I did get a lot done this year, just not the things I had planned to do. I know this because at the back of my desk diary I keep a list of priorities, goals, daydreams, aspirations and plans. Some of these are the low level bottom feeder kind of tasks, for example ‘learn how to use Excel’, so I don’t have to endure the humiliation of submitting my tax information in a Word document to my accountant. Others are more lofty, vague and ambitious like ‘have a son’.
On a list titled ‘2011 Goals: big and small’ which features twenty-two items, I managed to achieve exactly two things: I didn’t pay for parking at the University where I periodically work (I’m too miserable to buy parking vouchers and prefer a long walk into campus from an outlying car park. Faced with a choice between torrential rain, and paying $3.40 for a car space, I’ll always opt for a drenching). And I brought myself a nice pair of new trainers. Things I failed to achieve included: selling my house, the proper management of paperwork, finishing my crime novel and, something of a perennial favourite, getting rid of my gut!
On a list of thirty-two things I’d planned to do to my house, before selling it, I managed to achieve exactly (drum roll, please) five items. And that’s actually being generous with the point scores. The problem with the house (I like to blame the house) is that it’s one of those little 1960s fisherman’s shacks, originally a one room place, that later had a kitchen and bathroom added. I like rich colours, so when we first moved in, I made the mistake of painting the walls deep reds and greens. Unfortunately, being a small, square box of a house, it ended up looking like a Rubrick’s Cube. I’ve just finished painting everything white.
Then there’s a problem with my interior design sense, which could be kindly described as problematic. I prefer a style of home furnishings that lives comfortably with notions of kitsch, tack and overkill. Merging bordello themes (a penchant for furry blankets and velvety red and shiny gold fabrics) with a love of brightly coloured Indian and Asian Art, I effortlessly manage to create something that looks like the worst kind of Gentleman’s Club. Imagine some kind of colonial era bounder, staggering from one budget opium den to another, pausing for relaxation at a B grade antique shop, and you’ve got the picture.
'coastal'
I’m currently trying to emiliorate my own lack of taste by re-branding the place as ‘coastal’. This involves painting everything white and sticking stuff in wicker baskets (though why the f**k people do this is beyond me. The baskets are too small to hold anything useful, you can’t see what’s in them, and if you have too many of them you create this creepy Ali Baba and the Fourty Thieves feel). I’m picking up paint charts and going ‘mmnnnn, beige’. However just when the thought of all this beige got too much, I told myself that the house didn’t have to be ‘coastal’ it could be ‘coastal eccentric‘. This, I rationalised, would allow me the freedom to celebrate my own interior design excesses within a soothing cocoon of pale walls and floors.
So far the path to coastal eccentric has not run smoothly. I’ve found that the combination of a hot pink sari, casually thrown over a soft green leather sofa, just looks weird against a white wall. It seems as if the turquoise kitchen tiles that I so lovingly selected will tend to jump out, even against the calming influence of a beige backdrop. Then there’s this irresistable inclination to dot the bare expanses of white walls with LOTS of pictures. Frankly, it looks as if two different people live in the house and couldn’t decide what they liked.
Similarly my Arts career ran this year like it was being managed by a job sharing genius and idiot. For every resounding success there was an equally prattish custard-pie-in-face failure. The days the genius was on board, I managed to win just under $50k worth of grants, published a book and a journal article, participated in ten group art exhibitions, co-curated a successful touring artists’ books exhibition, published an article in an international art mag, and ran a couple of pretty cool community art projects. When the idiot took over, however, I couldn’t do a thing right. The list of knock backs, failed funding applications, refused opportunities, and politely phrased rejection letters (ranging from the polite ‘oh, we just had so many great applicants’ to a hissy subtext of ‘are you kidding?’) was monumental. Unfortunately as if so often the case, as everyone tries to clear their desk before the holidays, most of these missives arrived just before Christmas, leaving me wondering why on earth the idiot had been rostered on at this important time of year.
Helen Hopcroft: an artist's life 
