I’ve been slowly moving the things I do because I enjoy doing them more into a business, and while I’m definitely keen to ‘widen my horizons’ so to speak, and one day actually make a profit from it all, I’m not so keen about whether or not to get that serious about it.
One day I feel ‘Yes, I’m ready, bring it one’ another day, it’s ‘Oh, but I’d have to actually do work with tbe boring paper and accounting things … Yuck.’
So two sides of the coin, being a Creative, and creatively coming up with ideas to not do what serious side of my wants to do, because, hey, who doesn’t like making money from what they do? I had a book launch recently, and while I gave away books to those who’d provide me with material for the book (an anthology), I also sole copies of the book, so I had actual money in my hand from selling that book.
I liked that, but I also liked talking with people about what the book was about, especially where it connects with another important part of who I am and what I do. So yes, I’m a writer, but I’m also an Art Installation Creater and Curator!
There are other parts of who I am, and what I do I could potentially make money from too, especially the Stand Up comedian, and Publisc Speaker side, which I feel I’ve barely begun to explore, but still feel very much what I want to do more of, lots more!
Or I could just go on with my writing group friends, writing things, thinking about books I might write, or creative writing I want to do, and maybe doing itl if I fell like it …
Decisions, decisions. I’m not young, but I’m not so old I can’t still move into business, plenty of others have done that at the same age I am, early sixties … So Yes? or No?
I welcome any thoughts about this -please leave a comment to let me know how you think I could spend the rest of my life! Twenty more years, if I’m lucky, plenty of time to become rich, or to simply have the ‘funnest’ life possible!
For all of May this year and the previous two years I’ve spent some of my both walking, and raising funds for The MS May 50K, where people are encouraged to run, walk roll, or whatever method they use to get around under their own steam, to cover 50 kilometers in May.
I’ve like walking, and I have MS and have definitely benefitted from research into medicatins to helps peple with MS, and the proof of that is I’ve almost walked 100k so far and am going to go on walking for the few days remaining in May, and I’ll have my collection tin with me too, for people to pop in some money if they can!
If you click on the link above, you will see my fundrasing site, where online donations can be given. Even the price of a coffee and cake deal would be great, every little bit helps!
I have no official professional quailfication as a Curator, no Tertiary education in any Art subjects. But while I would not be able to get the job of Curator in any other institution, I am certainly the expert in the “Redbanks Rust & Found Art Installation”!
No-one knows more about this Art Installation than I do! And not only that, they never will! For I am the Creater, and Curator of this Art Installation, and much of the information concerning this Installation is still swishing around inside the creative space inside of my mind!
If I was a trained up professional Art Installation Curator, I would easily be able to show this piece which has now been put on display at this Art Installation. But that’s now the way things go in this Freelance “Pick It Up Then Put It Up” Installation. There is no list of the over 750 items now on display, and that number of ‘over 750 items’ is a guess, but as the person who collected almost all of the items, then put them on display and is now doing the Curating work, I am the Official and Only, Curator!
If someone thinks people can’t simply start creating such a thing, and then promoting it as an Art Installation and Tourism Site, well have I got news for them! That is exactly what I’ve done, well the first part, and the promotion of this installation/site is officially starting by the end of this month!
The Creation of this site has been fun, and I thank those who have assisted me in this, from Graham (my husband) our dog Lenny, Teresa who listened to me talking about his, and helped in the early collection times when it all started. And to Steve Oatway (an incredible creator of Found Object Art) and the lovely friends I’ve talked to about this project and some of whom have also given items for it to me. I thank you all so much! The interest from others has been a big part of how and why this is still going!
The curational process is much more brain work, rather than walking, although there is a bit of walking, and carrying involved as well, when moving various items found from the car to the midway space and then to the Installation, to be put on display.
CBut the process of moving from Creater to Curator also involved the consideration of why I was doing this, and what did it all mean, to me personally, and larger than that, to the community living in Redbanks, and broader than that. Me thoughts touch heavily on the Recycling aspects, and the related Reuse and Reimagining thoughts.
Further than that, as I’ve thought about the items I’ve found in the middle of country roads around where I live, well taking the various objects from the road to my boot or back seat and then putting them on display, I consider I possibly have prevented more than a few road accidents. I may have even saved some lives, who knows?!
I am glad about all of this, and while my brain and body remain so much engaged with this project, I’m sure the Redbanks Rust and Found Art Installation will go on becoming bigger and better! And this morning I pulled over when driving to an event to check my phone when I missed a call, then looked behind my car and found a new/old piece!
Then for the meeting I dropped into after that one, I showed this new piece, and told the new group member there, and found another person who loves collecting things too. Hooray! When there are things in your life that are important to you, and you’re passionate about, talking about them to others can have fabulous results.
This new person is interested in coming along for a look at what I’ve done, and she says she’ll bring a group of her friends with her! It really feels like this idea is a goer, for sure, and who knows, it may lead to even bigger and better things!
Life really is good, when others are on the same page, and understand why you love doing the unusual things you love to do!
I am Curating the Redbanks Rust & Found Art Installation, and while it it is not yet drawing in hundreds of visitors, I have high hopes it will be bringing in visitors soon. An Art Installation without visitors is a sad thing, except of course, the Installation has hundreds of cars driving past it every single day!
Every now and then I put out the sign, and get on with various curational tasks, making it all bigger and better!
