As far as collectives go, the crew at We Make Stuff Good have all the talent required in order to make their mark upon the Burn-city art frontier. Numbering over thirty individuals locally, nationally and internationally, many involved also crosshatch their membership with other luminous entities such as Sketch City, Melbourne Tours and Dont Ban The Can, to name a few.  Given this composition of deviceful minds, from all walks of the creative path, the crew at WMSG are at the top of the game, and contribute more than their fair share of passion to the cities flourishing scene.

Drawing upon that talent and energy, five of the women involved with WMSG have embarked upon a mission to promote both their own creative outputs, as well as WMSG as a whole, in a celebration of the strength of their female members. From amongst that contingent, Ania Stuff, Cammy Stuff, Krystal Stuff, Rachee Stuff and Verona stuff are all poised to unleash their work on the public, with a much anticipated tie in with the launch of the WMSG store as well as a tie-in event presented by Sketch City the following week.

Invurt recently had the opportunity to catch up WMSG’s Cammy Stuff, Krystal Stuff and Rachee Stuff to talk about art, their upcoming exhibition, and all things made good and proper.

First things first, can you tell me a little about yourselves and your previous experience in the creative realm?

Cammy Stuff: Well, I came to Australia, Melbourne, about two years ago now, I’m originally from the frozen fields of Denmark. I come from a very creative family where both parents are ol’skool graphic designers and a brother who is a musical rock’n roll wonder. I’ve been illustrating for as long as I can remember and my mum still keeps all my weird ass paintings from when I was a cool little kid.

Krystal Stuff: I guess I first noticed street art and became intrigued by it 8 years ago, but Ive always been I’m influenced by video art, design and illustration. Taking the train to school I was entertained by the walls on the Hurstbridge line in Melbourne. While at university I never picked up a paint brush, texta or pencil. My creative expression solely lived online, and electronically through video, interactive design, and animation. My video art was gaining interest internationally and around Australia but I found the process left me very isolated. After taking an active role in the Melbourne Street Art scene by supporting Sketch City and the Don’t Ban the Can events I found my self amongst a whole range of active artists and other participants who inspire me to continually be creative.

Rachee Stuff: I’ve been practicing art for most of my life, but have been practicing low-brow and street art since about 2003. Being part of the street art community I have had the opportunity to meet and be influenced by so many amazing people here and around the world which has led to the creating of the event Sketch City which I have run since early 2008.  I usually go by Rachee Renee, but sometimes I work under a few aliases, Aryze or Peach, but always dabbling with the super cute.

What turned each of you on to art and creativity right at the very beginning? How did you first get into it?

Cammy Stuff: I have to blame my parents for this one. I was surrounded by all the colours of the rainbow, quality paper, beautiful letters and digital equipment all day long. I caught the design flue when I was just a baby and the doctors couldn’t do anything to help me. Later in life my mum tried hard to explain to me that the art and design field was a rough environment, strongly dominated by male designers and the ever changing digital world. I kind of tried to listen and for I while I did put my pen down and started focusing on visual merchandising in stead. But I guess once you pop a fine line lid you never really quit. Art and design never left my veins. I’m a full blood creative and I’m proud to admit it.

Krystal Stuff: I’ve always found that my visual creativity has been my strong point in life. Its how I communicate, it pays by bills and if I could not express my self visually I would shrivel up and die! From High School it took me 2 years to finally be accepted into university. Having experience in online publishing and interactive design it was at university that I was exposed to video as an art form and the practice and study of animation.

Rach Stuff: My interest in characters and all things cute and ‘kawaii’ came from having a lot of Japanese pen pals when I was little. I found most of the letters I got quite boring but they all used to draw me these super cute characters throughout the letters which made me wanna draw like that! I started borrowing character books from the library and practicing faces and stuff and got an obsession with huge eyes, which have carried on through my art till today – I can get away from them!

Have any of you had any training in the arts, or are you coming from a self taught perspective?

Krystal Stuff: I studied a B.A Animation and Interactive Media at RMIT University in Melbourne and completed a Cert 4 in Multimedia at Swinburne University. After I completed these courses I realised I never picked up a paint brush, textas or colour pencil to create a finished art work. It was from this that I felt I needed to get back to my roots of pen and paper.
Cammy Stuff: No formal training. I was going to, but then life changed and Australia started to sound heaps better than four years in school. But I did spend many days of my teenage life in my dad’s studio. I learned a lot of just watching his methods and how he approached new jobs. He gave me the skills.

