The Artist and The Engineer

Part 1: Scissors and solitude

Don’t tell my partner but my greatest companion has always been a reliable pair of scissors. No matter the task, when I open the kitchen drawer or box or cupboard, it’s not a relaxed search but a frenzied race to be reunited with them once again. In this state of mind, I have a clear objective, a clear purpose. Granted it’s not quite the state of mind the monks intended, but nevertheless it’s my ticket to a higher realm - because in this moment, in this very moment, my project has been set into motion and nothing could make me happier.

You know this feeling don’t you?

The artists out there know. The insight. The creative flow. The determination to get whatever is locked up in your head out there into the living, breathing world. It’s an ache I struggle with every day. You might even call it an affliction. Although creative insight is a gift, it never arrives in a timely manner. Like an avalanche crashing down the mountain, my daily routine is buried in its wake.

Priorities? Pssh!

Seemingly out of nowhere I feel the need to sketch, draw, paint, paste, and chop my world back into place - as if something was previously awry. Whether it’s passion or compulsion or admittedly both, when the urge arises I seek a cosy place in the house and this becomes my refuge, much to the dismay of any other human dweller. In this extreme state of focus, trying to contact me usually incurs a five-second delay. Since I am all but on another planet, there is now latency involved.

Podcasts? Check. Music? Check.

This trance may see me painting behind an easel for days. At other times, turn a corner and find tiny pieces of paper, meticulously cut into shapes, strewn across the floor: tiny bodies, bird bodies, flowers, and Eucalyptus leaves.

Mother Nature provides an infinite source of inspiration.

The natural world is beautiful and terrifying at the same time, two seemingly contradictory ideas competing. There is something mystical about this union. The Australian Boab trees have twisting branches and stand stoutly in the bush, silent guardians protecting something precious. And yet, despite the hostile environment, their majesty draws me in. The Australian Outback is tough and intimidating; all plants and animals here seem to have this trait. The bush holds secrets, secrets worth protecting and preserving through art. People have appreciated this for thousands of years.

Isn’t all art a form of story-telling, a way to make our ideas last a lifetime?

Paper cutouts may be too delicate to last for thousands of years, but this is a small comfort in itself. I used my Fiskars scissors to cut loose outlines around my shapes, then I went around them with the Fingertip Detail Knife. A tiny slip of the hand would have caused the paper to tear but I had total control. The result was a millimetre-precision, accurate cutout of the tiny paintings. Craftwork requires steady hands, hands with a mind and determination of their own.

Part 2: Mess is more

At some point I learnt that satisfaction can be derived from things requiring precision and careful execution.

I still believe there are few things more satisfying in life than gliding a pair of scissors over a piece of wrapping paper and achieving a perfectly straight cut. Mum was always so good at this. I remember watching her with admiration, seeing the experience of her gift-giving nature summed up in one steady stroke of the arm. A faint smile would belie her calm exterior to reveal that she too was also impressed.

Oops, I just spilt glue everywhere.

I looked across the room in search of something to clean the glue. Little pieces of paper, most of them offcuts, littered the floor like oddly-shaped confetti. One might think the mess was celebrating itself. Like everyone else, the state of our house fluctuates between unstable cleanliness and ordered chaos. I have no choice but to embrace this mess for the sake of my sanity.

“Productive mess is good mess,” I reassure myself daily.

My maths teacher once said that if you want to solve a problem, you must first analyse all the pieces, that you have to “lay everything out.” I’m sure she meant figuratively, but I have a habit of literally laying everything out. My interpretation is that mess is a precursor to creation. Years later, I can’t help but embody this philosophy in everything I do.

I shrug, Order, disorder, you can’t fight entropy.

On the other side of the carpet, foamcore was stacked into little sandwiches of foam-and-glue for the collage I was creating. I would use the different heights to create shadows for my piece, giving it the desired dimensionality. Heavy textbooks, Fundamentals of Thermodynamics and Physics for Scientists and Engineers, pressed down on the foam towers. As gravity did its work, their only value in that moment was the weight of their pages, a phenomenon possible through the very mechanisms those pages described. As a paper press, the books’ usefulness to me was intuitive, gravity on the other hand… not so much.

A perfect example of the practical and the abstract worlds colliding. But which was which?

Part 3: Perfect shapes

My family appreciates good craftsmanship. Dad’s side hails from a long line of mechanics, Mum’s a family of closet artists. I’m a blend of both, somehow managing life as a burgeoning engineer and an artist when I can. It never made sense to me how society has separated the two, like cutting a whole of something into two distinct pieces.

The Artist and The Engineer are both seeking perfection in different ways.

I have been called a perfectionist many times, but I know deep down that nothing can be perfect. How else would we be able to move onwards, to the next project or challenge? The Engineer brings me discipline and patience to do better where I can improve. The Artist imbues my life with passion, whether that be for engineering or any creative project. The Artist is special because it gives me vision for what I want to do next. And it keeps me very busy.

