Aussies on Etsy – Art Nomadix

Megg of Art Nomadix is our Aussie on Etsy today.

We both hail (admittedly transplanted, but I call it home!) from the Northern Rivers area in Northern New South Wales.

Truth-be-told, I have probably seen Megg at the Channon Markets.  It’s a favourite Sunday market of mine – the people you meet, the sights you see – a visual and aural delight.

Megg has shared a bit (lot!) about herself – a truly amazing woman, and one I’m looking forward to meeting soon.

NAME: Megg
AGE: 50
HOMETOWN: Ringwood East, (Originally), – Warehouse in Nth Melbourne, – Nomadic Australia, and now Tyalgum, Northern NSW.

1) Tell us a little bit about yourself…
Having gone to an Alternate School from 14-17, I decided early on that I wanted to follow my own path…… I studied Mime for a year in France, after picking Hops and Raspberries in Tasmania.
Later on when I had returned to Melbourne from a couple of years up here in Northern Rivers region, I began working as a life model in a wide range of colleges around Melbourne, (paid to have free art lessons !), as my family and I set up an Arts Workshop, for visual and performing arts, in an old warehouse in Nth Melbourne, Living Rainbows Workshop.
I also had started painting clothes with rainbows and began a weekly market stall at St Andrews Market.
After being taught to crochet after a Down To Earth Festival, I accidentally made a hat.
Wearing this hat every week at my stall, I was soon receiving custom orders for hats, and I rapidly became a hat maker.
I was ‘seen’ by many, crocheting my Gumnut Antennas to the Universe Hats, on the trams and trains of inner Melbourne, wearing my unusual bright coloured clothes in a city of black and grey !
As I have now been making these hats for over 22 years, I can now call myself a Beanieologist.
I also work in many other mediums, fabric, clay, paint, water crayon, dyes and fabric paint,, and have been exploring and teaching myself to use a computer during the past two years, since my bus decided that 12 years travelling as a wandering nomadic artist, around our fabulous country, was long enough, she lost 4th gear. Luckily we were in this neck of the woods, where all my biological family reside now.

2) What time of day are you at your creative best?
The past two years my creativity has waned somewhat with the depletion of my energy due to some health problems…..and sometimes find that I only really find a reserve of creativity late in the day and can then work long into the night.
I used to be a very active morning person, up with the birds, work all day and keep going long into the night.
I think I am at my creative best when I can live on my own and just follow my own time clock, or not, as I choose. That’s when I create some wonderful pieces, often working on many projects simultaneously.

3) Where do you find your inspiration? Do you have any ‘rituals’ to help put you in the creative state-of-mind?
Hmmmm ….the colours and shapes of nature and the landscape, dreams and strange coincidences can give rise to an idea, that I suddenly feel inclined to portray in a hat, …..Baskets of hand rolled balls of wool sorted into colour, cry out to me, and so I empty the work basket and refill it with a new colour range, and let my fingers begin.
To wind myself up for the new season of hat making, I find that re-rolling the new wool and yarn I have found, into round balls, instead of the way it comes, helps not only with the ease of it unrolling as I work, but really gets me wound up, and ready to let my subconscious creativity unravel , and then I watch as the patterns and colours grow from nothing.
Before I can paint, either clothes and fabric or canvases, I find a need to clean the studio first, set everything in order and then I know where everything is and have a clean slate.

4) How do you squeeze crafting into your busy life?
Crafting has been a big part of my life, for many years, and having worked for myself for so long, you learn to utilise whatever part of the day you need to.
Having said that, it has been hard to squeeze in crafting time, with all the time that the online world of computers, has encroached into my life since the start of 2008. Yet there is a time for everything and while health problems have reduced my creative output, I have had the space and time to teach myself, to be computer literate, and keep up with the modern world.

5) What are you working on now?
Having just finished several fibre pieces for a local Fibre Exhibition, I am recommencing work on the first of two Competition exhibition Hats for the 14th Alice Springs Beanie Festival. I must have this tall hat ready very soon, so it can be posted in a box and travel un-express post, yet arrive before the 4th June.
The theme for this year is, ‘A Head Full of Love’, and I have designed a hat with a Globe of the Earth above the point of the hat with an All-Encompassing Umbrella over the Top. I am working on a Surrounding Rain Forest with a glimpse of Mt Warning, the ancient core of a Volcano here in the Tweed, with 4 large Eucalypt Trees supporting the Earth These are needle felted over some floristry wire for strength.
Several paintings on canvas , one 1.5 x 1m, one a long panorama, one small panorama, and 3 mini panoramas.

(See this blog post for more information on Megg’s glorious ‘A Head Full of Love’ beanie pictured below.)

6) What three tools could you not live without?
My Roll of Crochet Hooks, my Felting Needles, and my Digital Camera.

Love, Light, and Rainbows
Megg

To read more about Megg’s colourful and varied life, visit her blog.

And see her life and works in pictures at her Flickr pool.

Thanks for sharing your wonderful and inspiring life journey with us Megg.  Next time I’m up in Lismore and the Channon Markets are on, I’ll come looking for you!!