Rachee Stuff: My high school art teacher liked my comic-ish style and told me I should go to art school. I did and it totally destroyed my style, only letting me learn realism and landscapes and I didn’t do art for about 3 years after I finished that course. I managed to get re-inspired when I started dabbling in street art after hanging out with the Cave Clan (a painting crew that explores drains). I basically dropped everything I learned at art school and started doing stencilling and street stuff which has got me where I am now!

In terms of your methods of expression whilst you are working, what do you believe are your strengths?

Krystal Stuff: I turned to interactive design to create virtual expression of spatial awareness but found I can never learn the coding skills to do so. I then turned to the urban space around me and travelled through Europe in 2007 documenting walls, sights and buildings. It is from here I found my self intrigued and interested in how my own self expression is able to interact with public space. I also have a fascination with curls, swirls and asymmetrical shapes.

Rachee Stuff: I like to use anything with bright colours so I am mainly an acrylic and aerosol painter. I’d say my stuff is mainly aesthetically pleasing, rather than having some deep meaning, so I’d say the main strength in my work is pleasing the eye and making people feel happy.

Cammy Stuff: I would say I’m good at adapting my style into whatever it needs to look like. I do heaps of different characters, finer illustrative work and handmade types. It makes me never run out ideas.

How do you best express your individual skills and how do you strive to become proficient in what you do?

Rachee Stuff: I try to be influenced as much as possible by what I see around me. Doing Sketch City is amazing for inspiration, with hundreds of artists painting in the one space. I also like to travel as much as I can and be influenced by street art and people outside of Melbourne and make sure I collect lots of magazines, books and pictures to stick all over my house to be constantly inspired.

Krystal Stuff: Good pens, good brushes, good textas, and good friends help! If you are down and can’t get out of bed then you can’t work and be visually creative.

Cammy Stuff: I just keep it real. Word. Haha

Can you tell me a little about the influences within your own work, where does each of you draw your inspiration from?

Rachee Stuff: I’m really into Japanese art and culture, as well as street art and lowbrow artists – mostly from South America and Europe. I am also inspired by fashion magazines, photography and cartoons and comics I liked as a kid.

Cammy Stuff: My inspiration comes from all over but my main inspiration comes from Scandinavian simplicity and design from the early 90’s. That’s what’s crackin’ in my head at the moment.

Krystal Stuff: I draw inspiration from what going on around me. In uni i brought every design magazine on the shelf. Now I can’t open a book and I find my self reading blogs a lot less. I tend to be influenced with what’s around me at the moment, what art I see on the streets, what galleries and art/design events I attend and what art is happening in Australia. I have a real interest in the notion of contemplation and the process of creativity with you can find in my moving images and soon still images. I also can’t help deny my love for Walt Disney cartoons from the 1950’s.

How did you all become involved with We Make Stuff Good?

Krystal Stuff: WMSG was conceived by a group of like mined people whom where interested in street art events happening in Melbourne. The group know as We Make Stuff Good together have together run street art events and have documented them to share with the public. I’m one of the founding members that continues to more forward under the banner We Make Stuff Good.

Rachee Stuff: I first met the WMSG crew when they and Sketch City were involved in putting on the first Dont Ban The Can. I felt as though we all had the same drive to inspire community art and thought it would be best if we join forces and all work together to get more people involved.

Cammy Stuff: I got involved with WMSG pretty much straight after I arrived in Melbourne in 2008., so I’ve been a part of the family since the WMSG was just a baby. Let’s call me her crazy aunt.

In what way do you find that being a part of the WMSG collective helps to promote both yourself and urban art in general?

Cammy Stuff: WMSG is a perfect tool for the people involved to get creative. WMSG not only promotes its’ crew members’ work but also helps them develope their personal style by giving them heaps of different assignments. We get pushed out in situations where we need to think fast. Wether it’s ideas for advertising, events or articles.

Krystal Stuff: I find that WMSG gives myself a platform and subject matter to be creative with. It has given me and online and social platform to express my artistic opinion, share ideas, publish video and visual documentation of parts of the Melbourne art movement today. I haven’t exhibited my creative work in a couple of years so I find it exciting to do so with our My Girls exhibition.

Rachee Stuff: I think power in numbers is the key… more people supporting each other equals more networks, more contacts, more inspiration and bigger ideas.

Does the collective aspect of working with a crew such as WMSG act as a check and balance for feedback and inspiration within your own work? If so, how?

Rachee Stuff: Yeah, it’s always nice to have a support network as an artist. I think I have been too critical of my own art in the past and having this awesome support network gives you greater confidence in your own art as well as giving you the power as a collective to drive new and innovative community minded ideas.

