I don't know if anyone will ever read this, but… it's such an easy call.

The ATM Project has been one of the great highlights of my creative life. What a joy it's been to bring it into the world, to watch it grow, and to feel its impact on the thousands of people I've performed it for. I'm deeply grateful for the journey it's taken me on, and for the privilege of sharing it with so many. How lucky am I?

One of my favourite things is to talk about The ATM Project. I can talk about it for hours. I love how it's grown and changed as the world has grown and changed. I love how it captures a moment in time, of a country, and its people. How the prompts reflect sensibilities and culture. It's endlessly fascinating to me, and as the only one (who, as far as I know doing this), I get to sit in the front row and see the world with such a lens.

Which is why I wanted to reflect on this.

It started in 2019, when I was approached by The Affordable Art team in Melbourne to potentially conduct either a workshop or a drawing demonstration for the fair. Now, if you know me personally, you'll know this sounds like a nightmare. My hands shake as I draw, I get super self-conscious, and my drawing skills evaporate on the page. I remember in high school people sitting around watching me draw, and I felt super uncomfortable. I'm not made for that type of scrutiny.

However, I loved the idea of making art accessible, friendly, affordable and interactive. To live sketch someone's prompt and create an immediate and dynamic relationship between the artist and the Collector is so important to me. My next thought was, well, what if I drew this prompt, but hidden inside a box? And, it only makes logical sense to take it one step further and think, what sort of box could you insert a prompt into and receive a live sketch shortly afterwards? It sounds so obvious now, but of course, an ATM. An ATM where you write your prompt on a credit card, insert it into the box, and shortly afterwards, you will receive your original, gallery-represented, artist-drawn sketch. I am also very interested in the relationship between art and commerce, and felt it fitting to wrap this concept in this financial envelope.
This idea had been swirling around in my mind for many years beforehand. If this worked, the Affordable Art Fair would be the perfect place to try. Now, don't get me wrong. I literally had no idea if I could pull this off. I felt confident I could draw anything. It always astounds me when people ask. Can you draw a, I don't know, a … whatever? If you can draw one thing, I can't see why you can't draw another. But what I wasn't completely sure of was. How to make this work, logistically?
There have been multiple very steep learning curves with this project, and many things that needed to be considered. Like, how to make a credit card you can write on? What type of materials for the sketches? How many drawings can I do in a day? What will the ATM look like? What happens to the sketch once it's finished? What about the lighting inside the box? Argh! When I look back, I was fumbling around finding solutions, but with each hurdle, I just did my best and learnt how to improve it for next time.

The Affordable Art Fair Melbourne team asked me to put together a pitch, and I set out to fine-tune all the steps in the document. Maybe this was a little bit crazy, but they were super excited and definitely up for it. I think retrospectively, The Affordable Art Fair and I both hold similar values when it comes to art, or living artists. Art spans from one extreme to another, and there is space for everyone. I want to make work that is beautiful, yet accessible, with hidden extra layers, if you go looking for them, but eye-catching enough to garner your attention in the first place. It took me a long time to be able to comfortably lean into the whimsy of my work. I think people who have been through genuine trauma want to explore anything but visit those super dark places, and it's ok to make work designed to make you feel good. We have a space in the art world, too.
I then built my first little grey ATM from scratch. The exact size to fit in the back of my car. I'm not a carpenter, and it wasn't the greatest piece of craftsmanship, but it served its purpose and looked like how I imagined an '80s-styled clunky ATM (some people actually thought it was real and tried to insert their own cards inside!)
I've since updated to new, beautiful, professionally crafted ATM's, each one with its own flavour and style depending on the country, but I have this one as a portable version available if needed. And with my ATM built, I attended my first fair.

So, the part I love the most is the prompts people ask, and this is the part that fascinates me the most, as well as many others, and if I tell people about The ATM Project, they will inevitably ask about this, too. How long do they take? What was the hardest prompt? What is the craziest? Is there anything you refuse to draw? So many questions.
Occasionally, I used to share a prompt on Instagram, but I have decided not to do that anymore (unless I have very specific permission and I want to). I don't make records of the sketches. Who has the time? But I love how they simply go out into the world undocumented; old school. I see the performance as a small, genuine moment shared between the Collector and me. This is not about recording the art process but living it, with the finished sketch as the recording.
I decided that the sketches were not mine to share with the world anyway; they are not my prompts. I will, however, share the types of prompts and how they tell me a lot more about a person, maybe more than they ever intended. For, first of all, I want to make it clear. I genuinely cannot see who's writing the prompt, and they cannot see inside the ATM either. I treat each credit card like it was written by the most important person in the whole world (which they are!)

