Vodcast opens the human book that is Carmen Gray
From early days studying costume and set design to writing zombie books for early readers and teaching visual arts to hundreds of students across the country, Carmen Gray has lived a creative life.
Carmen shares her life’s journey as an artist, an author, teacher, and mum to once ‘wannabe zombies’ in a new episode of CQUniversity’s vodcast series Conversations with the Dean where she sits down for a two-part conversation with Professor Stephen Dobson.
Carmen’s passion for all things creative began back in her homeland of New Zealand, where she lived in a small town on the West Coast and met an inspirational artist who became a mentor.
She later studied a bachelor's degree at Edith Cowan University in costume and set design which laid the foundation for a career in visual art and design.
Transcript
[Music]
Welcome everybody today I'm sitting with Carmen Gray and we're going to be talking about the teaching of Visual Arts first we are on the land of the Darumbal people and I would like to acknowledge the elders past present and emerging and in the spirit of reconciliation I'd like to thank them for letting us hold this conversation it'll have a couple of parts we'll do a Kiwi welcome as well [Kiwi welcome]
welcome thank you for taking this time to come and talk Carmen so you work in our university and you teach our visual arts you didn't suddenly drop down from the sky and become a visual arts teacher how did this happen well thanks Stephen and thanks for having me today it's lovely to be here um so I guess my uh my whole my whole history and life story I suppose led me to the place where I am now um like most people um and I think probably my my love for art and um all things creative started in New Zealand when I was young because that's where I'm from in fact I'm actually a member of the Ngāi Tahu tribe from New Zealand so kiora I am very pleased to meet you thank you um so in New Zealand we lived on the west coast of of the south island and um we lived in a little town called Hokitika you probably know it I have been there it's very very cold and it's it's um the west coast is sometimes by the locals called the wet coast because it gets metres and metres of rain every year so just walking around the ground is kind of Mossy and slushy and soft with all of the the water in it it's just a very wet gloomy and quite gothic place you could probably say um and while while we grew up there I Met A lady called Allison Sanson who who became a mentor for me and she's an artist there she's still alive now she's in her 90s and she uh was just very kind to me and she taught me a lot about drawing and we would go out into the bush and and draw and paint different um natural things like flowers and and landscapes and things like that and that was really kind of the beginning of my uh creative journey I suppose you could say and that was I'm assuming that was in your I call it your school years or that kind of so so so how did that move you across cause now of course you're in Australia and exactly that was just the start of things that was the beginning so that kind of sparked my interest in all things creative and then we moved to Australia when I was 10 and uh lived on the Sunshine Coast and um and then uh I was also very interested in ballet so I did dancing for a long time and when I finished school I wasn't really sure kind of what direction I was going to go but I knew it would be something to do with um visual art so I stumbled across uh the course at WAAPA at Edith Cowen University in costume and set design and I um I enrolled there and and did 3 years of that and it was fabulous I I did a lot of uh designing for theatre dance um musical theatre and it was just a a fantastic kind of education and all things creative so that would encapsulate uh both the drawing the exactly the feel for materials the technique the and textiles you know there was costumes and um yeah there was it was all aspects of design really there was drafting there was learning how to draw a scale plan all of that kind of thing yeah did you think the world of design um I was going to say is it archetypal it doesn't change or do you think it the technology changes but the principles are the same I definitely think that's the case so in in design we have what we call the elements and principles of design which are are kind of the building blocks of all visual information and um the elements are really things like line shape colour uh of those things and the principles are the way we put those together and so um that applies to any kind of design it could be interior design could be tattoos it could be um graphic design it could be art it could be any kind of design uses those elements and principles and they always remain constant but the way we use them does change because of technology so I mean this is a relevant question you now teach of course in in your own history so you took that qualification did you say I'm going to be a teacher or what is it no I never did I never did so at school it was interesting because I really just didn't know what I should do and I I look back and I remember there was one person there a teacher who said to me um you should think about being a teacher and I instantly dismissed that idea I thought no I don't I don't want to spend my life in school um but of course here I am so the pathway after university um was kind of a long and winding one I did do some designing after I finished at university but I discovered I didn't I didn't really love it I have to say I um I'm probably a bit more of a lone wolf as a designer in theatre you're working with a team and you've got very um very strict deadlines you cannot you cannot break those I mean opening night you can't move it so it's it's a quite a a high pressure situation and and um I didn't love all of that stress and I started to sort of move slowly a little bit more into the world of of visual art for that reason because it was something creative but I sort of saw it more as a hobby um but then I I decided it might be something I could look at doing a bit more seriously and that was you on Edith Cowan and so you gradually gravitated back to this area correct so we came back to um my partner and I came back from Perth and uh moved to Rockhampton and um uh this is where he's from and um so that's how we ended up back here and of course my family was on the Sunshine Coast where we came from so it made sense for me to come back to Queensland as well so fast forward now you're you're building your teaching skills and you're working in that visual art space so if I said to you and and I think whenever you ask somebody who teaches something there there's always some underpinning kind of philosophy or theory I don't want to say theoretical that's the wrong word but there's some kind of thing that they kind of say this is who I am as a teacher what would you say if somebody asked you that um I think probably um I enjoy