.

The wheel has turned full circle.

“Art changes its address, but it’s not going away,” Mark said.

** Ken Daniel established the art school at WIAE in 1970. When the school amalgamated with Deakin University around 1985, he was appointed Dean of the fine arts across all Deakin campuses.

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[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] K [/dropcap]ate Bouman has taken the long way round, but she has finally come back to creating the delicate art she first began to explore as a child.

Growing up in Pomonal, a speck of a town between Halls Gap and Ararat, Kate loved to draw realistic pictures of the people and things around her and, at the age of 12, displayed her paintings in the Pomonal art show.

There were no major prizes to be won, but the high praise she received for her work encouraged Kate to keep going and, after finishing secondary school, she applied to study art in Bendigo and Ballarat.

Unbelievably, an administrative mistake meant that Kate was assessed as a Year 11, rather than a Year 12 student, and was rejected by both universities, so she applied to study childcare at TAFE instead.

“Childcare wasn’t really for me, so I ended up getting into horticulture (her parents owned a nursery in Pomonal)…by this stage I had come to believe that to make it as an artist you had to be either completely mad or dead, so horticulture seemed like the best option,” she said with a laugh.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] K [/dropcap]ate, 25, is now an orchid grower with Warrnambool Orchids, but this year she has also returned to her first love of creating beautiful things by hand and, in September, started a market stall as Pip & Lily Boutique crafts.

The care, patience and precision required for growing orchids is reflected in Kate’s creative work, which includes hand-drawn and painted cards, hand-painted jewellery, hand-made dolls, felt work and hand-drawn designs on clothing.

“I wanted my main point of difference to be the hand-made element, in that everything I do is hand drawn or designed,” she said.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] K [/dropcap]ate’s collection of hand-drawn cards, including a range designed for Christmas, pay homage to classic children’s books such as the Beatrix Potter collection, Noddy and Winnie the Pooh, and she is unashamed to admit that she owns more children’s books than adult books.

“I love the characters, the little animals, and the incredible illustrations,” she said.

A love of small animals also explains, in part, the choice of name: Pip & Lily.

“When I was a kid, I always wanted two zebra finches that I was going to call Pip & Lily, but then I came to realise that keeping birds in cages was not such a good thing, so I have kept the names, but I never got the birds,” Kate explained, laughing.

“And I also tried about 10 other names, but they were all taken, so Pip & Lily it is.”

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] A [/dropcap]lthough Kate has only been selling at local markets since September, she has been delighted with how well her work has been received.

“I make things for the love of it and as a creative outlet, rather than as a money making thing, but it has actually gone a lot better than I expected, which is wonderful.”

[box type=”bio”] Pip & Lily Boutique crafts will be at the Made by Me Market, Saturday November 30, 9am-4pm, Pavilion function room, Warrnambool breakwater. You can find also Pip & Lily on Facebook. [/box]

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