The Arts Muster weekend of wonderful workshops in Huskisson takes place in August each year. The program offers a diverse range of arts and crafts workshops guided by experienced artists and makers. Hand in hand with the workshop program there is the added excitement of the Artisans Market that happens on the Arts Muster weekend in August and as a stand alone event in April and November. Marvellous stuff … but who, and what, does it take to make events such as these happen? And keep them going.
Artists Are Doin’ It For Themselves
If you are of a certain age and were a fan of Annie Lennox and The Eurythmics in the mid 1980s, you may recognise the title of this article makes a nod to the hit, ‘Sisters are doin’ it for themselves’. [If you fancy an uplifting, life-affirming interlude, check out the YouTube video of Annie Lennox and the great Aretha Franklin performing it.]
The chorus of the song goes: Sisters are doin’ it for themselves / Standin’ on their own two feet / And ringin’ on their own bells / Said, sisters are doin’ it for themselves.
Swop ‘sisters’ for ‘artists’ and you get the theme of this article—although, in the case of Samantha Tannous, my subject here, both sister and artist apply.
Samantha Tannous, as well as being the founder, publisher, chief writer and editor of this fine digital publication—Jervis Bay Weekend magazine—is the founder, funder, and organiser of the annual Arts Muster weekend in Huskisson, now in its third year, and its highly successful spin-off, the Artisans Markets, taking place 3 times a year. Sam is also a highly accomplished practising visual artist and musician.
Of the various bees in my bonnet, one of the most active—despite being decades old—is the woeful lack of opportunities for all ilks of artists / makers / performers to present their work and generate some income. When I first meet Sam nearly a decade ago, I instantly recognised this particular bee of mine has a feisty twin in Sam’s fine bonnet. Our bees bonded. In my recent interview with her for this article, Sam’s passion and determination are still resolute and crystal clear:
“Something I’m very passionate about is how to empower artists to earn money. There are a lot of impediments to artists earning money and there are not a lot of people creating opportunities for artists to earn money. And even when artists do earn money, with things like an exhibition, they have to pay up front and then pay an enormous amount of commission. So that’s not actually giving artists an opportunity to earn money. That’s an artist taking a risk and spending money they don’t have to maybe make some money.”
Some bell ringing
Sam is not an artist/sister given to ‘ringin’ on their own bells’, so I am doing it for her. There are many and diverse bells to be ringing here but the ones I want to ring are about her unstinting, sustained efforts, year in, year out, to create opportunities with a dual purpose: 1. for artists to earn money; 2. offer the community arts experiences that enrich our cultural life and wellbeing.
Samantha Tannous is playing a truly pivotal role in leading-organising-funding-staging-promoting-sponsoring-supporting a swathe of arts initiatives in Jervis Bay. As someone deeply community-minded, Sam will be the first to modestly share credit and say it’s a collective effort, which it is, to a point. But it takes an artist with particular vision, aptitude, determination, persistence, resourcefulness and specific skills to first initiate, then be able to sustain and grow, an enterprise such as Arts Muster: the annual weekend of arts and crafts workshops; the Artisans Market and other associated Arts Muster events throughout the year; scholarships for high school students; artist residencies; mentoring; fund raising initiatives such as the Mini Book Art Competition (open for entries until 15 November 2025). Arts Muster is a truly multi-faceted entity, kept alive, buoyant and thriving by Sam as its beating heart.
Origins
Twenty years ago Sam was living and working in Sydney, in a demanding corporate job in public relations and communications. She actively sought out art workshops as a way of doing something with her hands, to spend time focusing on something material and tactile without work-driven pressure.
As a child and teenager Sam loved textiles. She loved the dressmaking and embroidery classes that she and her sister did with a friend of her parents on the weekends. As an adult in a very high-pressure job, Sam looked to those beautiful, slow-making techniques as something she could take up again for her own personal wellbeing.
“I made something. There was something tangible, material and tactile I took home with me—a piece of cloth or a piece of dyed silk or something. I started to pursue different techniques until I found felt. Then I just absolutely fell in love with felt and so I did every felt class I could find in Australia.”
Sam travelled to Western Australia or Victoria or wherever she could find felt-making classes. Immersion in events that offered a program of workshops, each teaching a different technique, was an inspirational experience. Sam revelled in this environment where a whole bunch of people gathered together for a number of days to learn and make, and have the opportunity to share their work with appreciative others. The generosity of the artists and makers tutoring the classes—sharing their techniques, ideas and skills with people—made a lasting impression.
When Sam had the opportunity to create such an event in Jervis Bay in 2023, she thought: “Yes, I have the skills to organise an event like this that makes a valuable contribution to both the financial wellbeing of artists—being paid to tutor—and to the cultural life of our community. So why not?”
