Year in Review 2020: learning to stay happy

When the world went into lockdown and all my travel plans were cancelled, I brought the world to me. My personal and business life merged together. This was the year Zoom became my best friend and sanity saver.

Every day for 6 months I went live hoping to inspire others to create through crisis and I learnt that home can be a rich source of inspiration. The view outside my window became a portal into the chaotic world outside.

With three generations under one roof, my family found ways to come together and appreciate each other yet still create our own spaces for privacy. We survived and learned to take one day at a time, no expectations.

This is how it rolled….

Art: the highs and lows

As an artist and an entrepreneur, I have learnt ( sometimes painfully) how to ride the roller coaster of highs and lows. For every application there are always rejections, on review they balanced each other out this year. 

*January: my work was accepted into an important exhibition in Melbourne about climate change called 1.5 degrees. It was the first time I exhibited at my favourite small gallery 45 Downstairs in Flinders Lane. I travelled to Melbourne to deliver my artwork and help look after the grandchildren. It was a win/win incorporating Luna Park, chocolate and art! I stayed in Melbourne until the exhibition opened in February.

Number of rejected exhibition proposals in 2020 = 6 

Number of exhibitions I participated in 2020 = 6

Creativity: challenges and courses

Last year I wrote that my big goal for 2020 was “ focusing on art, my creativity business and travel … because I have a big vision to take creativity to a large audience.”  This was the year Zoom became my best friend and sanity saver. I even took up Zoom yoga - I might never go back to a live class again….

*February: I launched my first signature course Dare to Create. Much of the course inspiration came from my visit to Melbourne and the exhibitions I saw there. But then along came Corona and all plans were thrown out the window.

Number of creativity business activities in 2020:

• 1 travel art challenge 

• 2 studio clearing activations for an artist and a writer 

• 3 creativity courses 

• 4 masterclasses 

• 5 Facebook groups running – far too many and a bit exhausting

Corona: bringing the world to me

At the end of 2019 I wrote about my epic travel plans for 2020, including an artist residency in the Blue Mountains, a trip to Iceland (again) and a papermaking trip to Japan for the IAPMA congress. 

 *March I travelled to BigCi in the Blue Mountains for my artist residency which looked like it was going ahead despite the looming crisis. I knew that creating art would soothe anxiety as I wrote in my blogpost from the mountains. Little did I know that a week later I would be forced to return home when the residency closed due to Covid.

I returned home inspired to make large (and small) paper circles which became worlds of paper. I stitched jigsaw pieces of the world onto them and as I stitched I became calmer. Three of these small paper worlds are now in the Pause exhibition in Kyneton, Victoria.

Number of days completed in my one month residency in 2020 = 7

Number of paper circles created in 2020 = 33

Staying at home: travelling through art

With all my travel plans cancelled it was time to travel through art. I brought out boxes of maps, postcards, tickets to museums and other ephemera to create travel art from home. I finally turned my old passport into a memory of travel through Mexico, Cuba and Ethiopia.

*April: I launched my Armchair Art & Travel free 5 day challenge. Participants joined me to create a series of travel inspired postcards and artist books made with travel ephemera.

Inspired by travel but staying at home meant I was able to spend time creating work for a solo art exhibition Fire & Ice about my experience in Iceland in 2019. I also created artist books with maps and a YouTube series Where in the World? about creating travel memories with collaged postcards. 

Social Media: 6 months going live daily

For the past 10 years I have made a small artwork every day. I started in 2010 and have continued ever since, with a six month sabbatical in 2016. These small dailies were a way to keep creating and document the things happening in my life, both personal and political. A daily practice is so important to provide a creative structure, especially during a crisis.

*May: I decided to go live each morning when I made my daily artworks, to help keep others inspired and to feel connected to the world. Some days no one watched, some days there were a few souls tuning in and saying a cheery hello. It helped my sanity during uncertain times and I began to experiment with coloured inks. I continued this to the end of October.

"Watching you on your studio videos over lockdown here in NZ a few months ago was a great help and encouragement for me to commit one day at a time to my creativity practice... I am grateful for your support with your inspiring videos etc.." Shelley V, New Zealand.

Number of daily lives in 2020: 182 

The World: outside my window

 While I made art inspired from the view outside my window, the world was descending into chaos and street riots. Like everyone I was shocked at the death of George Floyd in the USA. I responded to the Black Lives Matter with a collage about my time in Minnesota in 2013.

*June: The Black Lives Matter movement fuelled huge protests in Australia. I was in Canberra for a family birthday event and watched marchers heading to Parliament House. I started making collages from maps of Sydney and wrote about the importance of Bearing Witness in my weekly blogpost. We have much to answer for in Australia with our treatment of Aboriginal Australians as the number of deaths in custody continue to rise.

Number of blogposts I published in 2020 = 52

Number of Aboriginal deaths in custody in June 2020 = 437

Beating Procrastination: activating creativity

When I get stuck in my thinking and creating, I tidy up my studio. It helps shift my energy and gets me back into production, which I wrote about in my blogpost Procrastination or Productivity. Not only do I get a clean studio but it makes way for the magic to happen.

For many years I have created yearly vision boards. Many of these have pictures of French doors. It was a dream of mine to live in a house with French doors. With all the live videos and zoom meetings, I needed more privacy so my husband installed a set of French doors in my studio. What a difference to have a space of my own where I could close the doors.

*July: I launched a revamped version of my first online course I devised in 2019 called Activate Your Creative Mojo. This was such a successful course it began my journey to help give women the courage to create through taking small achievable creative actions.

Number of vision boards created since 2010 = 10

Number of vision boards with French doors = 4 (dreams can come true!)

