As we peer into Manteau Noir in Daylesford, a bunny dressed in shreds stares back at us, puzzling our imagination, the sculpture looks as though it has been dug-up from a grave. It’s gothic, mysterious and beautiful.

“Hip Hip Decay!” is the anthem of Ballarat artist Suzanne McRae, whose doll-like sculptures discover beauty in the grotesque collage of animals, Victorian fashion and fairy tales.

“We lived in Invermay, before it was fancy. Dad built an A-frame house. And so we had five acres of bush and paddocks and I would just go off by myself and play in the bush,” says Suzanne. “It was a great time.”

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“You've got a song you're singing from your gut, you want that audience to feel it in their gut,” writes Johnny Cash. “And you've got to make them think that you're one of them sitting out there with them too.”

As singer-songwriter Sean Dixon strums his guitar, his voice welcomes you into his past. On live stream videos he posts online, Sean stands barefoot with shaggy hair that sways as he wrestles with his guitar and cries out a poetic lament. “I can only do the best that I can,” sings Sean, “I find it hard to know what it is to be a man.”

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A warming sense of pride graces the face of Kelly Anne, Founder of Ballarat’s Greening Spaces. Inside her green haven, you’ll find trends reflecting the flair of the 1970’s, a resurgence of the indoor plant and the beginnings of a humble story. “I would love to get my business out of my home and into its own brick and mortar space to showcase our work”

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Fashion designer Tiffany Treloar stops on a lonely road near Glenlyon. She takes out her camera. She lines up the lens on an old gum tree, tortured by the prevailing wind. “It is so beautiful around here,” says Tiffany. Around the corner, she stops by an old barn with a ramshackle windmill. “This is just brilliant!” she says. The Melbourne based designer uses photographic images of rural scenes, night skies, industrial landscapes and beautiful found objects to make designs. She manipulates the images on her computer and the designs are then printed on fabric and then hand made into women’s clothing. “I design here in Australia and I make the clothes right here in Australia,” says the vivacious designer. Last month she opened a shop in Vincent Street, Daylesford and is working on a range of locally inspired prints for summer in her St Kilda design studio. She has two other stores, one in Flinders Lane, Melbourne and another in Gertrude Street, Fitzroy. 

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