teaching because I I enjoy helping people and um I suppose with teaching it's it's something that you you feel like you're helping somebody when you're teaching something um but I enjoy uh thinking about where ways of structuring information that make it easy for somebody to take on and um absorb and kind of understand and thinking about that kind of structuring of information really interests me and how you you know things like for example the other day I learned that if if you um if you create a teaching video of more than 3 minutes people don't watch it well they don't watch more than three minutes of it so things like that really kind of help me work out well what is the best way I can package this information that is going to be taken on by the learner the easiest and in the way in a way that is going to help them remember it so that kind of um planning I I really enjoy doing that and I enjoy making the resources and um sort of constructing that kind of uh lesson I guess you could say that will hopefully be good for the learner and over time I've sort of looked I suppose at what's worked and what hasn't and I try to refine my approach to it so that it's better and better and so that my um my students get uh a better a better um kind of experience a better learning experience when they come to us it it's interesting you mentioned that kind of the the the three minute you know um uh there were some who would say um this will always change in time there will say the Tik Tok generation have I think somebody told me it's 9 seconds and then they will move to the next one do do you feel sometimes when you're you're thinking about your teaching there's what I call the um the thing that's on the front of stage you're teaching but you're also looking for that thing they're learning as an extra without consciously learning it yeah do you do you have that kind of thought as a teacher I think teaching visual art um we try we try to help our students really think deeply about themselves that's um you know to create something new to be creative to be an artist you've got to be authentic so um you've got to bring something of yourself to whatever you're creating or producing and so I suppose that kind of introspective thing of really examining what it is you're taking on and thinking about is kind of innate to the subject that we teach um I don't know if that answers the question but yeah so I think I think it does because what what you're saying is that in the teaching that you create there's a a an attempt or a design or a desire to create some kind of connection I think so between both you as a teacher and a student but also what they're trying to create and if if the connection is that kind of front of Centre yeah than the other stuff comes with it I hope so but getting back to what you just said about Tik Tok and the 3 minutes I think in Tik Tok 3 minutes is the maximum you've got so isn't it interesting that they probably know the research too and that's probably why they set that as the maximum amount for their videos perhaps perhaps who knows it it is important because of course one of the great strengths in CQU is we want people to be study anytime any place so we engage with that teaching and learning in a a digital world so I think we'll stop there for the time being and thank you oh my pleasure thank you [Music]
Fast forward a few years and Carmen found herself a mum of two pre-teen boys who became the inspiration for a book series on zombies targeted at reluctant young male readers.
Published by Harper Collins the Zombiefied book series was a huge hit, with a website created to provide extra content for enthusiastic fans.
Carmen said the books were born both from her love of creative writing and art and her connections with her young boys who were often “lurching around for food” like zombies.
Today, CQUniversity’s hundreds of visual art students across the country call Carmen ‘teacher’ – a career she didn’t set out to achieve but one she is so glad she did.
Carmen says she doesn’t force her students to read her zombie books which she both authored and illustrated – “but that may boost my sales” – but it provides proof that visual art can take you into a variety of creative endeavours.
Transcript
[Music] Hello again this is a second conversation and um who would have thought that the topic for this conversation is zombies we are sitting on the Darumbal people again and uh I'm talking with Carmen Gray and when I was looking at your let's called your portfolio of work I was quite shocked that you you are actually um an accomplished writer about zombies tell us more yeah strange isn't it you wouldn't it just seems like a weird art and zombies um so I've always enjoyed creative writing so fictional writing and um uh I really started that when I was studying in in WA I started writing just as a hobby really for fun and um so I did that for quite a long time and um eventually I got some books published uh through Harper Collins and they are about zombies they are for uh 8 to 12 year old children specifically for um reluctant male readers that's the demographic and um in these stories there's a little boy called Benjamin Roy um and he he kind of meets some evil people at his school and through a series of circumstances he he ends up getting infected with this zombie virus and um but what what the evil people don't know is that that to become a real raging zombie which is what they want they want to start a zombie army he's he's got to attack a person and bite them to complete the process and he refrains from doing that so across the course of the the books he's he's tempted all the time he's fighting this internal battle to stop himself from um biting some in particular his older and very annoying brother that's that's a real challenge for him the the books as well there for for that age group when you started writing these is is this a figure that um has you've kind of mulled over and thought about over time tell us where did that creative spark the idea where did it come from well I know exactly where it came from um I have two two sons and at the time I started writing they were probably about 10 10 and 12 or something like that and uh they were very interested in zombies um and in fact they were always lurching around the house looking for food so you know you didn't have to look hard for the inspiration there um they were they were often watching zombie movies and playing zombie games and things like that and and I realized that that it wasn't just them it was also all their friends were very interested in zombies I don't know why but there was just this big interest in them and I noticed there wasn't a lot of books for kids that age that featured zombies they were mostly for older teens or older adults um and you know as a parent you don't really want your 10-year-old watching The Walking Dead or something like that so I thought well why not try writing something so yeah that's how it started so so