Aimee Frodsham on how a tight-knit industry is helping keep a rare art form alive

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For a snapshot in time, we asked eight people around the country to reflect on Australia Now. Here, Aimee Frodsham, Artistic Director of Canberra Glassworks in the ACT, shares her thoughts on what the global pandemic has taught her.

Keep reading our Australia Now series here.

 

What do three-metre-long eel traps and a pair of cowboy boots have in common? They’re both currently on display at major Melbourne exhibitions: Maree Clarke: Ancestral Memories at the NGV and Patricia Piccinini’s A Miracle Constantly Repeated at Flinders Street Station. And they were both created in glass at Canberra Glassworks.

 

Working with some of Australia’s biggest names in art on commissions like these is one of many strands that Canberra Glassworks – Australia’s leading centre for contemporary glass art, craft and design – deals in. Housed in the historic Kingston Power House, which powered the early development of the city, it’s a place that simultaneously innovates and celebrates the centuries-old glassmaking tradition in all its multifarious forms.

Canberra Glassworks Shop
The new shop at Canberra Glassworks, Australia’s leading centre for contemporary glass art, is winning plaudits for its interior design. (Image: Pew Pew Studio/Skeehan Studio)

A day in the life of an artistic director

In her role as artistic director, Aimee Frodsham looks after the centre’s exhibition program and helps facilitate making in the studios (whether that’s the fabrication of work for exhibitions and commissions or glassmakers operating their own business from the centre).

 

A glassblower herself who trained at ANU School of Art & Design (then Canberra School of Art) during a febrile time in the 1990s, Aimee often finds herself on the floor working with the makers across the various areas, including the hot shop and kiln, helping to facilitate fabrication of works that take many forms and specialisms. (“I’d never ask a goblet maker to make a bead for me," she explains, to highlight the sheer diversity that exists within glassmaking.)

 

“I love the history, the tradition and the skill, and I love and admire the artists that have dedicated their whole careers to mastering one particular area," Aimee says of her passion for glasswork. “I think that is just so mind-blowing in this contemporary world; nothing that we do is done on the computer." Without these phenomenal makers, she says, these crafts would be lost: consider the neon signs we see everywhere from shopfronts to Sydney’s famous Coca-Cola billboard.

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What she loves about glassmaking

The knowledge of this now-rare trade is at the risk of dying out, and the relationship Canberra Glassworks has forged with the industry is helping to fill the skills gap, demystify long-held secrets (that no longer need to be kept from a commercial sense), and turn the trade into an art form; as part of the National Portrait Gallery’s Australian Love Stories exhibition earlier in 2021, artist Harriet Schwarzrock created 120 sublime glass heart sculptures pumped full of neon.

 

The skill and craft involved in glassmaking necessitates collaboration and breeds a tight-knit artistic community. “We all really love and support each other," says Aimee. “We have to, to be able to make our work." And this sense of community extends outwards, too, embracing the public through education programs and school tours (“For us it’s quite strategic, because it’s really important for the next generation to know that glassmaking is a career") or team-building exercises for, say, the local police force or volunteer firefighters post-Black Summer bushfires. And, of course, workshops, from jewellery-making to glassblowing, which were booked up for months in advance after the Netflix series Blown Away aired. “We really encourage people as hobbyists to come and learn and to make, and to be part of our community."

Colourful glassworks for sale at Canberra Glassworks
The knowledge of this now-rare trade is at the risk of dying out. (Image: Pew Pew Studio/Skeehan Studio)

What the pandemic has taught her

Learning to be a better communicator, especially in terms of safety issues, and to be more agile within the organisation are some of the positive takeaways of the pandemic for Aimee. And missing having people around in the same way forged a different type of connection, by way of weekly Zoom sessions for the Australia-wide glassmaking community: “Every week another group of artists leads a conversation. They’re quite informal and a way for us to see each other and connect. We’ll keep going with those kinds of things because it has made me realise how fragile access can be, and providing access in different ways is really important. Zoom has given us the ability to reach out to people in our community who maybe felt isolated without us realising it."

 

Aimee says she feels lucky to live in Canberra, which she found transformed upon her return in 2015 after living and working in London for 12 years. “It had grown into a really wonderful, exciting city that had lost quite a bit of that stigma around it being a public service town." The past 18 months have left her feeling in some ways more connected and rooted to Australia in general and optimistic that we’re leaders in the world for art: “I feel really connected to the arts community and the amazing things we’re doing here."

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This scenic Victorian region is the perfect antidote to city life

    Craig Tansley Craig Tansley
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    Video credit: Visit Victoria/Tourism Australia

    The Grampians just might be the ultimate antidote for the metropolis, writes one returning Aussie ready to disconnect from the modern world and reconnect to the Great outdoors.

