Wife, mother, Poet, Writer, Art Installationist, Stand Up Comedian, Dog Enthusiast. Spending most of my time being creative in a variety of sometimes quirky ways!
I have suffered in my life, I have had wonderful things occur in my life. Concentrating on the wonderful things makes it easier for me to live a great life.
This event will be at 2 to 3pm on the 28th of July 2025, at 1594 Germantown Road REDBANKS South Australia. If you are able to get there, feel free to contact me and I’ll keep a look out for you!
The image above shows a small section of my Art Installation, a very small part of it. But in this section are perhaps thirty or more items of the Redbanks RUST & FOUND Art Intallation, with the entire Installation having more than 700 individual items on display!
The intention with this brief display is to guage interest in it, and to showcase the variety of interesting concepts it touches on. There are definitely recycling aspects, with many of the items on display thrown away as rubbish, and headed for the dump.
To me though, every item can tell as story, about us, about how we feel about our world, and about the commnity we live it. There are concepts of road safety there as well, and the ideas around history too.
But is it Art though? I say yes, and I’d love to hear what other people think about that!
The Redbanks RUST & FOUND Art Installation began as something far more simple than an extensive Art piece with over 700 individual pieces on display, as it is now.
But as they say, from little things big things grow, and yes, they sure have! It all started a couple of years ago, when I began picking up small bits and pieces of metal, usually beer bottle caps, and putting them on the front fence of ‘our place’, which is the home of my husband and I, in Redbanks South Australia.
Redbanks is a small township, in rural SA, in the Adelaide Plains Council area. There is a commnity Hall fallen into disrepair, and there are houses on small blocks, and there are farming land all around. We’ve lived here since 1988, and love our move from suburbia!
And while we love it out in the country, there is not a lot of community feeling in Redbanks, for that you need to go to Mallala, the closest town to our place, or Gawler, which is a good bit bigger than Mallala.
We moved out to the Adelaide Plains to breed pure bred show dogs, but now have moved away from that world, and simply have a pet dog, a Greyhound, Lenny. Lenny is an important part of this story, because many of the found objects found/collected when taking Lenny for a walk, are now on display in this Art Installation!
The creation aspect has come more recently, when someone I’ve been talking with someone about what I was doing, and it became clear to me this was much more than just a fence, with bits and pieces stuck on it, or leant against it! And as the Creation aspect moved along, the ideas regarding what I was doing grew conceptually, and before I knew it, I was an Art Installation Curator, presenting a literature-based viewing and then writing workshop.
And now, to take that aspect further, there is an anthology planned to be published and launched in the new year! The more I think about this project, the more I can see could happen with it, and at the moment, I’m in the process of readying various items from this Art Installation for a viewing at another site during SALA (SA Living Artist) Festival in August this year!
How Exciting is this? Very exciting, is what I say, and I’m loving being the Curator of an Art Installation!
Some people are terrified of Public Speaking, and would rather to almost anything, rather than actually speak in public. Not me, I love it!
So when the chance came up to do a short Stand Up Comedy piece at an event with several other Stand Up Comedians, I said, yeah, count me in! And now, as one of the other performers at that gig, Todd Gray, wrote in a message to me, ‘that monkey is now off the back, and a weight off the chest’.
The other performers, and especially the person who organised it all, Marc Ryan, were lovely to me, and it seems like the kind of thing where they all look out for each other. They all thought I’d done a good job doing my act as Nanna Carreau, an old dear who’s funny!
I had a couple of poems I’d written, and performed them, people laughed (with me or at me? who cares, at least hey were laughing!) And wow, I enjoyed doing that so much, I really want to do another gig!
Anyway, yes that monkey is now off Nanna Carreau’s back now too, and she’s has been whispering lines to me, for the next show! The performers there on that night at the Prince Albert Hotel in Gawler, it was, a venue I know very well. And no, not for hte reasons you’re thinking!
My writing group meets at that hotel every Thursday afternoon and that helped a lot on my big night as a Stand Up Comedian! I did a little impromptu act, sort of, yesterday too. I was driving home from a visit to my Mum, and had to stop to fill up my car with petrol. And as I was going insode there to pay for the fuel, I saw to young women collecting money for something or other, and decided I’d stop to see what it was all about, on the way back to the car.
So that’s what I did. They told me what they were doing, and I told them about doing the Nanna Carreau, and did a mini act, with just my voice and words, not dressed up in character, like in the photo below!
Then one of the young women google Nanna Carreau, and found a photo of her/me, and we all laughed again! The photo was a smaller one, and only showed Nanna’s Carreau’s head in that same beanie (which she’ll proudly tell anyone and everyone, she knitted it herself), but that link and photo were definitely enough to back up the truth of what I was saying!
