MEMORY COLLECTING WITH MARTINA CALVI
The crafting cool girl and junk journal queen on her varied creative approach ☁️
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Martina Calvi is a Sydney-based content creator and crafting cool girl. She’s the author of the new book, “The Art of Memory Collecting.”
MARTINA’S DIVERGENT CREATIVE STRATEGIES: ACTION/INACTION
Quality consumption fuels creativity. As Martina says, Pinterest and Substack are nutritious meals. Instagram and Tiktok are junk food.
Don’t worry about sticking to one medium or niche. Let your creativity expand beyond how you think you’re “supposed” to execute on it. If you’re usually a crocheter, but wake up inspired to paint the sunrise — even if you’ve never put brush to canvas before — just try it! You never know what changing up your mediums will bring you in terms of ideas.
Anything is worth making art about. Martina fills her “junk journals” with wrappers, receipts, and ephemera that would usually end up in the trash from her travels. The work you make doesn’t have to be existential or seeped in secret meaning. It can simply be an expression of what you’re thinking about or feeling in the moment its created.
What’s your metaphorical Adderall — something that slingshots you into an inspired creative tornado of action?
Pinterest and travel.
What idea or concept are you chewing on? Has it shown up in your work yet?
Inspiring creativity for creativity's sake — it's something that has always been an undercurrent to what I share online, but now it's what drives the products I design for Martina's Tiny Store as well, which has been really fulfilling.
How particular are you about your notebooks? Pens? What do you write in and with?
Super particular to the point where I've ended up designing and producing my own! A5, fabric bound, with a back pocket for storing ephemera and with a long silky ribbon to secure it all in a pretty bow no matter how chunky it gets with the things I paste in it. Before that I was using Leucchturm & Moleskine blank journals, which are pretty close to perfect.
What was going through your mind when you first decided to share your work?
I've been sharing my creations on the internet since I was 17 or 18 so it was probably something like — “I hope people like this.” Now it's more “I hope this reaches people like me.”
What’s your media diet, at present?
Pinterest and Substack are nutritious meals. Instagram and Tiktok are junk food. Does that make sense?
To be creative and to make things in 2024 is objectively difficult. You have to square off with distractions, global anarchy, and perpetual haunting of the existential question: “why bother?” What keeps you coming back to the ring?
Lately, I've been in a good flow. Some years it's difficult, some years it's not. Two years ago I barely posted at all, I was totally out of touch with my creative side. Then I went on holiday to Italy and was surrounded by all this beauty and inspiration and I found that urge to create again. I created a little photo zine of film photographs I took while I was there. Sometimes it's as simple as that.
Whenever I get into a rut I try to just step back, stop overthinking it, create what I feel like in the moment. A holiday to Italy always helps — but creativity is just meant to be fun.
Pinterest and Substack are nutritious meals. Instagram and Tiktok are junk food.
John Cage was inspired to develop his practice of composing via random chance and chaos after reading a book about the Chinese divining practice, The I-Ching. What influences or inspiration from outside of your field or profession have made the biggest impact on your work or process?
Falling in love has made the biggest impact on my work and process. I feel safe and happy and it turns out my creativity thrives in that state.
What do you do “wrong” that makes your work successful?
I don't stick to my niche. I was an illustrator, music photographer, designer, etc etc. Now I'm an internationally published author? It really doesn't matter at the end of the day! People remember you and your approach over anything.
People remember you and your approach over anything.
You’ve been working on something and it just isn’t coming through the way you’d like — do you kill your darlings and scrap the whole thing? Do you compost the idea? Do you file it away in your cabinet of misfit concepts to review later?
I look at it with fresh eyes in the morning. If it still sucks, I will look at it a week later. If it still sucks, it doesn't matter!
What’s a weird superstition you subscribe to?
Not weird, but I believe everything happens for a reason!
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Ooh what a thrill to see this in my inbox - love Martina's work!