    There are no kangaroos back in Chicago: they’re all here in the Grampians/Gariwerd. In the heart of the Grampians National Park’s main gateway town, Halls Gap, pods of eastern greys are eating grass beside my parked rental car beneath the stars. Next morning, when I see the backyard of my rented villa on the edge of town for the first time, there are kangaroos feeding beside a slow-moving creek, lined with river red gums.

    Five hundred metres up the road, 50 or so of them are eating by the side of the road in a paddock. I pull over to watch and spot three emus. Yellow-tailed black cockatoos fly overhead towards the tall green mountains just beyond town.

    ‘Kee-ow, keee-oww’… their calls fuse with the maniacal cackle of a kookaburra (or 10). Gawd, how I’ve missed the sound of them. Far above, a wedge-tailed eagle watches, and there you go: the ‘great birds of Australia’ trifecta, all half a kay from the town limits.

    Exchanging city chaos for country calm

    kangaroos near Halls Gap, Grampians National Park
    The park is renowned for its significant diversity of native fauna species. (Image: Visit Victoria/Robert Blackburn)

    I’ve come to the Grampians to disconnect, but the bush offers a connection of its own. This isn’t just any bush, mind you. The Grampians National Park is iconic for many reasons, mostly for its striking sandstone mountains – five ridges run north to south, with abrupt, orange slopes which tumble right into Halls Gap – and for the fact there’s 20,000 years of traditional rock art. Across these mountains there are more than 200 recorded sites to see, created by the Djab Wurrung, Jardwadjali and Gunditjmara peoples. It’s just like our outback… but three hours from Melbourne.

    I’ve come here for a chance at renewal after the chaos of my life in America’s third-largest city, Chicago, where I live for now, at the whim of a relative’s cancer journey. Flying into Melbourne’s airport, it only takes an hour’s drive to feel far away from any concept of suburbia. When I arrive in Halls Gap two hours later, the restaurant I’m eating at clears out entirely by 7:45pm; Chicago already feels a lifetime ago.

    The trails and treasures of the Grampians

    sunrise at Grampians National Park /Gariwerd
    Grampians National Park /Gariwerd covers almost 2000 square kilometres. (Image: Ben Savage)

    Though the national park covers almost 2000 square kilometres, its best-known landmarks are remarkably easy to access. From my carpark here, among the cockatoos and kangaroos on the fringe of Halls Gap, it only takes 60 seconds’ driving time before I’m winding my way up a steep road through rainforest, deep into the mountains.

    Then it’s five minutes more to a carpark that serves as a trailhead for a hike to one of the park’s best vantage points, The Pinnacles. I walk for an hour or so, reacquainting myself with the smells and the sounds of the Aussie bush, before I reach it: a sheer cliff’s edge lookout 500 metres up above Halls Gap.

    walking through a cave, Hollow Mountain
    Overlooking the vast Grampians landscape from Hollow Mountain. (Image: Robert Blackburn)

    There are hikes and there are lookouts and waterfalls all across this part of the park near town. Some are a short stroll from a carpark; others involve long, arduous hikes through forest. The longest is the Grampians Peaks Trail, Victoria’s newest and longest iconic walk, which runs 160 kilometres – the entire length of Grampians National Park.

    Local activities operator Absolute Outdoors shows me glimpses of the trail. The company’s owner, Adrian Manikas, says it’s the best walk he’s done in Australia. He says he’s worked in national parks across the world, but this was the one he wanted to bring his children up in.

    “There’s something about the Grampians,” he says, as he leads me up a path to where there’s wooden platforms for tents, beside a hut looking straight out across western Victoria from a kilometre up in the sky (these are part of the guided hiking options for the trail). “There are things out here that you won’t see anywhere else in Australia.” Last summer, 80 per cent of the park was damaged by bushfire, but Manikas shows me its regrowth, and tells me of the manic effort put in by volunteers from town – with firefighters from all over Australia – to help save Halls Gap.

    wildflowers in Grampians National Park
    Spot wildflowers. (Image: Visit Victoria)

    We drive back down to Halls Gap at dusk to abseil down a mountain under the stars, a few minutes’ walk off the main road into town. We have headlamps, but a full moon is enough to light my way down. It takes blind faith to walk backwards down a mountain into a black void, though the upside is I can’t see the extent of my descent.

    Grampians National Park at sunset
    Grampians National Park at sunset. (Image: Wine Australian)

    The stargazing is ruined by the moon, of course, but you should see how its glow lights up the orange of the sandstone, like in a theme park. When I’m done, I stand on a rocky plateau drinking hot chocolate and listening to the Aussie animals who prefer nighttime. I can see the streets of Halls Gap off in the distance on this Friday night. The restaurants may stay open until 8pm tonight.

