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I'm an artist living and working in the Chittering Valley which is a rural community to the north of Perth in Western Australia. It wasn't always this way. The first 20 something years of my working life were frittered away establishing a business in the commercial print industry. (Which I might add, is still running and this year celebrates it's 20th birthday! I'm still cheering wildly from the back office.) Anyway, after a couple of good-sized wakeup calls (was a bit slow to get the message) I realised that designing business cards wasn't making art. (Knowing the search engines will pick this up - if you've stuck your hand up to donate a kidney - email me - questions answered as best I can.) Thoroughly kicked in the backside, I re-arranged my life, handed over the keys to the office and headed back to school. Guess what? Management skills and a sense of layout aren't entirely useless in fine art... so maybe it was worth it. Anyway, first I had a good go at the Advanced Diploma in Environmental Art & Design at Swan TAFE. I hung in there until the end of 2007. It's a great place becaue it's so darned practical. You get to ruin your clothes and stain your hands and make a mess with anything and everything. You don't come out of there a painter or a sculptor or a printmaker - you do everything - which means you get to do what the work wants - because you can. Then at the beginning of 2008 the driving finally drove me mad. I'm no wooss - I was clocking up around a 1000km a week - what a waste of time. It was time that could be better spent making stuff and getting out in the real world. As a 2nd year student I won several awards - something for the bio alongside the diploma I thought... truth is it's all part of the learning. (Another one for Google: if you're studying fine art guys: don't wait until you graduate. The chances are, no one will be waiting around to meet you at your grad show. Get out there now!) Something, however, had to go... So I jumped ship again - actually in all honesty I wasn't just worn out with the travelling I got another little kick too ( warts and all this is). The politics in art school can be horrendous - you need a thick hide - which I don't have. And strangely I think that's what makes me good at what I'm going. So be it. There are other ways - and the bottom line - life is too short to waste putting up with being miserable... So... I'm currently working (slowly) toward a BA (Fine Art) at Curtin University through Open Uni. Yup that's fine art via correspondence - quit laughing - it works. These days it's online with really active forums which are sort of the equivalent to the lunch bench and the tutorial all in one - except - what someone says is there to be referred back to (and on record which keeps it civilised!) and can be researched before replying. You also get to be really self-reliant when making stuff and good at making your work look good in front of a camera (you can send things in for assessment if you want) but the photographing for effect is useful! Primarily, however, I'm at the coal face: making stuff, showing what I make and sticking my hand up when I can do something useful in the art world at large: hanging exhibitions, designing catalogues and whatever else for a couple of organisations. Oh, and coaching in colour theory and a bit of judging. Awards
Exhibitions (coming up)
Exhibitions (past)
Memberships
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| Muchea Rd, Lower Chittering in the early morning. | ||
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| All text, images, photos and art on this site are Copyright AA Williams 2007 |