about Andia Cally
Photographer credit Jeremy Melder
How I inspire others - My Manifesto
As an artist, poet and writer, I combine my eye for the exquisite and infinite beauty of nature with a passion for social and environmental justice to encourage people to pause, reflect, and reconnect with their sense of self, the natural world and their place in it , and with their sense of wonder.
I do this by sharing self-care creative practices and capturing the rich tapestry of Mother Nature’s canvas through my art and evocative/provocative prose, so you can experience your Earth walk through the eyes of love and from a place of empowerment. In all my offerings my aim is to fill your spiritual and sensory cup, so you can serve yourselves and the world from a plentiful place.
My Story:
As a child, I realised I was a bit different from the rest of my family, who, unlike me, weren’t blessed with an ability to ‘taste words’. It wasn’t until I was in my 20s’ that I learned this was a phenomenon known as ‘synaesthesia’, a condition where two senses overlap. Synaesthesia is rare, affecting about 2-5% of the population and is common among creative types, including Van Gogh, David Hockney and Kandinsky. It’s a condition that presents itself in different ways, including creating associations between colours and numbers, colours and music, or in my case, tasting words.
This association may explain why as a child, and a rather reluctant bushwalker, I’d imagine various landscapes as edible. When I looked at the ocean I didn’t see a large body of saltwater that reflected the colours in the sky. I saw a huge mass of undulating blue green jelly, with frothy vanilla ice cream lapping at its edges. I incentivised myself down many a walking track by imagining that they were chocolate covered and peppered with peanut rocks. Perhaps this extra sensory gift gave me the ability to see nature in a unique way.
Food associations aside, I have always marvelled at nature’s myriad miracles, her textures, colours, sacred patterns and hidden gems. With its infinite expanses, luminescent wild waters, silky sand and shell-studded shore— the beach, in particular, is my favourite place of worship.
In 2012, I took a voluntary redundancy from the rat race, trading the hazy city skies of Melbourne for the warmer climes of Mullumbimby in Northern NSW. Surrounded by majestic mountains and beautiful beaches I happily melted back into Mother Nature’s welcoming embrace. It was here that our correspondence began. Mother Nature started sending me endless artistic inspiration in the form of ‘‘living love letters’, rocks, bodies of water, leaves, shells that were all heart shaped.
I began documenting these heartfelt messages on my iPhone and eventually created heartfelt collages that I turned into A Heartfelt Creation greeting cards that I sold in select stores and online. These interactions made me much more aware and in awe of bite-sized beauty, the detail of the everyday minutiae, including the ephemeral patterns in the sand. I loved their abstract qualities and how after editing them they took on the appearance of abstract paintings. So began my sandscape series and my interest and passion for abstract macro lens photography.
Other colours in my creativity palette include painting with acrylics and alcohol inks, wand making and slow stitching. In time, I may include some of these offerings on my website.
A long-term environmental advocate, at the tender age of six I followed my older sister into vegetarianism and haven’t had a morsel of avian or mammalian meat since. Preserving our precious planet is a topic I feel passionately about and have advocated for in many arenas, serving on corporate environmental committees, writing articles, organising sustainable events, including Gold Coast Green Week and Sustainable House Day Northern NSW, working for Compost Revolution and co-founding a not-for-profit called Let’s Waste Less with my partner to reduce the amount of disposable plastics in our town.
Other long-held loves of mine are poetry and writing. I began freelance writing and in-house editing when I was studying the Professional Writing & Editing course at RMIT in the early 2000s, publishing several articles, opinion pieces and reviews, mostly around environmental issues, in various newspapers and magazines.I have also applied my writing talents to events, report and website writing.
In between events and communications jobs I also led women’s circles and completed certificates in Holistic Counselling, Family Constellation, as well as a Diploma in Art Therapy.
Read my poetry or view photography portfolio to get a deeper glimpse into what inspires me.
