Have you ever wanted to escape into a tiny dream world? Well, Amy Joy Watson creates them. Amy’s sculpture and painting harks back to those days when people had practical skills, you know, beyond being able to customise their MySpace profile to the max. Immaculately crafted of balsa, glue and glow-in-the-dark thread, Amy’s miniature universes are windows into a precariously beautiful dream-place. Fresh off the back of her successful show at FELT space, Some Place, I caught up with Amy to talk art.

So, what inspires you to make stuff?
My work is very process driven, it is very much about making something. Often making one thing leads to the next – its not like there is a core inspiration. I reference a set of 1940s encyclopaedias from my grandmother that have beautiful pictures and quirky captions. A lot of the images and titles of the work are sourced from that. That 1940s aesthetic does come through sometimes, not that it’s about the 1940s.

When you started your degree at Central School did you have a strong direction about which medium you would work in? 

Not really. I’ve always liked painting and sculpture, and I don’t really draw a line between the two. That approach to materials is evident in my painting – the construction of the frame…. I still treat it as a sculptural thing, you can see where the brush has been – gesso running off the edge. When I am preparing a painting I prime the surface with ten 
or so layers of gesso, then sand it back. 
All painters do these kind of things, 
but I see the making as what I love.

I think that comes across in the work – the joy in the careful construction of these things.
At my art school we had this saying ‘meaning through making’. We all joked about it, but if you really engage with a material, ideas do come up and it does start to mean things… not that I start with nothing.

I was thinking about the scale of the work, and it being quite small, so that the viewer has to peer into these tiny little worlds… Yeh, I’ve just done an application for the CACSA Project Space next year, and those are almost exactly the words I used. For the Project Space I want to make a larger rocky form so that the viewer almost stands within it, as opposed to these other works which were about these little self contained worlds the viewer stands outside of. I want to shift that.

You’re working with natural landscapes a lot, and not necessarily Australian ones either. Is there a reason you are working with these landscapes?
Yes, they are not Australian landscapes, I have been to Europe, but yes they are more imaginary landscapes, maybe somewhere from the past I’m dreaming of. At the end of my degree I was using a lot of snowy landscapes, my brother lives in Sweden and I was in Australia, but maybe wishing I was in that part 
of the world.

It seems like Australian people have this imaginary link to a European Arcadian landscape…
I’m not referencing any particular landscape, although I have used pictures from Antarctica. This show in particular, I watched this documentary from the library about Antarctic pioneers. A couple of the works were from one sequence of a figure walking through a blizzard. Even though he was really struggling and his jacket was billowing in the air, it was slightly on fast forward. So that’s where those figures, and some of the paintings come from.

I was trying to figure out what the little threads were in The story of the heavens were – I had an argument with my friend about whether they were birds, insects or snow?
Well, I don’t really mind what any one thinks… they could be bugs… but they were meant to be a galaxy filled with stars. The title kind of references that – The story of the heavens. I don’t necessarily require one interpretation though, or one meaning. 
I found this great glow in the dark thread at spotlight, and just thought:  
I have to use this in a work. So when 
the lights are out the galaxy glows.

I felt like there was almost a sense of nostalgia or romanticism in your work. Where do you think that comes from?
I suppose there is a kind of sense of longing for another place, imagined landscapes, an ideal place. The paper figures [in Untitled] are on a journey, striving for something else or looking back. If you do pick on that older aesthetic you would recognise some of the figures are wearing clothing from 
a hundred years ago.

Yes, it seems like the materials themselves have that effect. Painting, and sewing and the act of making with your hands is a nostalgia in a way for when making was a part of someone’s everyday life.
Yes, taking time, love and care…

Do you feel an affinity with ‘feminine’ crafts like sewing? Do you think ‘crafts’ and more feminine skills are becoming more relevant in contemporary art?
I suppose since I sew a lot I do feel an affinity with ‘feminine’ crafts. While I appreciate embroidery, knitting and other traditional ‘feminine’ crafts, (my house is cluttered with it - mum has doyleys on every chair and surface) I do not use these techniques directly. I suppose I am adapting techniques, and a sense of delicacy from this world and applying to new materials, shifting them into a contemporary context. Also the fact that I do a lot of the slow sewing work from the comfort of home means that my practice can be rather “homely” also. I certainly do think ‘crafts’ and more ‘feminine’ skills are becoming more prevalent in contemporary art. I think female artists are not shying away from approaches that may have previously been considered too crafty, or naff, or stereotypically feminine, or opposed to feminism in the sense 
that these were the things women 
had to do because they were stuck 
at home. I suppose ultimately thanks 
to the feminist movement we now 
have the freedom to work in whichever way we chose.

I feel like your work has a sense of dreaming of something just out of reach. Imaginary lives and landscapes seems to be a common topic that artists of our generation are drawn to. Do you think this is 
a symptom of modern life?
I have thought about this... It is like how people of our generation are into all things vintage, and many contemporary artists are looking to the beauty, time spent, austerity, and seeming simplicity of past times. Yes perhaps it is a symptom of modern life. Also perhaps artists today are looking to the beauty, time and care spent in these crafts of past times, which, contrary to today’s highly manufactured, plastic, contemporary world, become more appealing.

What keeps you passionate about making?
It sounds really lame: The love of making... of the actual act of sewing, cutting, moving paint around, playing with materials, observing lovely unexpected little things that happen along the way, things that I will often run with and take the work in a new direction – this is what keeps it fresh and interesting. And with the way I work I never really know how a work 
will end up looking so it can be exciting to watch something evolve.

So what’s on the cards for you next?
I’ve been working from Twin Bee studios, along with Rohan Fraser, Anna Horne, and a bunch of other artists, but I’ve just moved out because I’m going overseas in a couple of weeks. I’m going to be doing a residency in Berlin at TAKT Kunst Projectruam after travelling for two months!

More of Amy Joy Watson's works here