IN FOCUS: ARCHIVE

Do people like your work?
Then tell them about it!

The New Year is the perfect time to make or start contact with your supporters: briefly recap 2011's highlights and make the link to what you've got planned for 2012, say 'thank you' for their support in 2011 and give an idea of how often you plan to contact them in 2012.

Why make contact? To be remembered. To be more than a name. To sell your work. To make conversation. To get hired or commissioned. To promote your social media outlets. To be invited to good stuff. Heck, for like a hundred reasons!

By using free email marketing tools people can easily subscribe/unsubscribe to your updates, you can manage your email lists, and you can make regular contact with your subscribers using good looking email messages.   MORE

Entranced by the beauty inherent in design theory, Toni Hearn loves to work with simple shapes, clean layouts built on grids, formal structure, functionality and simplicity.

Coming from a home base in Leura, in the beautiful Blue Mountains, Toni describes her home turf as “very creative, laid back and a happy and safe place to come home to” and it’s also convenient for her studies at the University of Western Sydney, where she studied for her Bachelor of Visual Communications.

Mixing traditional design with digital illustration and collage underpinned by Swiss modernism, Toni works as a freelance designer across the creative industries.

Her recent projects include design and illustration for Remembering Eden - the 30th Anniversary Ultravox Tour Book, The Frequency 7 poster/flyer for the British iconic 1980s DJ and co-founder of the New Romantic Movement, Rusty Egan and Octobots, a non-profit organisation raising funds for charity, as well as her own publication Move in Time – the New Romantic Movement in Collage.   MORE

Built on a foundation of ten years as Western Sydney Dance Action, FORM Dance Projects is set to keep a culture of dance and learning in Western Sydney alight.

Based in the heartland of our creative West, at Riverside Theatres in Parramatta, the organisation is all about providing opportunities for dancers and choreographers, and runs a vibrant dance-based artistic program. For the locals, it offers the opportunity to learn more about the artform, to get involved, to see different types of dance in a local context, and to get up close and personal with dance; whether that means quietly nurturing your inner dancer or creatively stepping up and taking your dance career to the next level.

In its early days FORM Dance Projects was a small service provider, but over the years it has developed into a fully-fledged arts organisation with an impressive repertoire, ongoing government funding and high profile partnerships, working with the Sydney Festival and the Australian Chamber Orchestra.   MORE

“True realism is the most pure and subtle window into another person's world,” explains painter, Krista Brennan; “no other art form allows us to share the deeply intimate experience of seeing clearly, accurately and concisely as the artist saw, to stand momentarily in their place and experience their unique perspective. To create something that pure is my driving goal and inspiration.”

Krista loved visiting galleries as a child, and says the power and intensity of realism fired her imagination and passion for painting. “The desire to express and communicate how I felt, thought and what I observed spurred me to draw and paint as often as I could.”

Today she works across a range of styles, but focuses primarily on Classical Realism in the tradition of the 19th and 20th century masters such as Sargent, Waterhouse and Bouguereau.

Interestingly, the artist has a fascination with neuroscience, “so ideas that swell from that field feed into my art organically: perception, interpretation, time, the subjectivity of truth, neurological priming and so forth.” Her work also has a very personal narrative and reflects the beauty she sees in humanity and nature.   MORE

There’s a buzz about Andrew Hewitt. The Westmead local has been dubbed “Australia’s most inspirational drummer” and is carving his niche within the national and international drumming communities.

Andrew, who was born with Cerebral Palsy, is also closely aligned with the disability community, and includes disability advocate among his many roles, which range from performing artist and drum set clinician through to motivational speaker and workshop facilitator.

When his parents bought him a drum kit at the age of ten, they thought it would be a good form of physical exercise. With his condition restricting movement in his arms and legs, drumming is a very serious challenge, but a challenge he stuck with. Certainly not the passing fad Andrew's parents anticipated: “Drumming developed into a major passion for me and 30 years later I am still hard at it, travelling and performing whenever the occasion arises.”   MORE

After ten years of painting fridges, washing machines and cupboards, Michaela Simoni finally has her own studio space. Turning an obstacle into inspiration; creating art by coating her household in colour while bringing up three children, Michaela developed her practice – and her imagination – with ingenuity and a sense of humour.

Unable to bear the idea of poor storage ruining her paintings, and constrained by a lack of space in which to paint, this tenacious artist covered her household surfaces with her vibrant artworks: “I used to paint on all the white goods of the house. Then I started painting on walls, doors, letterbox, hand rails etc. The problem with this was when you moved it was all lost.”

Michaela Simoni lives in Auburn. She loves the vibrancy and the central location, saying “it feels very alive. It has all the pluses of being in the middle of Sydney with still having secret spots that are ideal for drawing and meditating.”   MORE