there's a couple of dimensions here to explore uh the first one is uh did you have to learn the language of 12 year olds well I already knew it because I was already there surrounded by them them and their friends so um for me the language was it was a daily thing I heard so yes I did have to learn it but it was all just sort of I was immersed in it so did you go around for a period and there's been a few books here hasn't there in the series four four yeah did you were you like this classical social researcher who talked to them and then rushed off and got the notebook out and said oh there's a thing how how did you collect your material as a creative writer that's an interesting question and and probably um all writers are a little bit different there they will have their own methods maybe I think for me when I sit down to write I just have to think back to conversations I've had and um when you're writing the words for a character when you're writing dialogue it kind of you sort of have an ear for it I suppose you sort of listen for how that sounds in your head would they really say that and so I think that's probably the approach I took there yeah interesting I have a parallel conversation going ongoing with my um older daughter who's a little bit old 17 now one of my daughters and she's in this age of you gradually uh developing your individual voice you know as a human being and you're going into this big world or whatever and uh there are situations that are confronting and I say you have to imagine in your mind run through things yeah and and I'm wondering in your kind of creative writing process did you find you were kind of uh running through the chapters or the episodes sure and then you wrote them down is that how you were doing it dreaming them sometimes it was more of a nightmare but um no the process for me for writing is is very um it's very clear-cut because I've done it for a long time so I've I've kind of developed a process that I like to follow and I stick to it and it's it's kind of um for me it's it's about sort of going through the first draft very quickly it's quite hard to write a first draft of anything fictional it's it's um it just seems to take a lot of energy and I in my mind I think of it as sort of like climbing a mountain so you're kind of battling to get to the top but when you get there you you kind of can see all around you and you can look down the way you came and then you can think actually there was a better pathway up this way and so then you go back down and you do it again and it gets a little bit easier and then again you go well actually no there was a slightly better way this way and this to me is like the iterations of a you know drafting process it's like writing a work of fiction and then redrafting it and redrafting it so that first draft to me is just just about getting it down as quickly as I can and then I go back over it and I with each draft I work on one specific thing so I might I might think about the structure of the scenes and and do they all work together or are the characters all true to themselves through the whole story arc or is the dialogue right so I at one thing in each draft and I try to make that as good as I can and then I go over it and over it probably about 10 times and the other thing I noticed in these books they're quite visual as well okay yeah so you've got this lovely little interactive site as well where you can add different colours on the figures and things so so did you also think when you're writing here this is a uh a community conversation for the reader between the visual and the written well I did do the illustrations for it um and I have to say when I was working on the on the books I didn't really give a lot of thought to a website or developing any of that but it it probably goes back to my history in terms of being a designer and so it was you know it's it's kind of um second nature to me to think about the characters in terms of what they're wearing and how they look and to actually draw them even when I'm writing so all of that information ended up on the website which ended up being you know coloring in pages for kids and things so so I think for me it's a this lovely um it provides an opportunity for the you call it the Living Dead which is the adult world or the adult televised world and this also gives an opportunity for a shared conversation between let's call it the adult world and the world that's coming through so have you picked up any of that kind of feedback when people have read your books what what do they react do they um well most of the people that read my books are 10-year-old boys so um they to them it's it's actually just part of the culture they live in it's interesting because that that relates to the study that I've done recently where um you know this for some reason in the last 30 years it seems that there's been this huge surge of interest in undead things whether they might be you know zombies or vampires in particular particular um and there's just so many books there's so many movies and so for them it's just more of the same for them it's it's a part of and that's the world they've grown up in they don't know a time when zombies and and vampires weren't hugely popular um kind of cultural icons like they are now I'm trying to imagine you as a teacher teaching the visual arts so when you're teaching your your students do you kind of uh put this book on their reading list I mean and how how does it Inspire your teaching um I can't say I force my students to read this book although that's not a bad idea I might might boost my sales um no I I think probably it it gives the students an example of where they can go with their creative journey in terms of illustration I suppose so they can see well this is a real world application of the skills I'm learning here um so that would be one way of of um I suppose bringing those two worlds together and then I have a final question which is an excuse the pun an open-ended book because um I'm fascinated by this global movement you can go to a library and then you book a person they are a human book started in Denmark and it's you find it in many places now um do you consider yourself as that kind of human book when you're teaching I think we all are you know we can I think we can all learn from each other and it wouldn't really matter what human you checked out of that library you would find something out that is amazing and new to you I think because we all have our own history and we all have our own story and I think every person's story is probably very interesting if you if you sort of um got the chance to find out about it lovely thank you thank you so much Carmen thank you [Music]
“They can see it as a real word application of the skills they are learning.
“It’s one way of bringing those two worlds together.”
Watch the vodcast on the CQUniversity News channel on YouTube or listen to CQUniversity Podcasts via your favourite podcast app.