Learning: becoming a student again

To be a good teacher, you need to get into the student’s way of thinking. I was always a bit disruptive in my school days but as an adult I’ve learned to take heed of the teacher’s advice.

*August: I felt the need to invigorate my arts practice and so I took a weekend course at the Byron School of Art with Emma Walker. I felt very inadequate when confronted with big sheets of paper but wanted to breakout of my “ small” way of creating. After I had scrunched up the paper, she suggested I turned the hose onto it. The water created beautiful images.

Later this year I undertook an intensive Kozo paper making workshop using paper mulberry bark. After steaming, stripping, cooking, rinsing and hand beating the bark fibre, I then failed to make paper in the traditional Japanese way. I returned to my own method which made beautiful washi (Kozo) paper but overall it was an extremely labour intensive exercise!

Number of courses I took in 2020 = 2

Number of failures = 0 (there are no failures in art, only experiments)

Investment: staging a solo exhibition

Many artists believe that having a solo exhibition is the pinnacle of achievement. Often it requires a good deal of investment in yourself to stage a solo exhibition, especially if you have to a hire an exhibition space and hold a launch party. Investment = Self Worth.

*September: I held my solo exhibition Fire & Ice at an artist run initiative The Field, in Murwillumbah. It was an intimate space which suited my work really well and gave me an opportunity to create a body of work which celebrated my experience at the Nes artist residency in Iceland in 2019.

In conjunction with the exhibition I held an Imagine Peace activation to coincide with the annual lighting of the Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland to commemorate John Lennon’s birthday. We made a paper world, held a peaceful meditation led by textile artist Ellie Beck and sang Imagine. Fellow Iceland traveller and entrepreneur, Carol Robinson was Master of Ceremonies and brought Yoko Ono’s message of peace to us in Murwillumbah.

Connecting: a new weekly post

One of the main ways to communicate with people these days is through email. I bless the day I got my first job as a journalist in a daily regional newspaper. Not only did I meet my future husband there, I also learned to write stories as I typed. It’s an invaluable asset for my creative arts business. I have realised that life is circular, I am back to writing stories again.

*October: I launched a new weekly initiative The Sunday Post as a way to keep in contact with those on my email list. Although I send a monthly newsletter, I wanted to have more regular contact and add links to interesting news and blogposts. I’m always grateful for the responses I receive from people who read them- it inspires me to keep writing.

October is also the month I make my yearly calendar. This year most of my art has been about circles. I chose 13 of my daily ink drawings for my calendar, Circles of Connection 2021. Participants in my 8 week Dare to Create course each received a 2021 desk calendar.

Number of Sunday Posts published in 2020 = 12

Number of monthly newsletters published in 2020 = 12

Going Digital: a map can take you there

A year of being on zoom meetings, going live and creating videos for my courses meant a lot of screen time. Working from a laptop has been my default practice for the past 5 years. With aching shoulders and neck, I decided to go big and get a desktop computer, just in time to create videos for my YouTube channel.

*November: I launched my Where in the World? series of travel videos on YouTube each episode relating to one of the collaged postcards I made during 2018. It was so much fun. I thought I would be able to make 91 videos to coincide with my #91 days postcard project. After 11 I was unable to sustain the pace! But I will definitely be making more in 2021.

I participated in a collaborative artist book project organised through the International Association of Paper Makers and Artists (IAPMA). I turned a map of my local area into a pocket artist book and sent it off to my counterpart for her to add her story to.

Maps, travel and artist books also featured in the one month course I ran in November: Awaken Your Creativity. Participants made folded and woven artist books to tell their stories and use weekly projects to awaken their creativity..

Number of Where in the World? videos = 11

Rebalancing: time for change

One thing I discovered this year is that I don’t have to travel far to get inspired. Now I look at travel with new eyes – do I need to take so many plane and car trips? How can I help the world rebalance itself? How can I stay home and still be content and happy?

*December: I teamed up with 3 other women from around the world who I met online at Sigrun Live, an annual event held by my Icelandic coach Sigrun, which was held this year on zoom. We are in in different SOMBA programs run by Sigrun and met for the first time in a zoom breakout room to brainstorm ideas.

We decided to do a collaborative advent video calendar to give people two minutes of happiness in the rush and stress of the leadup up to Christmas. We each made 6 videos about happiness techniques ranging from Tahitian dance to a chocolate meditation. At the end of the 24 days we offered participants a free happiness gift from each of us.

There were so many days amidst the chaos of 2020 when I genuinely felt happy to be alive. To be grateful that my family were safe and well and to celebrate all that we have. Three generations under one small roof learning to love being happy together.

Number of days of happiness in 2020 = 24 +

The crystal ball: forecast for 2021

Usually by December I have a number of plans in place. The lesson from this year is to be flexible and prepare for change. My resolution is to work smarter not harder in 2021. My word to focus on is: balance. Making time to celebrate success, family and all I hold important. To rest, having a scheduled day off each week and not take life too seriously as everything can change in the blink of an eye. 

In 2021 I plan to:

• Hold 8 school holiday workshops in the Scenic Rim, QLD in January

• Have a joint exhibition at Northern Rivers Community Gallery in Ballina

• Resume my artist residency at BigCi in March

• Travel to Tasmania in April for the IAPMA 35 th anniversary paper celebrations.

Number of plans for 2021 = 4

Number of expected changes to all my plans = 4+!!!

One thing I know for sure - 2020 has taught me to treasure small moments of joy, celebrate being alive and reach out to support others in whatever way I can. And to bear witness.

Thank-you for reading this epic blog post and Happy New Year!