Finding inspiration in something unsuspected: inside the mind of an artist.

Posted on 6 June, 2014

As a second-year uni student, it’s sometimes hard to stay motivated.

It takes so much energy to merely keep up with the world around you when you’re studying, let alone when you’re contemplating where your study will lead when you’re done (probably to a ridiculously large HECS debt. Cheers, Tony). I’m sure many of my fellow classmates would agree that looking for some kind of inspiration or motivation to do their work is a daily struggle. Well, fear not! I found some great inspiration last week when I met with the wonderful and inspiring Megan Jackson.

Megan is a local artist and textile designer. After completing a degree at the ANU in a Bachelor of Visual Arts, and graduating at the top of her class with honours, Megan made a name for herself amongst the Canberra design scene. She’s known for creating colourful and bold hand screen prints on textiles and has exhibited her work at spaces such as the ANU School of Art and the Gallery of Australian Design. To say the least, Megan has quite an impressive resume, and I was lucky enough to meet with her and chat about her latest exhibition; inside.

Walking into the gallery was very exciting. The room was full of vibrancy and colour. All Megan’s pieces boasted a playful nature whilst still maintaining a sense of simplicity. Each piece was packed full of personality and saturated with bold colours and designs, but this was never sacrificed for a lack of ‘cleanliness’, so to say. All of Megan’s pieces are clean, simple and meticulously polished works. Megan describes them as ‘functional’ pieces of art, and ‘more than just fabric’. She considers the life of the product and how it will work in a particular setting, rather than merely how it looks.

The gallery itself complemented the pieces sensationally, allowing each piece to shine on its own. Although the gallery was quite small, the composition of Megan’s works in combination with the lighting allowed the space to glow and seemingly look bigger than it actually was. This showcased the properties of each product, displaying them all individually as a piece, but also collectively, as an exhibition.

 “This is my first solo exhibition. I only had seven weeks to put it all together but I’m really happy with how it turned out. It pushed me into doing something that I always wanted to do. At times it was completely overwhelming but seeing [my] ideas come to life is such a satisfying experience” Megan says.

To a not-so-arty person, like myself, 7 weeks may seem like a pretty long time to set up an exhibition. But I was sorely mistaken. A great deal of time and effort goes into creating just one small design. Megan says that every one of her designs begins as a humble drawing. When she is happy with the design she will scan it into a computer and then put the pattern into a repeating sequence, almost like a jigsaw, so then when they are printed out she can place them together on the fabric in a much larger scale.

Now imagine doing puzzles over and over again on all different kinds of fabrics, constantly manoeuvring and tweaking things. I can imagine this could be quite a tedious and time consuming process, so to pull together an exhibition of this calibre and scale in just seven weeks is a commendable effort. In addition to her textile printing, Megan took on the challenge of doing some ceramic pieces, also a difficult and time consuming process. This was something completely new to Megan, but with the help of a local ceramicist, she pulled it off beautifully.

Mid-conversation with Megan, suddenly writing essays seemed like a ludicrously easy task to me. Don’t get me wrong – there’s still a lot of work that goes into writing essays, but when I compared this to the degree of difficulty and skill required of Megan’s work, I was reassured that anything is possible when you put your mind to it. Even though something may seem overwhelming to begin with, whether it’s setting up an exhibition in seven weeks, or writing a bunch of essays that count for 45% of your grade, what you get out of that experience is satisfying and you can be proud of what you’ve achieved in the end.

the essentials

What: Megan Jackson’s ‘inside’
When: Until Sunday 8 June 2014
Where: Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Manuka
Web: www.ccas.com.au