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General managers of national advocacy groups, who spend their days lobbying at the highest levels of government as they fight for rights and often the livelihoods of their members, may well have a creative approach, but you tend not to expect them to be visual arts graduates.
Catrina Vignando, who graduated from the ANU School of Art in 1998, is General Manager of Craft Australia, a peak national organisation, which represents the Australian professional craft sector on the local and world stages.
During her four years at the School of Art, where she specialised in textiles, Ms Vignando developed an interest in curating.
“I had a very strong interest in arts management at the time, the upshot was that I did quite a lot of exhibitions,” she recalls.
“It was more a general interest than something that fitted into my training.”
By the time she graduated she had four exhibitions under her belt.
The next step was a commission to produce an ephemeral sculpture for Canberra’s Floriade. The resulting creation Windflowers, was based on an irrigation system, powered by brightly coloured windmills and installed in Nerrang Pool in Commonwealth Park from where it shot jets of water into the air, while the spinning windmill blades made colours that rivalled the blooms on land.
The collaboration with the event’s organisers and the public renewed her interest in a “curating rather than a making” career, and led her to become a freelance curator, and later to take contracts which included work at the National Museum and a one-year homecoming to the School of Art Gallery.
More curating and arts outreach work followed through the 1990s working at Megalo Access Arts as the Administration Manager and in 1999 she joined Craft ACT.
“I have always been interested in creating a bridge between the role of the maker and how the public can interpret that work and make it relevant to their life.”
She became Executive Director of Craft ACT in 2000 before taking the position of General Manager of Craft Australia in 2003 where she is building bridges for the sector as a whole.
One of her current major projects is setting up Interact: Contemporary craft in a digital future — an online forum to evaluate Australian craft.
“We need to look at where craft is going, what the major issues are and whether we need to refocus as a sector,” she explains.
This career is not what she expected to carve out for herself during her time as a student, with a life making art seeming the most likely option. However, she says the skills she developed at art school in project management, flexibility and of course creativity have served her well in her chosen arena, and that being an artist helps her relate to the people she is representing at Craft Australia. Any other skills she has needed, she has picked up on the way.
“I view learning as a lifelong thing. People can’t enter into a career thinking they have done all the training they are going to do. For me university was the start of something, rather than the end.”
www.craftaustralia.com.au
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