The Box Project: Pushing past fear. Leaning into authenticity. Finding Creative Flow

In Australia, scattered across quiet suburban roads and beachfront promenades, tucked quietly in alleys and beside schools are green boxes. They are square in shape, about the height and breadth of a squat broad man and float in the air balanced by a single metal stem. I later found out their colour, shape and position is designed to make them literally melt into the landscape unnoticed.

Actually they are quite beautiful. As a three dimensional shape they catch light and cast shadow. You can’t hide the shadow these structures cast with all the green paint in the world and, they are especially interesting under fluorescent yellow street lighting at night.

A little while ago I was wandering the streets of the Northern Beaches of Sydney in the dead of night, every night.

I’m not an insomniac or anything but I am addicted to weird beauty. If you have ever taken to wandering backstreets at 3am in urban areas it is a landscape transformed, a place of total mystery, melting in and out of shadow and lit from the glow skittering across hard surfaces in the harsh lights of cars, street lamps, exit signs, whatever.

When you have waked down a road every day for 15 years you think you know that street. Walk down it at 3am and you’re bathed in the fresh breath of discovery. Houses are illuminated and you see the insides of all that was hidden. Yellow street lights also bleach colour and that ‘oh-so’familiar’ road suddenly becomes monochromatic with harsh stark illumination and shadow and you think, fuck! I’ve gone to Mars!

Also modern cities are gross lets face it. They try to be beautiful, new builds and new architecture and lots of money for steel and concrete and perfect gardens. But these things always, always, look old and decaying in about three seconds after they are built. I always notice that. Funny how truly old architecture that is crumbling under your feet is truly beautiful in its decay. Take any European city. Rome. Its literally built on thousands of years of layered civilisation, everything is crumbling and it’s so beautiful it makes you want to cry. Walking these modern city streets at night, and all that ugliness becomes so incredibly interesting. Line and shadow, beautiful shapes appearing from nowhere - It's breathtaking.

Anyway, I was walking for months shooting, (photographing) the weird, stark, creepy beauty of these abandoned streets and after a while these boxes popped consistently into my experience. Theres another one, and another, god they’re everywhere! And what the hell are they anyway? trying to be so inconspicuous?

All of a sudden I had this rush. I wanted everyone to see the weird beauty of these mysterious boxes, I wanted to leave my mark, and really they are the perfect three dimensional installation art canvas. Right on your street, in front of your house, you walk past it every day seeing-but-not-seeing, in your face and belonging to no-one. Jackpot.

I’ve always been interested in art on a large scale but how to do it? Street art is epic for that but I don’t know how to paint massive murals and get away with it. Don’t you need huge ladders and litres of paint? How to I carry it there and out? The logistics are like goddamn guerrilla warfare. I realised on all these late night scope-out missions that the urban landscape could literally become my canvas. Hooo-llleeyyyyy hell. Im sure a million street artists have realised this in a split second but it seemed like a fucking firework in my brain when I figured that out and all of a sudden I wanted to bring these pitifully trying-to-hide nondescript boxes to life.

And really, the Northern beaches is so squeaky clean. Not a single hair out of place. Any graffiti is quickly clucked over by angry clucking-their-tongue boomers and the council efficiently removes any traces. Street art can actually be some of the fiercest community-feels promoting, pride generating connection building act. Look at Melbourne! Look at Banksy! Well that was what I told myself when I first started, (admitting I have authority issues here). And strangely that connection to community was the biggest, craziest and best result of panting all these boxes in the dead of night. But I’ll get to that later.

After all those months of photographing abandoned backstreets, carparks, surf clubs, staircases, breaking onto gated apartment lit pool areas, (oops) I had inadvertently done all the green box mapping in my area. I knew where 50 of them where straight up, how to get to them and the best ones where I could hide in the shadows and get going with the painting without too many repercussions, (hopefully).

