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treechangeseachange · 3 years

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The return

It’s coming up to 3 months since we returned to our block and it took us 8 weeks to slow down. On the weekend we slowed down we enjoyed the first official Friday night catch up with our neighbours as the full moon rose. On Saturday we went out for brunch. No sport on Sunday morning meant a sleep in. I played handball with my boys for the first time ever in my life. Lamb shanks slow cooked on the wood heater. We squeezed in a late Sunday afternoon fishing trip. It took us 8 weeks to find some calm. We had forgotten how to do normal. I haven’t written for this blog since um wow December?! My leisure time since then has been extremely limited and when it occurred I prioritised my mental wellbeing and sleep.

This journey has brought me to the edge of my psychological and physical limitations. I watched my husband do a terminator style non stop renovation while trying also to commence a rebuild. His promises to take time off over Christmas dwindled to 2 days. There was so much to do. I helped with whatever jobs I was able to and then focussed on the household and occasionally, our boys. Midway through January this year we realised trying to work on both the renovation and the rebuild was insanity. The local real-estate market was booming. Post COVID, Sydney city dwellers realised they could put in a few days in the city then work from their coastal holiday pad the rest of the week. We decided to get our investment property, come bushfire haven, onto the market before the summer ended. We mapped out each remaining job and the days required to accomplish them. We calculated selling time, settlement time and remaining bank balance. What were need to do’s and what were optional extras. If everything went to plan, we could pay to get some work done at the block and make it habitable enough to move into. It was an extreme test of time, energy and resources.

It worked. We listed by the end of February, sold in three weeks and settled five weeks after settlement. I write that all in one glib sentence. Of course all of that only happened with considerable focus and effort. Life for the boys was hectic. 99% of their toys were packed and moved into storage weeks before the house went on the market. As the house neared completion we stressed about them damaging something. When the house was on the market we stressed about them getting things dirty - the walls, the windows or the cupboards. I banished them from the bathroom, they had to brush teeth in the laundry and shower outside. Luckily it was warm and didn’t rain much in those few weeks! Anyone who has sold a house while living in it knows how painful open homes are. The logistics and effort of cleaning and styling, while working full time from home, scheduling everything between work appointments, getting the dog out of the way and the boys to school, nearly broke me. Thankfully the selling process was short, but we packed a lot of opens into that time and by the end of it all, I had become a shouty, grouchy mum and wife. It was also a real highlight to hit menopause and bring some phenomenal hormonal energy into the mix. Phew.

Before we packed up and left I was lucky enough to have a week away with the boys. My fully wired self hit Melbs and my family gave me refuge and forgave my intensity. We managed some fun and the change of scenery was a big relief. Husband, however, stayed behind to work on the temporary shed home. Holiday behind me, I returned to packup and clean and polish the house for the financial return of our lives. Literally.

Can you then imagine our triumphant and spectacular return to our block bathed in happiness and light? Um well perhaps instead picture this - we arrived exhausted to an unpowered, work in progress temporary residence in the middle of a mice plague and endured 200ml of heavy rain in four days leaving us surrounded by mud. Happy to catch the rain in our tank? I wish! The new tank leaked 8000L the week before we moved, and only our neighbour’s spare tank loan meant we had any water at all. But being so small, it overflowed and made even more mud. The heavy rain was so loud on the tin roof it frequently woke the kids in the night (who then woke us), mice ran across the floor, huntsmen spiders dropped from the ceiling. With nowhere really to unpack things, cooking became like the biggest ever memory game, which box were the bowls in? Where did I pack the cutlery? The rain delayed our solar power install so for 10 days we lived out of an esky and by torchlight. We both kept working full time, getting the boys to school, after school sport commitments and then husband kept building after he got home and into the night. After a week of stress and chaos we knew something had to give, fortunately husband could take time off work to focus on our build and family life.

