A ‘side quest’ sounds much more exciting than ‘getting off task and distracted’, a ‘quest’ sound meaningful, magical even. ‘Side quest’ even implies that there is a ‘main quest’ which gives a sense of purposeful direction to my art meanderings.

The problem with making weird stuff is that the weirdness becomes normalized and I don’t always recognize that I’ve moved from slightly weird to really weird. Actually, my main aim is to pursue a kind of ‘Creepy elegant beauty’, but sometimes I wander down a path that takes me into simply strange and weird.

These little side quests sometimes have a wee hook to them that takes me further, or sometimes it’s an adventure into a dead end. I decided long ago to trust the journey and give myself wholeheartedly to wherever my art takes me, I have a fairly loose hand on the wheel.

‘Pirates’ has the kind of ‘Creepy elegance’ I’m chasing

I have a love of the ‘side quest’ when out walking in the bush too. ‘What’s down that track?’ can lead to a charming 20-minute meander beside a lovely creek or a 4-hour slog through knee-deep mud with darkness fast approaching. I love not knowing where a track will take me, my family and friends - not so much.

I walk alone a lot.

I love not knowing where a track will take me

One of the things that set me off on this latest side quest is making the smaller characters or ‘riders’ on these larger animal’s movable. I found I had so much fun arranging these characters that I wanted to build some interactive artworks. After making quite a few animals with elaborate structures on their backs, I wanted to make some larger pieces and thought to make carriages. This really opened up the scope for multi-piece works.

In ‘Travellers’, some of the little characters are hard at work, climbing around the carriage, some are stuffing around doing nothing and there’s a driver who appears to be the only one doing any actual work. (Just like a real workplace!)

‘Travellers’, polymer/air-dry clay with possum fur and recycled jewelry.

The second thing that sent me off in this exploration was the fun I was having with stop-motion animation. With static animal sculptures the legs don’t move so any movement is from the smaller characters climbing around.

I had a play with AI videos making the animals move (quite addictive by the way!), but didn’t like the liberties that the AI took with the image. I could probably have ironed out some of the issues, but didn’t really see it as more than a bit of fun and a novelty. I’ll probably play with it a bit more, but the more hands-on approach of stop motion has more appeal.

All of this (and the fact that I was playing with grandkids and toy cars) led to this idea of building structures over old cars, and the ‘Wheelies’ were born! With wheels, things move naturally when playing with stop-motion video, cars can spin, race and the extra bonus is having rearrangeable small figures ‘driving’ them! I’d like to pursue this idea a little more, creating little stories around the artworks.

‘Vroom”, one of the pieces I call ‘Wheelies’ air-dry clay, recycled jewelry and possum fur made over the top of a toy car.

After making some of these small ‘Wheelies’, I’ve been getting more elaborate with larger, more complex boat shapes with a bit of a fantasy Viking Mad Max vibe. I love the silliness of a boat on wheels that could never float. I’ve been playing a bit with sails and flags too. I don’t know where these characters travelling in their boat cars are going or where they’ve come from, seems they need a story.

‘All aboard’, air-dry clay with recycled jewelry and possum for over a toy car.

I’ve no idea whether this is an idea that will stay a while to be elaborated on or flit off to wherever ideas live when they’re not being made real. I’ve a few more ideas to make along this theme, then, who knows where the track will take me.