By this point, Sam had gained valuable experience in teaching workshops in different fibre art techniques, which she absolutely loves. She derives huge satisfaction from being a tutor, sharing the knowledge she has spent 15 years building up, and seeing that ignite a creative spark in others. Doing a workshop with Sam—her enthusiasm, passion and knowledge—make for an unforgettable experience:
“I’m really excited to present the program of Arts Muster classes. It makes me so happy to promote it and to share with anybody who wants to come. The classes are for all levels of ability and experience. I am very clear about that: this is a very accessible and inclusive opportunity. You do not have to be able to sew or paint or draw or stitch or whatever. You don’t have to have any skills at all, just your own self.”
Necessity is the mother of invention
Sam is an exceptional artist and arts leader in our region, but artists doing it for themselves is no exception. It is the norm. Not exclusively out of love and altruism but pure, unrelenting necessity.
The history of artist-led-funded-organised initiatives in the Shoalhaven goes back decades. I could write another (very long) article about the myriad arts groups, associations, events, prizes, festivals that have been brought into being by the will and voluntary effort of artists, sustained for as long as humanly possible, and then faded or folded or been forced to close. Then, artists regroup, perhaps welcome newcomers with fresh energy and enthusiasm, and the cycle starts once again.
The absence of consistent, sustained, systemic support for creative arts practitioners is a deeply engrained reality, particularly in regional areas.
An article by Kelly Burke, ‘Shock to creative ecology’: NSW regional art galleries face funding crisis after state pulls financial support’ appeared in The Guardian on 2 July. The gist being:
Three out of four regional public art galleries in New South Wales are facing a funding crisis after the state government pulled its financial support as a result of a massive restructure of its cultural funding arm, Create NSW.
Even as I am writing this, I receive an email (29 July) from South Coast Arts—the Regional Arts Development Organisation representing Shoalhaven, Kiama and Shellharbour local government areas—spruiking the benefits of the arts to regional communities at the same time it is advising us of a substantial loss of its state government funding (via Create NSW).
All this makes the stupendous efforts of artists doing it for themselves even more remarkable.
Share the love. Show your support.
Back to Sam, Arts Muster and the Artisans Market. There are any number of ways you can help, and benefit yourself:
- Book into one of the workshops during the annual Arts Muster—nurture your creativity and wellbeing
- Consider sponsoring a scholarship for a Vincentia High School student—you donate the cost of a workshop ticket for a student to attend
- Enter the Mini Book Art Competition (entries close 15 November). Invite others to enter.
- Consider doing your gift shopping at the three Artisans Markets each year. The next market is the pre-Christmas event on Sunday 30 November 2025.
- Volunteer to help, especially on market days, with tasks such as putting up banners, flags, signs; being an extra pair of hands for bump-in and bump-out and a myriad other things. Email Sam on hello@artsmuster.com.au
- Encourage artisans / makers you know to apply for a stall
Samantha The Artist
Let me ring one more particular bell to close. In between doing so much for other artists and the broader community, Sam somehow miraculously manages to maintain her practice as an artist (as well as a musician).
On the website of the Jervis Bay Arts Trail—another artist-initiated-led-organised-funded enterprise, and one that Samantha sponsors and supports with her marketing and media skills—you’ll find Sam listed as a participating artist.
Samantha is a fibre and textile artist who works primarily in felt. She is interested in the connections between the physical landscape and the inner self, the dreamscape, imagination, memories, and particularly in the liminal space between wakefulness and sleep. She is fascinated by the hypnagogic state, where the rational self dissolves and the transitioning mind conjures sounds, light and visions that arise from the subconscious self.
Sam has held two solo exhibitions, most recently “Self-covered Buttons” in October/November 2024 at Gallery76 in Concord West – part of the NSW Embroiderers Guild. The show was a whimsical and light-hearted tribute to the haberdashery shops that used to be a part of the retail landscape. Sam was a recipient of a grant from the Joyce Spencer Textile Fellowship for this show.
Her first solo exhibition, also at Gallery76 was “Under Cover”, in May 2022. Bright, textural works layered colourful metaphors of conspicuous camouflage from the animal and insect worlds onto the complex female psyche.
Prior to that, Sam jointly exhibited with pop-artist Jamie Cole in Kiama, in a show titled “Dreamscapes” at ArtBar Kiama, and with artist and paper-maker Heather Matthew, in a show titled “Occupy” at Northern Rivers Regional Gallery in Ballina.
Sam exhibited with the group untethered fibre artists inc. from 2015-2023. The group staged an annual exhibition of diverse fibre artworks in galleries including Lane Cove Regional Gallery, Manning Regional Gallery, Gallery M Adelaide, Timeless Textiles Newcastle, North Sydney Coal Loader and Wallarobba in Hornsby.
She teaches workshops in a variety of fibre and textile techniques, including feltmaking, natural dyes and botanical printing, shibori and fabric manipulation. Until recently, Sam was also the editor of FELT Magazine Australia.
Go, Sam!
And, thank you.