Cammy Stuff: It’s always a good sign that you can function as an artist individually, but also in a collective. I found it really difficult to take other people’s ideas into consideration before, but now it’s just a part of the fun. It’s nice to sit down in a group and spread all the ideas on the table, pick the best ones and make them function together. After working with our own event I know it takes more than just one brain to make happen. So yeah, I guess it has made me a lot more calm looking at my own work. I appreciate people’s opinion more and take notice if they recommend me to do some changes.

Krystal Stuff: I work best in a collective with a bunch of people who tell me the what they think about my work, and share their point of view of what I’m trying archive. I believe that’s the goal of any piece of art or design. Art can be an undirected sense of self expression but if you have a message behind the medium I believe it becomes more meaningful.

Can you tell me what you hope to achieve with the release of the online store for each of you personally, as well as WMSG as a whole?

Krystal Stuff: I’ve personally wanted to design T’s for a long time. I’ve felt that with all the online bloging a critique’s of other people work and events, that it was time to give a bit of our own style back into the community. I’ve seen people with the WMSG T’s on in the street and fell chuffed that they are wearing our designs.

Rachee Stuff: It’s a great way for me to promote and sell my own art as well as creating yet another strong network that can support each other and help drive each others creativity

Cammy Stuff: Personally it could be great to sell a whole lot of my awesome shit. Just bang it out! But as a WMSG member we as a group would just love to see more t-shirt collaborations with other artist and maybe in the future sell more artworks through the WMSG online KIOSK (We just love calling it the KIOSK!).

What other projects do you all have in the pipeline? What else you have been working on recently?

Krystal Stuff: Well, as a Director of We Make Stuff Good, my goals are to see the brand and the people in the collective grow professionally. That’s want I believe in, and I work on that as much as I can. We’ll continue to support We Make Stuff Good events and grow our online presence. We’re endeavouring to become a knowledgeable base of resources for people to rely on in order to seek inspiration, and get involved in the Melbourne art scene.

Cammy Stuff: Oh, we always have a lot to do. But right now we are concentrating on making our exhibition and online KIOSK launch the coolest event. This is our first big event, not taking Don’t Ban the Can into consideration, and we want to make it good because that’s what we usually do!

Rachee Stuff: Well, the next Sketch City will be happening the week after the ‘My Girls’ exhibition, on Saturday March 13th. This event is celebrating Melbournes female creatives, so we’ve invited 10 female feature artists to paint our walls, 10 female DJ’s and bands and even some female breakers! There are few girls working in street art is Melbourne and most of them don’t know each other so it’ll be a great chance for them to network and collaborate while showing everybody else (yes, boys are very welcome!) the awesome creativity they have to offer! Check out for more info [ed. more info on the upcoming Sketch City event will be posted up soon]

Finishing off, what are your individual views on the state of the arts here in Melbourne?

Cammy Stuff: Melbourne’s a beautiful city with a lot of beautiful artists. I like the way people express themselves down here. Coming from a whole other planet in Denmark, I’m just really fascinated by the drive that Melbourne artists have, even though the Victorian laws must make it quite difficult sometimes. Melbourne artists just never seem to give up and that’s why this city will never die. We got some strong cats down here.

Rachee Stuff: I think we are at a really exciting point within the arts here. People are more inspired and community minded than ever and really driving each others creativity. There are so many innovative events and projects happening at the moment, particularly in the warehouse realm, so things can only get better really!

Krystal Stuff: I think street art is in the public eye more then ever now that there is so much more of it within our urban environment. The same goes with all the video art and animation with the release of online site such as Youtube.

There are more and more people attending exhibitions, events and people are getting involved and supporting the Melbourne and Australian art scene. They are mostly hearing about these events though social media and online plat forms which add strength to the Melbourne Arts movement. With out the Internet, the blogs and all the social media, the Melbourne art scene just wouldn’t be the same.

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What: My Girls – We Make Stuff Good
Who: Rachee Stuff, Krystal Stuff, Cammy Stuff, Verona Stuff, Ania Stuff
When: March 5 2010, 6pm. Works also on display at the ‘Ladies Luv’ Sketch City March 13, 4pm
Where: Dazzleland Studios 25 Eastment St, Northcote. Tram line 86, stop 31.

See the We Make Stuff Good website for even more information, and check their kiosk to buy cool stuff.
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Members of WMSG in action at Sketch City. See more videos on the We Make Stuff Good channel on Youtube