It could be Margot Robbie or the local security guard. I simply don't know. Sometimes people write who they are, so I do know, but I've missed these too, if they're scrolled up the side and not in the prompt area. It gets pretty hectic inside, and I don't have much time.
I'll put some people in groups to make it easier, as after doing so many sketches, I've seen some patterns, and I'll call this first group the ‘so you think you can draw anything' group. These people have a special place in my heart because they keep me on my toes, and I'm definitely up for the challenge. They tend to come out later in the evenings after a few drinks, and I suspect they are in friendship groups, as I tend to get a few cards each more outrageous than the next. However, I'm yet to receive a Simpson's ‘destiny'. Who knows, maybe one day.
These can be a lot of fun; however, I do suspect some may have a tinge of, I'll show her what a difficult prompt can be. For example, they might include ‘sound-scapes' or ‘Colonisation', things that are more abstract and not so easy to sketch into one obvious image in only a few minutes. Sometimes they are more like a concept so foreign that they are literally a mix of nonsensical sentences, and I have to try to make something cohesive. On one occasion, I found out from a staff member that the prompt was written by a teenage son who was at the fair under duress with his mother, so to appease him she got a sketch as she thought it might be fun, but I think he just wanted to write something so abstract and strange (with a hint of how to pick up girls in the mix) to annoy his mum. It definitely was memorable.
The reality is, the hardest prompts are just the ones I get when I'm tired. I studied a B. A degree in Graphic Design from RMIT, majoring in advertising. Part of my training was thinking up concepts for advertisements, and I think this serves me well at the fairs. A prompt is a prompt, and it can be as simple as a singular image (once I was asked to draw a carton of milk). However, I do like to change up the scale of an item or add a whimsical twist to it. Collectors get what they ask for, but not how they expected it to be. Maybe that is why the performance is so popular. I think the record is one Collector returning seven times in a day.
The next group are the artists, who tend to enjoy the gentle reminders of their struggles. How do I know they are artists? They like to share that they are, too, which is lovely to know, and I feel a kinship with them. I had one artist ask for what I assume was a sketch of their own work. Which, as I couldn't ask, is only what I thought. They were obscure enough, and there was something about the way they wrote their name that made me think this was true. Some of the artists need a pep talk in the prompts, or some encouragement, but it's the ones who really appreciate the quality of the sketch that I really hold close. It's funny, but I think I'm kind of like a singer/songwriter; the singing is the idea, but the way I sketch is the song, and it makes me so happy to hear they like the way I draw. That part is all me, on the fly, scribbling my heart out, hoping that the linework and the shading tell their story and are beautifully executed. I hope no AI will ever replace the way a human hand makes marks across a piece of paper. So delicate, so captivating, and so immediate. Just like having majored in advertising, the years of drawing on paper, a skill I find fewer and fewer people possess, are another factor in the performance. There are no second chances or control Z. It's drawn once, and each sketch is completely original to the singular person's prompt. Sure, I've made mistakes and use an eraser, but I'd like to think this only adds to the texture of the sketch and my own failings as a human trying their best.
The next group likes to use the ATM as a photobooth. They want a reminder of the day, ‘three ladies having fun at the art fair' kind of vibe. These are so sweet, yet inevitably, they must fight over who gets the sketch, so two more ‘same but different' prompts arrive soon after. As I said, I don't know for sure, but that is what I see written on the credit cards.
Others want me to draw a memory of a fantastic holiday, or a first date (in a hammock) or a proposal on the beach. These are a little tricky because I don't know what anyone looks like. In Singapore, I got a lot of tigers, and roosters and rabbits and more.... To me, it seemed like very strange animal combinations. It was only after the first day, and I thought about it, that I realised these must have been family zodiac signs. I will say the Singaporeans really liked to get their money's worth. Either lots of super large families or multigenerational prompts, but a lot of fun trying to make a zoo of unrelated animals look cohesive in a sketch.

