The person doing it

I’m Jen. Australian, Nottingham local, and it is just me.

No team, no franchise, no van with a slogan on it. I grew up in Australia and I chose to live here, in The Park, which is the whole point — I’m not passing through. I just say “rubbish bin” a bit oddly.

Growing up out there changes what you think counts as far away. From Australia, Asia isn’t exotic, it’s the neighbours — I spent time in Japan on exchange as a child. That’s why cherry blossom and cranes keep turning up in the painting, and why I find the phrase “the Far East” quietly funny.

Then seven years as a flight attendant, back when long-haul still meant linen and proper glassware. That is where I learned what good service actually is: noticing the thing before anyone has to ask for it.

Then twenty-one years making. I married Matt, an Australian too, and we raised two children first — Ash and Flynn, both grown now — and alongside them painting and photography, and furniture nobody else wanted brought back to something you would want in your hall. I paint on skateboard decks, mostly: graffiti and street art habits I never grew out of.

All of it taught me the same lesson twice — that having beautiful things close to you makes you happy, and that most of what people throw away never needed to go.

Matt does the website, the spreadsheets and anything with a cable attached — and there are a lot of cables, because his relationship with them is what the family politely calls pathological. Every one of them is tidy and labelled. I have stopped asking why.

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