My first box ever was 100 metres from my house and I was in my PJ’s. I had THE most delicious colours from Ecklersley’s art shop where they keep all the spray cans under lock and key and you have to request the cage to be opened while the arty shop assistant stands, hovering disapprovingly over your shoulder.

I popped the cans into my backpack, had a massive glass of wine to calm the old nerves and took off. I figured I could ditch the cans in a bush if I was caught, bolt and then hopefully look like an innocent young girl just out of bed to put the cat out for the night.

The target was the green box on the corner of Woods Parade and Fairlight Street in Fairlight. In retrospect it was a pretty busy road and it was a Friday night when everyone is usually out later so not the best choice.. but It was a great box with heaps of visibility and I wanted it to be my first.

God was I nervous. Who the hell did I think I was? You know spray cans are extremely noisy? they rattle like crazy as there’s a little metal ball in the can so that when you shake it, the paint mixes. Also, and especially that night the spraying it’s self is really loud.

Two taxis rolled past me in the first 15 minutes and I kid you not, I commando rolled into the adjacent bushes every time shaking like a leaf - I shredded myself in those damn hedges.

After a while as any artist knows, you get into flow and I forgot all the cars that steadily made their way home with their Friday night wasted occupants. Spray paint is great because all the rules for painting go out the window. 'Start light then build in the darker colours'. Fuck that! Even spray paint, the medium of the rule breakers, breaks the damn rules! You can paint light over dark, mist it in or get super close and make lots of nice drips. Heaven. Absolute heaven. It dries so fast you can just keep layering until the sun comes up! I didn’t even notice the cop car until it rolled past my peripheral vision and it only paused, and went on its way. I took it as a sign that I was on the right path.

When I was done I packed up and got the hell out of there. I wasn’t really sure how it would look in the daytime because I was painting under yellow fluorescent streetlights and it bleaches out the true colour. I got to depend on the car headlights cruising past for glimpses of how it really looked so I could gauge wether to keep going with that colour or change to another… funny how things work out.

When I woke up I smelt like acrylic paint, my hands were absolutely covered and when I blew my nose flecks of colour hit the tissue - oops, rookie. But everything just made me grin. To this day the smell of spray paint still makes me unreasonably happy.

That morning I cruised past the box in my van furtively like some guilty criminal revisiting the crime scene but that all dissolved when I saw it. Jesus Fucking Christ! It was GORGEOUS! It was a 3D installation in candy colours! The face under full sun was almost fluorescent and the sides in shadow created tonal variation and it was a goddamn miracle of life.

Now’s the time we have a heart to heart. In the beginning this whole street art thing was about pushing through fear. I’ve lived a huge part of my life in fear, pushing down pushing down pushing down to survive. One day I’ll tell you guys a bit more about my life but when I lost my mum the worst I had feared happened and all the suppressed creativity inside me started smashing against the cage I built, absolutely screaming to be let out. My god did the beast get out of its cage. Street art is about the act of creation in the face of fear, responding to the voice inside you to make shit happen! And, street art is also about surrender. You can’t hold onto your art, it will probably be removed, scrubbed off or painted over. So you have to make like the Tibetan Monks who spend months creating sand mandalas and then brush them away dispassionately to understand the pitfalls of attachment. You can’t be attached to your art when its left to the mercy of the street. You create, appreciate, let it be destroyed or whatever and move on to you other idea. In the words of Aleksandra Zee - Just. keep. making.

My creativity runs against a million blocks of self worth daily. Actually several times in a day. But really creation is my destiny in this life and I feel that. Its a deep and consistent throb like a heartbeat and when you stop listening, ideas you have failed to act upon become a sledgehammer in your chest. Even now all I can think about now I have FINALLY stared this blog is Jesus Fuck I have so much backlogged art to write about, (post about, edit, build upon, shit, shit, shit!)