The next group are the kids. Once again, I'm not sure, so I'm only going by the writing style (and once I thought it was a child's writing, but when I asked the staff, it was actually an old man. Oops. Never assume anything!) But these prompts are magical. Some kids have wonderful imaginations, like a ‘baked bean dog', but many want things like mermaids, ballerina pandas, or anything Minecraft. These can be some of the most complicated sketches, dinosaurs playing soccer whilst riding in a rocket, or tea parties with multiple guests. So much to pack into a sketch within a couple of minutes.
The other thing I love about the kids' sketches is that this is possibly their first interaction with an artist, perhaps their first original artwork or commission. Parents seem to encourage anything, as they are happy to get their child involved. I hope that some will grow up to love and cherish art and see the art world as non-pretentious but welcoming and not daunting.
The next group I'll put together are the ‘gifts' and the ‘pets', and I simply do that because I think some get a drawing of a pet, to give as a gift to a friend or family member, or for themselves. I don't know for sure, so it's another guess. I will say, what's interesting is how you will get a particularly popular breed at each fair; French bulldogs one year, another might be labradoodles, or British short-haired blues (for cats). As a dog owner myself, it's super important to get the breed looking right, and I have to make the call if they want a simple sketch of the dog or something more whimsical. Pets, to me, are like family, so I tend to treat them as such. It's the dynamic prompts like ‘two dogs playing' that are perhaps more challenging, as I have to ask, playing what? One prompt answered this for me, though, ‘UNO', of course! Ha! So much fun. Also, because I have a limited colour palette with only blacks to greys, with a splash of red, making sure the pets' coats are close to the right shade is challenging, but you'd be surprised how much colour, or how your brain fills in the colours for you. As I said, I like the challenge.
The last group are the ones who really took me by surprise, and they seem to be becoming more and more frequent. I definitely didn't see any prompts like this before COVID. I don't know if this is what I should call them, but perhaps the ‘broken-hearted' works best. I found that there are a lot of silently suffering people in the world, and I think of them often after the performance. Prompts include family trauma, loneliness, grief, and sadness. It wasn't my intention, but The ATM Project has become a vessel to share such intimate feelings in a safe space with no judgment. Maybe it's easier to share something like this with a stranger you cannot, see?
When a prompt like that comes through, I have asked myself whether to draw what they ask for or something more uplifting. Afterwards, I asked myself whether I drew the right thing or just made things worse. I'm not a trained therapist, and it weighs heavily. I think about Edvard Munch's The Scream. He painted how, I'm sure, all of us have felt at one point or another. There is a comfort in that image, as it makes me feel less alone in those moments. I have taken this approach too, drawing what the prompt asks for (which are never graphic or threatening, but more like a painful longing). I do this because I don't want to tell people how to feel, but I want them to know that I listened to their prompt and that they were heard. That, I truly believe, is the most important thing. I'll sometimes comment on the credit card (which gets returned to the Collector anyway), asking if they are OK, but part of the performance is knowing they were understood.

I've had a few prompts asking me to draw Fen, my protagonist from my children's book, because they know a child who needs a little courage right then. I'm guessing the child could be going through a divorce, or maybe they are sick. I don't know, but maybe these prompts, though easy to sketch, are the most difficult to draw.
Obviously, not all the prompts fit neatly into these categories, but it's a start. As I said, I could discuss this for hours. What I'm most surprised by is how the ATM turned into something I could never have imagined. When first approached, I never dreamed I would visit other countries like England, Hong Kong or Singapore or travel across Australia from Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne performing. I have seen some beautiful, kind and tender prompts. Once, a kindergarten group delivered their own drawing to me, which was so cute and wonderful. Some are funny (stories of family misadventures involving eating too many bowls of rice) or historical (Noonday gun in Hong Kong), or surreal (dream interpretations) and yes, I once drew Justin Bieber.

It gets super hectic in the ATM, and inevitably, we have to ‘temporarily' close down while I catch up (just like a real ATM). I will admit, it's so much fun. I don't listen to music, but the gentle hum of the fair muffled from inside the four walls. I lock in, I'm so focused, I think I forget to breathe (I have a fan to keep the air fresh) and snacks if I have time and lots to drink. My ATMs are bigger now, and I can stand up and stretch. One question I also get asked is. What if someone does the same thing? And I have one response – good luck! So many things have changed since the first show to streamline what we do today. I've made some mistakes, but I smoothed out the process, and I know what I am capable of having complete control.

I also feel like I'm so lucky to have this little window into people, and I thought a lot about what I share about The ATM Project. I don't need to advertise as the fairs sell as many as I am capable of doing, and we always have to turn people away. I did get one suggestion, and I really like this idea. Maybe once I retire, I'll put a call out to everyone who ever bought a sketch, and we can collate them into a book… a fitting end to complete The ATM Project, and a wonderful record of everyone who supported it.