Fast forward to now. The financial pressure of the summer has eased. The temporary living quarters are functional and steadily improving. We have a beautiful wood heater. Our off grid solar system is powering us even during these short winter days. I have more kitchen cupboards than ever before, plus a dishwasher! I have hung up my clothes in a full wardrobe for the first time in nearly four years. The boys each have clean new wardrobes. Their separate rooms are still being built so they are in what will be our room which is insulated and wall paneled. We can cope with an outside shower and toilet. My husband is a legend.

What’s it like actually being back? I confess I was nervous about my own and the boys emotions. Eldest son is extremely happy to be back. Youngest son has taken time to adjust but that has more been due to his fear of the dark. The noises of the bush are unfamiliar and there are no streetlights out here! There has only been one time where a prebushfire memory overwhelmed me. Every person’s bushfire experience and recovery is unique. Unlike many others we are fortunate have the opportunity to not have to build on the exact footprint of the old place and I think this is psychologically helpful. It’s not the same space, and with some trees dead and gone the landscape is altered, its a slightly different perspective. The boys are older now, so our lifestyle is different too. Slowly we are finding a new rhythm on our land. The boys are absolutely loving being back on their bikes on bush tracks.

I was excited to resume my morning walks, although maybe not as excited the dog! He’s happy to have his off-lead roam again. But the first week of walking I found tough, the burnt and recovering state forest I traverse didn’t bring me the joy it used to. In the heavily logged areas where only isolated saplings were left unlogged, they couldn’t survive the heat of the fire or they didn’t have community trees to share nutrients through their roots to support recovery. The undergrowth is now the canopy and is booming with all the extra sunlight but when I look at it, all I see is fire hazard. Then as the weeks went by, my view softened, I recognise the bush is healing like me. I am appreciating small wonders of nature. A spider’s web highlighted with morning dew or the fascination of new plants thriving. There are trees that have fully recovered, others seem to be doing well, and there is much green in the landscape to enjoy.

On my morning walk I also see which animals are about in the night from what they leave behind. There is at least one very busy wombat! We see wallabies reasonably often and last week one morning I found big roo prints in the clay right near our place. We hear a boobook owl calling most nights and more frogs chirping croaking from the gully than I ever remember. Which now makes sense, we definitely were in drought for some years prior to the fires and the creek has this year been running for months. Less exciting is hearing foxes at night, my son especially dislikes their eerie calls. In daytime the bird life is altered. We are down to one lyrebird, there used to be two with adjacent territories battling loudly with their extraordinary mimicry. But at least there is one, how a ground bird survived I can’t imagine. The yellow robins aren’t around us now, we have wrens in the cleared spaces and in the lush shrubs busy brown gerygones dart and chirp. A shrike thrush has made a nest in our bushfire remains pile, her song is piercing and wonderful. Rarely are the yellow crested black cockatoos here now. This past weekend we did see two circling wedge tailed eagles the silent assassins of the sky wheeling high over the gully with that phenomenal wingspan.

Surprisingly my greatest source of happiness in these first few months being back has come from the sky. Unobstructed by buildings, the sky feels bigger in the bush. I’m loving the late winter sunrises. My very favourite time is just after the sun has risen when the horizontal sun rays set tops of the trees bright orange. Those are magical minutes of golden tinged trees. The sunsets. The stars. The moon. the sky has been a revelation and a source of happiness. Maybe because I’m spending more time outside I notice it more. Seeing glittering stars through the steam of a hot outdoor shower makes the cold walk inside completely worth it!

Slowly I am regaining my sense of gratitude for this place. The quiet. The privilege of not seeing another house. Having no curtains and that not mattering. Not worrying about noise and neighbours. Lack of street lights at night.

All of a sudden things aren’t hectic and we are settling in. It still amazes me after 6 moves in 5 years how intense moving is and then how imperceptibly things transition to not being new anymore. Normalcy sneaks up on me every time. Clearly this isn’t really normal but we’re enjoying this new start in our old place.

#treechange #seachange #nswbushfires #recovery #offgrid

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karlymichelle1 · 7 years

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Please forgive my rant, or maybe not....

As artists, the system is designed the fail us....

To all you artists out there, the system seems to be set up so we will fail - or at least - so we won’t prosper without a whole lotta luck.

