Paper artists

No matter what the future brings, natural tactile qualities will always hold our interest – just ask the artists who have made paper their business.

Celia Alison, 48, creator of Cecily
For someone who was an incessant doodler as a girl and who designed greeting cards to sell to fashionable Christchurch gift shops for pocket money, Celia Alison took her own sweet time to find her feet as a working artist.

Celia is well known in her native New Zealand as the creator of the much-loved cartoon character Cecily, who has been syndicated in newspapers and magazines, is the star of greeting cards, postcards, calendars and books and, more recently, has adorned everything from coffee cups to fridge magnets. But, despite her worldly-wise sense of humour and multiplying laughter lines, Cecily is only 10 years old. And her creator’s road to success was a long and winding one.

In the beginning
“My first career choice – medicine – was as far removed from art as possible,” Celia explains. She graduated with a degree in physiology, instead. “I didn’t know what to do with it – or myself – so in 1978 I set off to see the world, hopeful to find what my place in it was.”

Her travels took her to Europe, where she spent six months exploring castles, cathedrals and museums and soaking up many centuries of history and culture. “I was so inspired by the art of Europe,” she says. “The visual world opened up to me and I knew then I wanted to be part of it.”

She returned to New Zealand in 1980 impassioned but with a healthy dose of practicality. “I didn’t think there was money in fine arts, so I studied graphic design at Wellington Polytechnic.” Three years later, she left with a book illustrating job in her sights – and ended up designing pamphlets, in-house publications and even driver’s licence questionnaires.

“It couldn’t have been more prosaic work,” she laughs. “It probably didn’t develop or extend me, but it did provide a steady income and allow me to do freelance work for book publishers.”

Emboldened by these fledgling forays, Celia returned to London to look for similar work but found the standard of competition much higher than she’d anticipated. “I did a bit of magazine illustration and layout work, but the British designers were so sophisticated. It was really hard. I lost confidence in my art and taught science and maths to survive.”

Turning over a new leaf
In 1984, she flew home to New Zealand and based herself at her parents’ holiday house. “I needed time to be alone, to lick my wounds and restore myself spiritually. Slowly, I started to draw again.”

In fact, the London trip hadn’t been a complete disaster – far from it. Celia had recognised a number of commercially viable ideas she knew she could adapt for the New Zealand market. Pretty soon she was designing her own Moa Revival range of gift cards, wrapping paper and other stationery featuring classic Kiwiana icons, such as kiwis, sheep, paua shells and Buzzy Bee toys, as well as producing similar merchandise for clients. The business grew through word of mouth.

“The work I was doing was very commercial and very successful. I’ve always focused more on lifestyle than on money, so I employed a friend to oversee the business side. I made the most of the spare time that my relative prosperity allowed: during summer, I’d make a month-long sales trip around New Zealand, and in winter I’d go skiing.”

The fact her work was not restricted to an office meant she could take longer sabbaticals. One year she went to Ireland, then, in successive years, she visited Tuscany, Italy, where she attended a life-changing course in etching. “The guy who ran it was a teacher like no other. He really pushed me to the limits. He said, ‘The world is wide open with possibility. Choose a direction and go for it!’”

That direction turned out to be Cecily, but Celia says her creation was more a subconscious choice than a conscious one. Years earlier, a friend had suggested Celia draw a cartoon of a typical New Zealand woman, based on her own humorous experiences and those of her friends and family. Celia decided the time was right to make that idea a reality. “I thought, ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained’. My original idea was to do a book, but the publisher I approached wanted to see it syndicated first.”

Celia sent examples of her Cecily work to a women’s lifestyle magazine – and not only sold her cartoon but became the subject of a feature article herself. Cecily made her debut. An angular creation in black and white and wearing what were to become trademark thick-framed glasses and accompanied by a few pithy, well-chosen words, she struck a chord with contemporary women.

Cecily diets, skips gym glass, sometimes drinks too much and hates putting out the rubbish. She has bad hair days, sneaks overweight cabin baggage on planes and consults her horoscope every morning because, in spite of her higher education, her own bank account and endless upwardly mobile aspirations, she too must find out if today is the day she will meet Mr Right.

Cecily is now available in Australia and the UK and could be in Canada soon. “I love designing Cecily,” says Celia. “Designing cards sounds so genteel, but I’ve had to drag myself into the age of the internet. I’ve tried drawing on the computer, but I adore using paper too much to give that up. I enjoy working with thick, textured paper and building up rich tones with lots of sketchy, organic lines.”

Celia versus Cecily
Cecily is Celia’s alter ego: the lanky frame is shared, as are the dark bob and glasses. And, when Celia moved into one of Lyttelton’s ‘grand old ladies’, some 19th century architectural details crept into Cecily’s world. “She certainly started off based on me – and we have aged together,” Celia smiles. “I met my gorgeous man George at about the same time as Cecily’s love interest Gordon came on the scene. People thought that was hilarious, so we often get called Cecily and Gordon. But they didn’t work out and Cecily is still single, while I now have a partner and a readymade family of two kids!”

 

Where are they?
Enchanted Envelope can be found at www.enchantedenvelope.com.au.

 

Did you know?
Sending greeting cards is a tradition that dates back about 200 years. Mostly an indulgence of the elite and wealthy, and delivered by hand, the practice gained mass popularity with the introduction of the postage stamp in 1840. Today, seven billion cards are sent each year in the US alone.

Words: Kieren Charteris. Photography: Sam McAdam. Hair & make-up: Aimie Fiebig.