That first day after painting my first box I carried a burning fame around, glowing in my chest. It was this warm light that I had finally fucking created something epic and it was beautiful. My entire world was the canvas and there were ten thousand more green boxes begging to be some other colour, ANY other colour. Also that I had finally done something to express myself, that I could be fearless, and that I was engaging with my urban landscape in the coolest way ever.

Months and many boxes later I started to realise just how magic this painting thing was. I was meeting the most incredible people. Everyone wanted to be part of what I was doing, (so much for secrecy). I spoke with 90 to 19 years olds about street art and they always had great stories to share with me - Like I was giving them something and their stories where payment. People would stay with me the whole time, (hours) and talk. They were fully supportive, they loved it! Before going inside to their homes they would say things like, “I can’t wait to see this tomorrow morning!”

Im not saying there weren’t a couple of close calls. One time I was almost citizens arrested and had to sprint two blocks and lost all my paints. Another time I was chased by the police and had to leg it through an apartment complex, vault over a brick wall and hide behind three garbage bins for two hours while they searched. Even then I was loving it though.

Six months later and I don’t know how many boxes now I was out on a date. A first date with the now love of my life. He asked me out for dinner and being an artist himself I said I had another Idea. We were back in Fairlight painting and he was shooting me paint and all of a sudden this BMW pulls up and these two suits jump out. Fuck. They came up to us and said, “ Oh My God! You’re the box artist! We have been hoping our box would be painted for ages we’re so happy! Whaaaat a crazy thing to hear in the dead of the night from two lawyers in Manly. I really started to realise that people loved their boxes, and they were so possessive. All of a sudden this random metal nothing became ’their’ box. It totally blew my mind. Often other people would tag over the box artwork and I was always like, ‘ hey that’s cool, the boxes are evolving’. Then I would come back and some local had cleaned the tag off and left my artwork - talk about pride! I loved it when that happened.

People started requesting boxes, ‘Please do mine!’. What I realised is when you’re doing something from a pure place inside your heart that feels so right and in a way that’s giving back, you get the most amazing response back from the people around you. My parents were understandably worried.. My godmother actually called me from Melbourne and warned me that I might be destroying my life doing this. My other friend Jesse who had gotten into heaps of trouble shooting his sunglasses brand Enki on a naked model, (Marisa Papen) in front of the Pyramids and throughout Egypt, an extremely dangerous place for a female to be naked anywhere let alone a mosque for gods sake, called me to say congratulations, sent me a free pair of sunnies and said, “if you ever get busted, go to court wearing these sunnies, the most outrageous, chic-est suit you can get your hands on and ill call everyone I know in the publicity world and get your picture in the papers to promote your art. Sweet.

The fact is that beautiful things happen when you are living in your authenticity and creating. Communities open up, joy swallows you and all of a sudden the universe starts pelting you with opportunities. It’s insane. It’s taken this massive post for me to really remember that as I am currently bogged down in university assessment schedules, (Im studying at Billy Blue school of design in Sydney) and its taken over my creative flow. The best best best thing that happened really was, that by tapping into my authenticity and creativity I really have met the love of my life and we are living a creative life together. He is beyond imagining and nothing could have prepared me for the infinity of who he is and what we give each other. To see your journey stretched out in front of you exploring life together with your soulmate is… well there are no words.

Wether you find the love of your life or not what I really want to say is that pushing past fear and finding some kind of creative expression will uplevel your life. It gives you something no amount of online shopping, expensive houses, food, drugs, alcohol - whatever your distraction, can give you. Its pure and it lifts the soul into living your potential, your real potential as a human being. The unique gift that no one else has. Nothing can beat that.

I have so many ideas for the future. What I really want to do is design objects and furniture and spaces, and i'm getting there. Street art has been my first steps and the biggest lessons and Im so happy to finally be sharing my crazy creative journey.

Thank you for reading all this way and coming with me on this post, I feel like this is another part of my creative journey, just as important as that first stroke of paint in the middle of the night in my Pj’s.