Snip, snip, snip

There is never enough time in the day. Not even enough time to feel angry, impulsive, or perplexed at this fact. I shake my head and sigh. There is only time to do, to create, without overthinking it too much. Maybe that is why - despite all the technology, all the applications, and the many design programs - I still love working with my hands. It feels real and it feels tangible, uncomplicated in a way, like trimming a hedge and maintaining the garden.

Call it old-fashioned, but it will never go out of fashion.

Some days I feel guilty that the way I spend my free time is in pursuit of something intangible. Painting, cutting, creating tiny shapes and gluing them together - am I not just wasting time? Does it matter that we do not always fit the shapes society has made for us, into moulds traced with exactness like my creations?

Maybe it would have been nice just to stay young, oblivious, yet almost free from these expectations.

As a little girl, Nanna would always stash boxes in preparation for my arrival. All kinds of boxes. Boxes galore! It was there I was influenced by the simplest of things: a pair of scissors, rolls of sticky tape, and a set of paints. Here I could fully devote myself to creating planes, helicopters, spaceships and most importantly, more mess. Life is supposed to be messy.

Perfection was never the goal.

Part 4: Boxes don’t exist

Why do we focus on putting things into boxes, rather than what we can create with them?

The kitchen table, the workbench of my childhood, held so many possibilities. My greatest creation was a box ambulance. It had upholstery, rear double doors and Vegemite lids for wheels. Unfortunately it ran solely on the engine of my imagination as the bonnet was made of felt. Somehow most of my creations were vehicles, but I would also create would-be electrical devices too, like a camera or a tamagotchi. I wanted so dearly for them to come alive, with electrical wires for veins and guts.

Sometimes the things that intrigue us most are the things we don’t quite understand, like electricity, physics, or an abstract piece of art.

I went on to study engineering and physics at university. I figured that one day, this would allow me to create on a grander scale. Through engineering, I was able to learn new tools and discover more about our physical environment. I thought the world would become clearer, but I was stunned to find that the more I learnt, the less familiar it seemed. Art on the other hand was always familiar. It was a way back from the rules, a method to reconnect with my complicated, intricate, translucent self. You see, through engineering and physics I could think outside the box, but through art, the box both did and did not exist at the same time.

[Gasp] Now I’ve gone and done it!

I have a habit of overthinking. Back in the living room, I hold my breath and position the cutout shapes on the white backboard. This part requires my full attention for what is done cannot be undone. The suspense of the final cut, the ‘squelch’ of the last blob of glue… Just one mistake, one slip up, could ruin many hours of pain-staking work.

Radiohead is playing somewhere in the background.

The world snapped into focus as I honed in on the task at hand. A few squeezes of the glue gun, plus a few snips of the Fiskars, and the pieces were floating on an airy white surface, just as I had envisaged.

My doubts had told me it would never work.

Today those doubts were proven wrong. By completing this project, the negative thoughts had been shoved in a box and trampled on defiantly. Admiring my work in all its colour, form, and glittery goodness, I let relief wash over me as I embraced this small achievement.

It had worked!

It was over. In the moments following success, there is no greater joy than sharing your work with others and seeing how it affects people differently. The results are fascinating, exciting, and sometimes unexpected. Like a discovery of sorts, but not the scientific kind. It is impossible to hold back the excitement of co-experiencing an abstract thought, like dreaming the same dream. It is a feeling that cannot be contained... or simply put in a box.

Part 5: The world of forms

Question: in the years following this tour de force, what became of my creation? The answer: I sold it for a fortune and retired early, living the life of an uninhibited artist, painting and creating whenever I please.

Ahh, a girl can dream.

These artworks were moved into ‘the spare room’ of course. My little moment of success and the elation it brought, soon to become a distant memory. I will crave the next moment even more, but next time the stakes will be higher. I’ll spend more hours perfecting. I’ll hold my breath longer upon the final cut. I’ll call upon my supreme powers of focus once again, and pray to the art gods that maybe this one, yes this one, is the one that gets hung on the wall.

Time and time again I will begin the next project and then the next.

Sometimes I even wonder why we do it, why it is so important and satisfying to transform our thoughts into something static and unchanging. Would it help us remember in years to come? Or maybe by capturing our thoughts we can better understand them and perhaps ourselves?

The artist and technologist John Maeda once said, “Innovation doesn’t just come from equations… it comes from a human place.”

In a world where we are constantly being bombarded with information, crafting allows me mental clarity, a moment of peace and intimacy away from the ocean of noise. A moment for reconnection. There is solitude and space in my refuge. Clutching a pair of scissors, I am reminded of my human presence and of my ability to create anything.

The limit does not exist!

The forms of Nature are endless. When the world is appreciated through the lens of The Artist, the mundane is never taken for granted. Everything is like looking at an alien planet. Although we may happily leave The Engineer to tackle the why’s and how’s, some things cannot be explained simply with words and equations alone. It requires a human element. That which brings all perspectives to bear, to realise our potential as creators and writers of our own unique story.