CrumpArt

You’ve Changed 48% in 10 Years

You’ve done a good job changing with the times, but deep down, you’re still the same person. You’re clothes, job, and friends may have changed some - but it hasn’t changed you.

Almost ten years ago to the day, I moved from a town in country Victoria to Melbourne. I finished high school in 1996, and was going to study art at the University of Ballarat, but had to rapidly alter my plans when a letter arrived from RMIT — I was accepted into the Advertising course. My parents had previously said that if I went to uni, it would have to be in Ballarat (for financial reasons), but they came along with me to the Advertising Q&A session, turned to me at the end and said, “If you get into that course, you have to go.” Apparently the prospect of me having a somewhat financially viable career was more appealing than being an artist, and while I obviously don’t agree with that thought anymore, I really wanted to do the course and happily rode the ticket out of town for all that it was worth.

Because my move was one of extremely short notice, finding somewhere to live was difficult (we don’t really have a “college” system here, although there are some very expensive options for a few universities). To cut to the chase, I ended up in a hostel with 16 other girls. Run by Catholic nuns. On Church St. Across the road from a church. My parents were very happy, and despite the crazy early curfews and occasional “interesting” meal, it was a good place for me to be in my first year — I think I was the only person from my school to go to RMIT from the handful who moved to Melbourne, so the hostel meant instant friends and a good support group.

I still don’t quite know how I managed to get into that course. I didn’t know a thing about advertising (I had to look “copywriter” up in the dictionary before my interview), I had a fine art folio — there was no graphics option at my high school — and a copy of the school magazine I’d helped edit. I was ridiculously shy and nervous and awkward. And I got into a course that accepted roughly 40 people from 2000 or so applicants. Crazy stuff. First year was hard, mostly because I was so shy and so clueless. Second year was harder, mostly because I went out with a boy from my course for four months over our summer break, and we broke up after the first week back at uni. I didn’t really cope well with that, and it showed in my grades. I failed a subject for the first and only time because I didn’t get an assignment in. But while I was going badly in the advertising and extra-curricular subjects (the one I failed was part of the latter), I excelled at the arty subjects — photography, writing and illustration. I really only remember one thing that my illustration lecturer said to me, and it turned out to be the most important thing that anybody told me at university. After looking at my first piece of work for the year, she said, “Why on earth are you doing advertising???!? You should be painting.”

I discovered Ani DiFranco that year as well. I remember hearing Untouchable Face on the radio as I was getting ready to go to a 21st birthday. I had a blank cassette in the tape deck and randomly decided to record it, which was the best move I have ever, ever made. Ani DiFranco was my catalyst for change, and it’s thanks to her music that I came into my own and figured out how to be a better person. I met the Mister a month before my third and final year of uni began, and he’s often joked about writing Thank You letters to both Ani and Carlton United Breweries for their respective roles in helping our relationship get off the ground.

So third year went well. It’s amazing what a little happiness will do for you. I ended up graduating with distinction and won a really excellent grammar book (The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: a Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager and the Doomed) for the getting the highest marks in my writing class. Two months later I started work at a big advertising agency on a crappy account for an even crappier wage. I take part of the blame for the crappy wage — I really had no clue as to how much I should be earning, and I’ve never liked asking for money. Plus the whole shy thing was rearing it’s ugly head again. In that time I had free breakfast every day, free beer every Friday night, met a lot of good people and hated my job. I was too exhausted from having a “creative” job to do any of my own work, until I was signed up with a couple of the other creatives for a seminar on youth that was presented to our clients. I’ve forgotten exactly how it all worked, but a few of us had to do a painting on the theme in a couple of hours, in front of an audience. My anti-establishment, anti-marketing, Buffy inspired painting brought back my anarchic spirit and made me want to make art again. I learned HTML and started a website. It was a very, very bad website, but it was a start. I started making other things. I made a suit cry at work when I stood up for myself — the management and the suits hated me for it, but all the creatives came up and said thank you. Me. I actually made someone cry. I still can’t quite get over that.

Eventually the account I worked on moved to another agency, and we were all retrenched. I took my package and ran. I did go for a couple of interviews at other ad agencies, but it soon became clear to me that I just couldn’t do it anymore. I went on the dole for a while, realised how much television I was watching when we got our electricity bill, then moved to a remote Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory for six months to work as a literacy and numeracy tutor at the school where my sister worked. Over the next few years I spent more time there. Back in Melbourne, I had my first solo art show at the CUB Malthouse/Playbox Theatre. It focussed on the Wadeye community, and later I returned there and helped their first ever year 12 class, taught by my sister, set up a small business to sell their artwork.

A few months later, back in Melbourne, I was accepted into the Fine Art printmaking course at RMIT. I was outright rejected by VCA the year before, and somewhat rejected again (I made the “maybe” queue on the second attempt), but thankfully by that time I realised that I really, really didn’t want to go there. Funnily enough, I received “A” letters from RMIT and Monash the first time I applied.

So, ten years later, I’m still a student. I still have no money, I was re-employed by the company I worked for last time I was at uni, and I’m studying at the same place as I was in 1997. I even have the same student number. But I’m a better person.