Aspire

Along with the Miss Pinup competition, I'm juggling three jobs and managing to stay very busy!

One of those jobs is as a freelance photographer's assistant, working for a wonderful German woman called Carmen. Carmen has her own boudoir photography business, specialising in vintage and pinup style photography, and she creates absolute magic. She's also got a wicked laugh, a heart of gold and is great fun to work with. My very first job with her was at a magnificent Victorian mansion in Kew called Butleigh Wootton.

It's the type of place that transports you into history… or into some period drama film which makes you wish you lived in that era… (Every period drama has that effect on me!)
I was flabbergasted, imaging the real family that would have once lived in such splendour! Sprawling rose gardens, Juliet balconies, winding staircase, crystal chandeliers, four-poster beds, chaise lounges, marble-topped fireplaces, everything antique…. What a workplace!

My job involved meeting and greeting the clients as they arrived, showing them up to our studio area, de-clothing them, filling them with champagne and chocolates and chatting with them as they were made-over by the fabulous make-up artist Rosie. Then helping accessorise their lingerie outfits and leading them to the boudoir rooms where Carmen would work her magic with the camera, while I assisted with lighting and props.
It was the sort of job that makes you realise that you actually can make a living doing what you love.

Since then I've worked for Carmen on a regular basis; photoshop post-editing, and prop making. She commissioned me to make her a human-sized vintage cake for her models to jump out of, and offered me her cardboard plasma TV box to use.... I took that lucky box home.
It made me think of the film Indecent Proposal, when Woody Harrelson quotes Louie Kahn about the brick. I believe that even that TV box wanted to be something.. Even a box aspires to be something better than what it is. And that lucky box got its break. On my lounge room floor, with a Stanley knife, some paint, some fabric roses and some gold tassels, I created a bit of my own magic…
Carmen even let me christen the thing and be the first model to jump out of it (picture above).

At the moment she's commissioning me to make a pair of five foot angel wings.. I have one thousand feathers, which also aspire to be something beautiful..

And as Woody Harrelson says with his sexy southern drawl, as all things aspire to be something better than they are, so must we… Maybe that's the point of life and the path to enlightenment… to become something better than you are.. or at least to aspire to be so…

:o)