Anyway, they told me I should record myself doing my act, and put it up on TikTok, and I’d get thousands of followers! A fine idea, and one I may see if I can get my son to help me with that one day. In the meantime, I’m definitely going to discuss the possibility of that writing group I mentioned putting on a workshop in doing comedy/Stand Up, and then later on in the year, have a Stand Up Comedy event as a part of the Festival of Words we run every year in July.
We have a theme for the Festival, and this year the theme is ‘Time’, and Nanna Carreau and I are already thinking about what we will/or rather could do with that theme! I have to remind myself, I may be the President, but I have a subcommittee to convince!
Ah life is so much fun, and it looks like it’s going to get much more fun, and funny too! Cheers, have a laugh, you deserve it!
At the moment, I’m in the middle of working on a variety of different projects, some of them relevant to this website, others not. But of course, as a writer and creative person, everything that happens in my life is connected with evetything else!
Today was a matter of writing a new form, working my way through it, and ending up with a suitable result. That feels like a good result, and I hope the actions that follow on from that will also be good ones.
Necessary plans – coming up with the needed words and ‘financials’, humph! The Words part of it, that comes more naturally to me, but those numbers, they’re definitely not so natural though.
But when you’re going into business, or upping the actual business you’ve been doing in an informal way, to turn it into something more formal, (and one hopes bringing more monetary rewards), well if you want the money for your business, you’ve got to get the business plan happening!
So that’s what I now have, a business plan for the business that is me – “Carolyn Cordon” Writer, Public Speaker, Art Installationist, and Stand Up Comedian! and the exciting thing that happened last night is that someone spoke to me last night about doing a talk at a Service Group, so my Public Speaking career is definitely happening.
I expect there isn’t likely to be several hundred dollars or so in recompense for my time, nothing like that. I suspect the more likely reward will be perhaps some chocolates, and not a lot else. At this stage, that’s not relevant to me, it’s all about getting the word, my words, out there, spoken!
Some of my published books at an event I’d attended, below:
With the new Business Plan I created, I’ve planned to do many more events such as was the one above, when I have my books on display, ready to be signed and sold!
The idea od being judged as ‘normal’ is of no interest to me, I don’t ever want to be ‘normal’ it feels so limiting! I’m a Word Nerd (a term I’ve only recently come across, and I know willingly embrace it! Words are the thing that draws all of the best things in my life togerther.
From reading and especially writing, to talking, and performing, and of course thinking, Words are what floats my boat! I love new words and ways to say things, I love intellingent conversation, listening to clever radio is my idea of the perfect driving companion, some of the time anyway.
Lots of people I know, ad those I don’t know (yet), might say the same, but I suspect I might take all of that in more unusual directions at times, that many others wouldn’t envision ever doing themselves.
The most obvious one is probably the Art Installation I Created, and am now Curating (a work in progress, and I’n expecting lots more actuon will be coming along on that one later on this year. And of course my desire to do work as a Stand Up Comedian is probably not what the average 60+ year old wants to take up doing …
But I have plans at foot, and hope to have a lot of fun doing this one for sure. The idea of performing as my persona of Nanna Carreau fills me with happiness! I offer humble thanks to Martin Christmas for his assistance with getthing the idea of this persona up and running!
That’s me dressed as Nanna Carreau on the left, the man on the right Len Dix is far better known than me (in motorsport circles especially)
This occasion was in Mallala, when there was an afternoon of classic cars when one of the roads was closed and the cars were there for people to see and learn about. So, with encouragement from someone I know, I dressed up and Nanna Carreau and had fun, and gave some of those in the crowd a bit of a giggle too!
Taking opportunities is something I’ve learnt to grasp with both hands, and am enjoying where some of it takes me! Soon, there may be something happening for me in the Barossa, if things pan out well for me, and if they don’t there will be other times, in other places!
Having books, and doing things with, and in libraries, that seems to be quite a good thing to do! And given the fact that I like talking to others, and I have books and thoughts, and a somewhat interesting life, well I think so anyway, I should be taking about it to others!
And who knows there may be book sales to come of doing that! Book sales and author talks, as well as doing writing related workshops are all classic ways for writers all around the world to earn money.
I’m a writer, and I know about these things. I’m just not that good (yet) at the marketing side of things. I’m working on that though, and I hope by the end of this year, I’ll be much better at it!
I’ve had a life, and I’m still having one, a different one in new ways, and I’m loving it! Not everyne would say the same, and I’m sad for those people. Perhaps a session with Nanna Carreau would cheer them up, and make them laugh!
Carolyn Cordon - Creative 