Meet an Artist

Maitland-based artist and graphic designer Jaime Pritchard, who has a serious love of paper, finds joy in both collaborating and retreating into the quiet reverie of making in her studio.

Jaime Pritchard in her studio in The Factory, Maitland.

Each weekday morning, after sipping a ristretto or two at a Maitland café, Jaime Pritchard strolls across to her studio by the Hunter River to begin her day’s work. Her studio is on the ground floor of The Factory, a collective of creatives that Jaime and her partner, Sean Ballenden, a musician, producer and audio engineer, set up in 2017.

A day in the artistic life of Jaime can include anything from a graphic design job for an organic flower grower or natural winemaker, to creating a mixed media abstract artwork, to painting, sewing and knotting paper as she develops a sculptural installation piece for an exhibition. She has taken a bold step into the freelance life, with all the excitement, freedom, and challenges that presents, after many years working as a full-time graphic designer.

Jaime grew up on the Mid North Coast and moved to Newcastle in 1997, studying Graphic Design at Hunter TAFE and later printmaking at Newcastle Art School; she is an experienced multidisciplinary arts practitioner with a diverse set of skills and a serious love of paper.

Paper, with all its beautiful textures and flaws, is a catalyst for Jaime’s creativity, bringing her joy whether she’s making a woodcut print or in creative flow with acrylic, ink or pastels.

Jaime Pritchard, A Glimpse of the Inner (detail), 2019, multimedia installation created for Into the Void

When I meet with Jaime, on a smoke haze day, she is excited about a special delivery of paper winging its way to her from Hanoi. This traditional Vietnamese paper, made in a sustainable way by the social business Zo Project, will form the basis of her next ‘Plants in Pots’ series.

‘Plants in Pots’ is a sustainable art concept Jaime developed while on holiday in Vietnam last year, to create ink paintings of pot plants on locally made paper and then donate a percentage of sales to the Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation in Vietnam, which helps children in crisis.

Jaime Prichard, Plants in Pots, 2019, ink and pastel on paper

Jaime’s impulse to collaborate with, and support, the local creative community led to her developing a small free local publication, The Conveyor, in 2018, which profiled artists in the region. In 2019 she and other residents of The Factory hosted an open studios event, Into the Void, celebrating their artistic practice, live music and community. For her latest project, Patina & Hide, Jaime is developing a line of bags and accessories featuring her design and original art, kicking it off with a limited edition of small bags in collaboration with Annie Dennerley of Maitland’s Dennerley Leather.

Jaime's latest project is Patina & Hyde, limited edition small bags made in collaboration with Annie Dennerley.

Jaime is a perfectionist at heart constantly inspired by the Japanese spirit of wabi-sabi, the acceptance and appreciation of beauty in imperfection.

She draws from memory, emotion and reflection on her life in the reverie of practicing her art, especially whilst creating her large paper installations, when the process of making takes on its own rhythm and affords time for the exploration of, and expression of, her inner life.

Jaime’s new multimedia installation, Unravelling to Recognition, will grace the Project Space at MRAG from February to May, and encompass strands of knotted paper, light projection and sound, with the audio composed by her partner, Sean. Inspired by a quote from the American social research professor and speaker Brené Brown, this piece, and more broadly Jaime’s practice, is guided by the idea that:

“We can’t unravel the truth without recognising the threads”.

Q&A

Jaime Pritchard, Unravelling to Recognition (detail), 2020, multimedia installation, video projection, paper, timber dowel, charcoal, cotton, beaded sequined embroidered garment yoke, dimensions variable. Sound by Sean Ballenden, garment yoke donated from private collection of Leonie Smith.

What do you love about working with paper and how does the phrase ‘Life is as fragile as paper’ resonate with you and your creative practice?

Paper can be strong and resilient, fragile and vulnerable, or all these things at once. It can be saturated but not disintegrate, folded time and time again; but there is a tipping point when it will break. It can be marked by ink, paint or charcoal; manipulated and sculpted to create form; it is so light it can hold movement and throw beautiful shadows; it can be sewn, cut and torn. All much like life itself.

Tell us a bit about the different elements that form your multimedia installation Unravelling to Recognition? {Project Space, Feb to May 2020}

Unravelling to Recognition is made with approximately 50sqm of paper, projected moving image, a soundscape and a beaded garment called a yoke. It’s an immersive representation of a time of deep personal reflection; it’s about the process of allowing space to explore one’s inner self, leading to acknowledgment of past experiences and emotions, and to personal expression and growth. I was gifted the yoke by a local creative and as an experiment used an overhead projector to cast a still image of it onto a piece of satin. It threw such a beautiful pattern, and I later filmed some footage of myself moving behind the projection. The soundscape is composed by my partner, Sean, who has a wonderful talent for creating deeply visceral music. Even though he developed it independently of me, in his recording studio (Triple Three Studios) here in The Factory, this installation has been a great way for our creative endeavours to weave together.

Interview: Sally Denmead

Jaime Pritchard, Reflections, 2019, acrylic, ink and paper on timber, 62 x 46cm

You can see more of Jaime’s work and read an extended Q&A with her at jaimepritchard.com.au. Jaime's installation will be in MRAG's Project Space during Artastique festival. See page 33 for more info.

Find out more about The Factory at facebook.com/ thefactorymaitland/ and follow Jaime's new project via Instagram @patina_and_hide A selection of Jaime's exquisite paper products are also available in the Gallery Shop.