The Bakehouse Studio (left) where I teach and make art, and my library of art books for children.
I’ve always thought of myself as more of an artist and a teacher than a writer, and although I’ve had a lifelong obsession for books, I never expected to be writing one of my own.
From my earliest memories, my bedroom was lined with books. For me, books are like windows into other worlds. I just love them and love to collect them! Especially art books for children. I suppose it was my interesting collection of art books that eventually lead me to writing one myself.
Watching my children find more enjoyment from playing with pebbles, paddlepop sticks and buttons than any manufactured toy or game, I began to experiment with how kids in my classes could make art from their own found treasures as an alternative to expensive traditional art supplies.
My daughter Mimi (left) planning an imaginary resort with pebbles from our garden, and her worry dolls made from paddlepop sticks, pen, tissue & tape.
In one particular workshop I did using recycled materials, I found myself showing students a dozen different books with great historical examples of how artists have used recycled and found materials and objects. At the end of the class, I was reflecting on this to a parent who happened to work for Walker Books. I said to her, ‘if only I’d had just one book with all those great examples in it instead of 12 books’ and she said, ’well if you write it, we’ll publish it!’ It was an exciting idea so I immediately wrote a proposal and mocked up a sample page and the three year process of research and writing began.
Apart from the convenience of having just one book to teach from instead of many, I also wanted to reinforce what children are learning at school. That is, to care for the environment, to be mindful of the amount of waste they generate and to find clever ways to keep it out of the waste stream.
Found treasures including bottletops and feathers.
I’ve always been a hoarder of anything I think may one day have a use, but it wasn’t until the book FOUND was published, and I started doing many more promotional workshops in bookshops and schools, with many more students, that I really started to look at my own consumption and waste-producing habits. It became a daily challenge to see how few times I could throw something away and how many things I could salvage, wash and reuse.
AGNSW workshop “Busting to be Found” where students made a bust using nothing but found objects such as toilet rolls, coffee cups, plastic bags, newspapers, bottletops, buttons, recycled glue and tape.
For example, I began to wash and keep milk bottles, lids, takeaway food containers, takeaway coffee cups, plastic spoons and forks etc. And instead of collecting everything and anything, I decided I needed to come up with artmaking projects based on these most frequently wasted materials.
“Skyscapers” from an Operation Art workshop (left) and a “City” from a Bakehouse Studio holiday workshop.
This new habit of scavenging, had me rifling through people’s office waste paper bins looking for their coffee cups to rinse so I had enough for my next workshop. On one occasion I found someone’s lost wallet under a pile of rubbish. They were ecstatic.
Soon people were collecting stuff for me and dropping it to my home.
Lisa finds Found in one of her favourite bookshops – the art Gallery of NSW!
So writing Found has profoundly changed my life and the way I live in the world and especially the way I approach making art. For example, I can no longer throw a coffee cup or a plastic fork in the bin and I can no longer walk past a feather or a bottletop without picking it up.
I hope that my book FOUND will have the same effect on everyone who reads it, and that they will use the short project ideas to fire their creativity in ever-increasingly, recycled ways.
