Jono Everett

FEATURED ARTIST

Can you introduce yourself and tell us where we are?

My name is Jono Everett. I’m a designer and maker of furniture, and I manage this place with my partner, Sophia. This is The Soap Factory in Mayfield East, Newcastle.

We’ve got 11 artists here, all working in different mediums. There are ceramicists, fibre glass artists, a bronze sculptor, jewellery makers and five woodworkers. Sorry if I’ve forgotten anyone.

We’re a small creative community focused on making, and we make to a very high quality. Everybody here is at the top of their game, and we’re very lucky to have this incredible facility.

What are you currently working on?

In recent years I’ve turned much more seriously toward my sculptural bent.

A lot of that work at the moment involves my massive collection of roadside chairs. I’m collecting chairs, reshaping them, taking them apart, using gouache, torching them, applying homemade inks and stains, and using a variety of finishes to build monochromatic wall assemblages.

The works are steering towards concepts of home and memory.

A lot of these chairs are already imbued with great history. I particularly love finding chairs that have been badly painted by someone in an attempt to beautify their home. You can see those marks of history within them. Every chair carries something. I feel honoured when I find them on the roadside. I collect them and give them another life through the storytelling of these wall assemblages.

Is this a shift in your practice?

It is obviously a big shift, although I have made sculptures throughout my 40 years of designing and making.

I’ve now moved into a position where I am making more of a transition into sculpture, and taking that aspect of my practice much more seriously. I have this overwhelming feeling that I’ve got a limited time to get on with what I need to get on with.

I’ve made furniture and worked as a designer my entire career, and that is completely loaded with creativity and experimentation. I’ve always pushed the boundaries. But quite often, with commission work, there’s a client behind it. There are expectations that come with that. You are working to a brief to a degree.

I’ve had fantastic clients who have been very liberated in what they’ll allow me to create. But a lot of the way I work is probably not how you are meant to do it.

How do you approach making a work?

I love the idea of writing yourself a brief and saying, “Here are my goals. This is what I’d like to achieve artistically and personally.” But I have never really worked that way.

I have an idea for a piece, and inevitably, particularly when making art in wood, there are all these intersections along the way that start to steer me somewhere else. I’ll see moments, and I’ll think, if I cut that piece of wood off, that moment is gone and I won’t get it back again. I need to seize that moment.

So I quite often run with it. The piece may end up being quite different to what I originally imagined. Then I keep massaging it. All of that means it can take an incredibly long time to make a piece of artwork.

But I can’t stop until I’m really happy with it, even if it has taken on quite a different form.

What draws you to chairs?

The idea of using chairs is that they already have this past life, this past history imprinted on them. You can’t really ignore that. It’s something quite beautiful, and I definitely work with that.

Interestingly, I’ve started photographing chairs in their native habitats because it’s totally irresistible. I’ll see a three-legged chair, what used to be a four-legged chair, on a slope in an overgrown industrial estate or in the middle of a paddock, and I think, why is there a chair there?

Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. Chairs are dumped on the roadside everywhere, often in the most obscure places. I think that is profoundly poetic.

I’ve noticed, now that I’ve gone down this avenue, how many painters have painted chairs in paddocks and places like that. They also see what I see. Hopefully people hearing this will now see it as well, that chairs are really quite beautiful.

A chair is such a powerful object. It resonates with everyone. Everyone knows a chair, understands a chair. Everyone has had their favourite chair, or chairs they don’t like, or the ugly lounge they couldn’t get rid of in shared accommodation. They are part of our Australian psyche. I think they are a really strong symbol, so I love working with them.

What has this body of work taught you?

This transition into experimenting with a body of work around chairs has shown me many things.

When I’m taking chairs apart, I see incredible craftsmanship, which I can obviously relate to as a chair maker.

There are no rules. I can let go of the steering wheel.

When I first started taking chairs apart and putting them on the wall, making wooden assemblages, I thought I wasn’t allowed to reshape them or touch them. I thought they had to be exactly how I found them. But that was really difficult, and it wasn’t giving me the results I wanted.

Then I thought, why? No one told me to do that. I’m allowed not to do that. In fact, I’m allowed to do anything I want.

It is a difficult transition to realise that, as an artist, you can make whatever you want, in any way you want, without boundaries. I think that is a learned thing.

I am learning how to take my hands off the steering wheel and be free, while still demonstrating craftsmanship and skill, and making sure the stories are expressed properly.

I see many of my contemporaries doing that too. It’s a crazy time in the world, and I think people are finding it really important to express themselves rather than just working.

If you’ve got creative talents and the opportunity, if you’ve got a workshop or a space, why wouldn’t you do that? It’s irresistible. I think it’s my time to be doing that, and that’s where I’m at now.

Follow Jono Everett

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/everett_creative/

Website: https://www.everettcreative.com.au/

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