So that is the sign, and while it is a little awkward to carry, it is a fine exercise to carry it from where it is put away, and back again, once my stint as the Curator is over, with perhaps more items put out on display!
This Art Installation has over 750 individual items, most of them ‘rusty’ bits and pieces, ‘found’ mostly by me, but sometimes by my husband. This idea is reaching out to people I’ve told about it and I’m thrilled to have been offered, and then accepted items to consider for inclusion.
This has led to some intriguing things, and I’m thrilled to have such a great range of different items of different kinds! There’s a chicken, that has attracted the interested of many, including me, I love Chickie Chook, and I have ideas about this one, with a children’s book in the future!
There’s Chickie Chook having a rest and thinking about adventures to come!
I have so many thoughts about where this children’s book may go, and putting on my business woman hat, I’m excited about using both that books, and Chickie Chook herself to help ‘sell’ this Art Installation where she lives, and reclines!
That chair may not be made of metal, but there are certainly metal bits and pieces that go to keeping it all together and while they may not be rusty yet, I suspect there will be rust happening soon enough …
There are items much smaller than Chickie Chook, such as beer bottle caps (lots and lots of them!) and there are bigger items, such as an exercise bike. And in the top photograph, there is that yellow and black sign, that I found one day going for a walk.
It was lying on the side of the road, lying flat on the ground, with weeds growing all around it! I was surprised, but knew what I had to do. I collected the item, and after contacting the relevant auttorities, who didn’t want it back, I then happily put it on display!
This Installation is taking up my interest, and my time, in great ways, and I am so looking forward to showing it all off and telling visitors all about it. There are many contexts involved, recycling, repurposing, reimagine, as well as road safety, when I consider the accidents that may be avoided because of the items taken off the road where motorists may swerve around them!
That won’t happen now because I’ve taken them from the road and put them on display as part of the Redbanks Rust and Fund Art Installation!
If you’re interested in seeing this in, contact me, and a visit can be arranged. email: kittycordo@gmail.com
When I used to say I was a writer, I didn’t also consider myself to be an artist, wrongly so, as it turns out. Because of course, writing is indeed an Art, the Art of Literature.
The book pictured above is one made up of writing, both poetry and prose, from people connected to my writing group, and I am proud of each one of them!
It is filled with responses to writing prompts given at our various events held, and the book is certainly correctly labelled as literature, such is the quality of the chosen pieces.
I am as proud to be connected with this book as I am of my own personal published books I have. But a couple of years ago, I took my first steps to another form of Art, that of Visual Art. I took up the idea of perhaps writing and actually illustrating children’s picture books.
And to do that, I would naturally need to actually draw the pictures to go in the picture book, right? Right! Well that idea, while a fun change for a while, didn’t really take off in my mind, and while I’m still open to the idea one day happening, it is off my list of things to to NOW!
But the idea of being a Visual Artist as well as being involved in Literature stuck in my head, and I decided it was somethng I had to do, and how I was going to do it was to take something I’d already been doing for a bit of fun, and treat it in a much more serious way.
I am a dog owner, and as my husband and I have been walking our dog (Lenny, a Greyhound, retired from racing), well I’d been picking up bits and pieces of rusty “rubbish” and putting them on our fence.
Over time, there were more and more things there, and as the fence itself is made of iron, and much of it has rusted. I thought about it all, and decided I would put it all together, thinking of the many important contexts touched on by what I was doing.
In the image above are some of the items that make up this Art Installation, a tiny section, some given to me, some found, but all of them either rusty, found or both rusty and found. That chicken now has a name, Chicky Chook, and she may well be the ‘star’ of a picture book, using photos rather than drawings … My mind comes up with so many different ideas!
Anyway, back to the Art Installation: Obviously, recycling and reimagining items otherwise looked on as trash, and now considered as items put on display, and so assist in the creation of the “Redbanks Rust and Found Art Installation”, all went toward my thinking on what I was doing as Art.
Initially I was Creating an Art Installation, and now, having more than 750 individual items on display, with more awaiting placement, and of course more found every week, I am thinking more closely about what I am doing, and where the best place may be for each item to be put on display.
Previously I would just put things anywhere, now I consider the most effective way to place each item, filling gaps in the display, to make it more visually appealing to onlookers …
So yes I am indeed a Visual Artist, as well as being involved in literature. I in fact have been bringing the two Art forms together, and intend publishing a collection of written responses to this Art Installation, and launch it at a Festival put on by my writing group.
Writing will always be a much loved aspect of my Art, but Visual Art is becoming more and more important to me as well!
Those two frogs were giving to me by a friend who’d had some rearrangement in her garden and no longer needed them, and she automatically thought of me! I’m becoming famous about this Art Installation, in my immediate community anyway, and am thinking about ways to extend my breadth of connections regarding this, and turn both it, and my other Creative things I do into a paying business!
Exciting times, and I am gathering as many supporters together to assist in making this installation into a fun and interesting place for tourists, whether they’re intrastare, interstate, or overseas visitors. This idea is taking up much of my thinking at the moment, and I truly feel it may actually work!
I don’t need thousands of visitors, I just need enough visitors committed to what I have to present, and happy to pay for it. I’ll be working at making my site one for not fust looking and walking on, but getting involved in what is on presentation, as a form of Experiential Tourism.
This is really appealing to me, and I hope it will be of interest to many others as well. If anyone is interested in knowing more, feel free to contact me, I’d love to tell you about it! And tell your friends too!
Carolyn Cordon - Creative 