To me, a non-businessy person, it seems like a ridiculous business model but maybe I’m missing something.

In this little rant though, let me clarify early on I am not talking about the ‘elite arts’ - that art which can be bought in high end commercial galleries or art that is displayed in funded and established galleries - e.g. the NGV here in Melb. These funded galleries that have free, public exhibitions are doing an enormous service and need to continue to do so. However, they are funded. Also, they do tend to supplement their free exhibitions with paid ones. Also, they are actually a different, whole kettle of fish....

Back to rant:

For the general punters out there, here’s how a lot of galleries work:

You go to a gallery, you get to view the art for free, you leave.

You can buy work if you wish but you probably won’t.

—-

This is the model for nearly all community art galleries and local galleries.

In this little rant, I am talking about the everyday and local galleries, and the artist who lives down the street from you and is trying to save up enough money so that they can afford to hire a gallery to show their work and buy frames.

And yes, you read that correctly - we the artist pay to have exhibitions for a lot of spaces. Not all, but a lot. And you don’t really have a chance of getting invited to exhibit somewhere that will pay you without the exhibitions that you’ve paid for yourself.

Generally, gallery spaces incur none of the financial risk whatsoever. The artists do. But galleries do get some of the profits.

We, the artist, pay a fee for the hire of the gallery space. And I do get that there are expenses that have to be paid to run a gallery.

We more than likely have to pay for advertising (It was included only as standard in the hire cost in one gallery in my limited experience, I have done it myself for the other exhibitions rather than pay extra when available - but if you print anything out, that of course still costs).

We generally have to promote our event ourselves. For some strange reason that I don’t understand nearly all the galleries I’ve exhibited in (admittedly all local, small community galleries - but all established galleries nonetheless who have exhibitions continually) don’t have a great media presence. I have a larger social media presence than most of them which is saying something. So I have create Facebook events, made specific social media banners, sent out emails, put up posters, handed out posters etc. for all of my exhibitions - it takes heaps of time with very little pay off - or at least it feels that way.

I’m not saying I wouldn’t do any of this anyway - but when all a gallery does is put up a poster on the door, maybe a single online post, and send out an email to what is actually a very small list of people (which they possibly lead you to believe was somewhat inflated when you initially spoke to them about hiring the space), it doesn’t feel like they’ve bothered to do much at all. I’m continually surprised at the small online footprint of some of these galleries. And I still don’t understand how galleries that exhibit something new every 2 weeks to 1 month don’t have regular relationships with local papers and advertising places. But again, maybe I’m missing something.

Then we the artist pay the gallery if any of our work actually sells in the form of a commission. Sometimes this is up to 40% but seems to more commonly be about 25/30%. This means, for me anyway, that I price my art at what I think is a reasonable amount for time, materials etc. but I generally don’t add in the extra for the commission - I just take the loss myself because I believe that if I was to put it up even less of it would sell.

Sometimes we even have to pay extra for insurance. But more often than not we’ve already paid for our own insurance anyway. Most of the time though, insurance doesn’t cover the actual artworks, either theft or accident (and I have had people in the gallery touch, move and generally get way to close to pieces so accident is a real possibility - often without the gallery letting them know that it is inappropriate). Insurance just covers public liability, and if we can afford it, personal accident.

Then we the artist essentially pay the general public to come to the opening night because we have to provide for the opening night spread (I’ve had to do this this for all bar one exhibition. Sometimes you don’t organise it yourself, instead you pay for someone else to. I’ve taken to taking on this responsibility completely myself, mostly because I don’t really like the ‘standard’ exhibition opening night traditions (but that’s another whole rant) but also so I have some oversight to the amount that is spent).

Also, ever been to an artists talk event? Maybe not, but they are often scheduled or it is highly recommended that you do one by the gallery and they are often free. Why? Why do we expect a guided, in-depth talk by the artist about the creation of their work to be free?