    What else is on offer in The Grampians?

    a boat travelling along the Wimmera River inDimboola
    Travelling along the Wimmera River in Dimboola. (Image: Chris McConville)

    You’ll find all sorts of adventures out here – from rock climbing to canoeing to hiking – but there’s more to the Grampians than a couple of thousand square kilometres of trees and mountains. Halls Gap may be known to most people, but what of Pomonal, and Dimboola, and Horsham? Here in the shadow of those big sandstone mountains there are towns and communities most of us don’t know to visit.

    And who knew that the Grampians is home to Victoria’s most underrated wine region? My disconnection this morning comes not in a forest, but in the tasting rooms and winery restaurants of the district. Like Pomonal Estate, barely 10 minutes’ drive east of Halls Gap, where UK-born chef Dean Sibthorp prepares a locally caught barramundi with lentil, pumpkin and finger lime in a restaurant beside the vines at the base of the Grampians. Husband-and-wife team Pep and Adam Atchison tell me stories as they pour their prize wines (shiraz is the hero in these parts).

    dining at Pomonal Estate
    Dine in a restaurant beside vines at Pomonal Estate. (Image: Tourism Australia)

    Three minutes’ drive back down the road, long-time mates Hadyn Black and Darcy Naunton run an eclectic cellar door out of a corrugated iron shed, near downtown Pomonal. The Christmas before last, half the houses in Pomonal burnt down in a bushfire, but these locals are a resilient lot.

    The fires also didn’t stop the construction of the first art centre in Australia dedicated to environmental art in a nature-based precinct a little further down the road (that’s Wama – the National Centre for Environmental Arts), which opened in July. And some of the world’s oldest and rarest grape vines have survived 160 years at Best’s Wines, outside the heritage town of Great Western. There’s plantings here from the year 1868, and there’s wines stored in century-old barrels within 150-year-old tunnels beneath the tasting room. On the other side of town, Seppelt Wines’ roots go back to 1865. They’re both only a 30-minute drive from Halls Gap.

    Salingers of Great Western
    Great Western is a charming heritage town. (Image: Griffin Simm)

    There’s more to explore yet; I drive through tiny historic towns that barely make the map. Still part of the Grampians, they’re as pretty as the mountains behind them: full of late 19th-century/early 20th-century post offices, government offices and bank buildings, converted now to all manner of bric-a-brac stores and cafes.

    The Imaginarium is one, in quirky Dimboola, where I sleep in the manager’s residence of an old National Australia Bank after a gourmet dinner at the local golf club, run by noted chef and teacher, Cat Clarke – a pioneer of modern Indigenous Australian cooking. Just south, I spend an entire afternoon at a winery, Norton Estate Wines, set on rolling calico-coloured hills that make me think of Tuscany, chit-chatting with owners Chris and Sam Spence.

    Being here takes me back two decades, when I lived here for a time. It had all seemed as foreign as if I’d driven to another planet back then (from Sydney/Warrane), but there seemed something inherently and immediately good about this place, like I’d lived here before.

    And it’s the Australian small-town familiarity of the Grampians that offers me connection back to my own country. Even in the better-known Halls Gap, Liz from Kerrie’s Creations knows I like my lattes with soy milk and one sugar. And while I never do get the name of the lady at the local Ampol station, I sure know a lot about her life.

    Kookaburras on a tree
    Kookaburras are one of some 230 bird species. (Image: Darren Donlen)

    You can be a local here in a day; how good is that? In Chicago, I don’t even know who my neighbour is. Though each day at dusk – when the kangaroos gather outside my villa, and the kookaburras and the black cockatoos shout out loud before settling in to sleep – I prefer the quieter connection I get out there in the bush, beneath these orange mountains.

    A traveller’s checklist

    Staying there

    Sleep beside the wildlife on the edge of Halls Gap at Serenity.

    Playing there

    abseiling down Hollow Mountain
    Hollow Mountain is a popular abseiling site.

    Go abseiling under the stars or join a guided hike with Absolute Outdoors. Visit Wama, Australia’s first environmental art centre. Check out Dimboola’s eccentric Imaginarium.

    Eating there

    steak, naan bread and beer at Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap
    Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap serves a great steak on naan bread.

    Eat world-class cuisine at Pomonal Estate. Dine and stay at much-revered icon Royal Mail Hotel in Dunkeld. The ‘steak on naan’ at Halls Gap brewhouse Paper Scissors Rock, can’t be beat.

    Dunkeld Arboretum in Grampians National Park
    The serene Dunkeld Arboretum.

    For Halls Gap’s best breakfasts head to Livefast Cafe. Sip local wines at Great Western’s historic wineries, Best’s Wines, Seppelt Wines and Norton Estate Wines.

    two glasses of beer at Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap
    Sink a cold one at Paper Scissors Rock.
    How a tight-knit industry is helping keep a now-rare art form alive