For the past few years, local man Ross Fairley, has been creating scrap metal artworks, putting together metal replicas of animals and various plants.
Ross has been entering scrap metal art in the annual Spirit of the Land festival in Lockhart, competing against professional artists who, unlike Ross, are able to dedicate all of their time to their art.
The Spirit of the Land festival is the closest festival that, primarily, displays a wide variety of scrap metal artworks, with the amount of entries growing every year. Having collected numerous third place prizes in various small arts categories, Ross is determined to find time in his busy farming life to create unique masterpieces solely for the Lockhart festival.
“The Spirit of the Land festival is a challenge because it’s mainly scrap art. They have some really good stuff there,” he said, “and it’s getting better too!”
“My Aunty just said “Can you make me something to liven the room up?”” said Ross, on how his passion for scrap metal art came about.
As a farmer by day, creating scrap metal art is just a hobby for him. Creating one piece of art can take up to ten to twelve hours, finding whatever spare time he can to make his art. “I’ll come home from work and maybe I’ll do two hours in the afternoon, a morning on a Saturday or a full day on Sunday,” he said, “It’s just a hobby, a part time thing”.
Having to juggle working on the farm and creating art, Ross was unable to find spare time to create anything to enter in the Spirit of the Land festival this year. As a result of that, he decided to take his scrap metal art to a festival in Yass. Unlike the Spirit of the Land festival, the Yass festival was for all types of art – with very few scrap metal artists entering their creations.
He knew that this festival would be tough to take a prize home from due to the vast variety of art. However, the people spoke after Ross missed out on any prizes from the judges, picking up the People’s Choice Award for his Tasmanian Tigers creation.
When asked where the inspiration for the Tasmanian Tigers came from he said, “I was sitting down having a Cascade beer,” referring to the Tasmanian Tiger on their logo.
Ross has had many triumphs with his art over the years, with the most notable being the sale of his art to Gai Waterhouse. He put together a dragonfly for a P&C fundraiser for the school in Jugiong, which was displayed at a silent auction at the Long Track Pantry. The auction lasted around two months, with Gai coming to the Long Track the day after the auction ended.
After seeing his art on display in the Long Track, Gai fell in love with his unusual style of art. Unable to purchase the piece in the Long Track, Gai immediately called Ross and asked for him to create her a few unique pieces, an offer he could not turn down. Loving his work, Gai could not resist also buying some of his well known Kookaburra creations.
After dedicating numerous hours to creating these pieces, and personally delivering them to Gai’s house, Ross didn’t even get the chance to meet Gai, as she was out and about that day. “I’ll meet her one day,” he said. Having spoken to Gai on the phone, she was very impressed with Ross’s talents and the quality of the creations she is now a proud owner of.
Ross said that he will continue creating the scrap metal art he enjoys as long as people keep supporting him by buying and enjoying his artworks. His artworks are on sale at the Long Track Pantry, Jugiong.
Ross is pictured with his ‘goannas’.