For some galleries, yes I think this should be free, because they can afford it, they are probably able to pay the artist themselves, and frankly it is going to be beneficial for society to make them free (again, I’m talking larger galleries, those with government funding etc. who can bring in a different type of artist, not your local community art gallery).

So, to sum up, we the artist, have to create a body of work, front all of this money, spend all of this time, with absolutely no guarantee that anyone will buy our work.

Or even turn up to look at it.

It is a system designed to fail us. It is a system that is designed to make the arts seem elitist because to become elitist is the only way to survive. It is the only way to make money. That is, if you can even become an ‘elit’ artist - if your style fits what mainstream society wants, and if you can survive long enough to become noticed.

But to be a grass roots, local, relevant, everyday artist dealing with the issues of society doesn’t pay the bills. It barely covers the materials, so forget about getting any money for your time.

And you know what? This doesn’t just mean the system fails the artists, it also fails society. It does this by not valuing the arts, and the experience and opportunities they offer, by not placing a price on the education and the expectation that someone else can teach you something about art and, most importantly, it deprives us as a society from experiencing more art, of participating in more art. Because I firmly believe that if it wasn’t so expensive to be an artists, that if there was more money to support artists, that there would then be more art and more good art - relevant art, art that invites you in, art that challenges you, that surprises you, that is locally relevant, that is relevant to society, that speaks directly to what is happening in life right now.

To make the art free to access like this, with no means of funding the artist, de-values the artist and art we are creating, because it creates an expectation that it should be free. And this means that there will be less artists and certainly less diverse ones - and possibly less creative and engaging and brave ones because we instead spend so much time simply trying to just survive - which means creating ‘mainstream’ art rather than the art that is actually needed (again, another rant for another time).

My proposal to counter this is $5 (or maybe even $10????) entry to local galleries wherever possible.

I get that for some places this is not realistic but seriously, what’s the harm of putting up a donation tin that is for the artist, or maybe split between the gallery and artist at the end of the exhibition? How is that so hard? Why would that be so wrong? Would that really stop people from going? If you want to be really specific - kids in for free, some sort of group discounts, and after your first entry, you can use your ticket to re-enter the exhibition for the length of the current show.

Would that be so bad?

Except for Artists talks - you’d need to pay your $5 again for that because seriously, you expect us, the artist, to make the art and then talk about it coherently? Artists are generally visual creatures and you’re asking us to also be eloquent?!

And for all those naysayers out there who want to come back and say ‘I value the arts’ - sure you do - and I do believe you - but when was the last time you paid for something that wasn’t pop culture music or film? When was the last time you bought an original piece of art from a local artist? Or a print from a local artist? When was the last time you were prepared and bought a set of handmade cards that’ll cover all the cards you need for the year from a local artist rather than the cheap and cheesy from the newsagent shop as you are on the way to a birthday party? When was the last time you bought a beautifully crafted wooden cheese board from somewhere in Olinda as a gift? Or some handmade jewellery from a local market? Or ordered some beautifully and painstakingly handmade clothing from a local maker?

Forget about gifts and presents - When was the last time you bought something locally handmade rather than the cheap version from a large shop? When was the last time you spent time in a gallery just because?

When was the last time you allowed yourself to be inspired by the craftpersonship? Were awed by the beauty? Challenged? Comforted?

Would you have been prepared to spend $5 to get in?

Would a $5 fee have prevented you from going?

Does it seem that unreasonable?

An aside: And don’t say just go and get a grant. Grants are not that easy- they require realms of paperwork in advance, again without any guarantee you’ll get it, they often require a huge amount of planning and preparation, again without any guarantee you’ll be able to put it into action. You also have to be aware of the available grants. And apply. On time. Often you actually need help from other organisations to submit, which could cost money upfront. Sometimes I think it’s only worth it if you are going to do the project anyway, and just hope that the grant comes through to help. Or, it’s a way to fund the big, really big projects.

But as a local artist, just trying to get your next exhibition up and running - it’s often pretty far fetched.

That’s my rant.

Pay the $5.

Support the arts.

#arts #support the arts #artists #the system is designed to fail us #my rant

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