The house of imagination

It doesn’t take long to realise that Jo Eastaff delights in finding beauty and utility in the old and the discarded. As an artist, school teacher and curio-collector, her particular brand of optimism infuses all aspects of her life. And nowhere is this more abundantly apparent than in her Middleton home.

Jo spends hours in her studio: drawing, painting, making jewelry or holding informal classes with friends.

Originally bought as a weekender in 1997, the house was then just a tiny pink-asbestos shack, half-clad in timber. Tucked away in the older part of Middleton just west of the Point, it was exactly what Jo was looking for: full of character but ripe for extension. In the years since, Jo has slowly made good on her vision and the shack has gently grown, and at the same time transformed from a weekender to a permanent home. The little shack is no longer recognisable but you can sense its character has evolved rather than been extinguished.

I visit Jo a couple of days before she leaves for a two-week holiday in Fiji. She’s just finished another term teaching art at Encounter Lutheran College and is in mid-preparation for an exhibition of her prints, paintings, drawings and jewellery, which will see her home morph into a gallery for the duration of the South Australian Living Artists Festival shortly after her return. The exhibition, titled Flotsam and Jetsam, is inspired by Jo’s coastal life and affinity for the ocean. It’s fitting then, that her works are displayed in her living room, which itself showcases exquisite sea views via large windows that draw the eye up and out towards the horizon. The living room was an early addition to the original structure, followed by a lighter, brighter bedroom, workroom and expanded bathroom.

But first came the pantry. Usually the most utilitarian of rooms, pantries are hardly the stuff of lifestyle magazines. But this pantry – and particularly the floor mosaic of repurposed parquetry, leftover tiles and stones collected from the beach – is emblematic of Jo’s approach to renovation, in which found and rescued materials far outnumber the new. ‘These things seem to have a character of their own because they’ve had a life with other people,’ Jo tells me. She points to a white cupboard in the living area, ‘I taught at St Peter’s Girls’ for 18 years – that was the old science cupboard.’ On one of the shelves, a faded label still reads ‘magnesium’. ‘That’s just so precious,’ she says.

The home and studio are full of collections, curios and supplies all there ready to inspire the prolific Jo.

Jo’s deck becomes an extension of her living room in the summer. With glorious views of Middleton Beach – it is a gorgeous spot to while away a morning, afternoon or evening.

The cupboard itself houses one of Jo’s many collections of shells, crockery and all manner of other trinkets she has amassed during her travels abroad – and to the local op-shop. On another wall there’s a display of paintings of the local area while an old pair of wooden oars rescued from hard rubbish hang nearby. The mix is incredibly eclectic, which is just the way Jo likes it. She finds joy in coming across things that make her heart sing and gathering them around her. ‘And as you can see,’ she laughs, ‘a lot makes my heart sing!’

For Jo, these collections aren’t merely decorative, they’re inspiring; they represent connection to the wider world, not just because they might come from one of her repeat trips to Sri Lanka or Fiji, but because they’re reminders of the people Jo’s met along the way.

‘I feel I’m a better person for having met all these extraordinary people,’ she says. ‘You tend to be increasingly less insular and realise what’s actually going on in the world.’ This desire for ongoing connection with the outside world is evident in the thoughtful renovations that have slowly transformed the shack into a truly bespoke indoor-outdoor home; the windows in the living area don’t simply frame the view but invite the outside in (‘you never get cabin fever in there, never’) and the adjacent wall opens up onto a sheltered deck (‘I live out there in summer’.)

Same goes for the bathroom, where bi-fold doors open to reveal an outdoor shower. ‘I shower out there every morning, rain, hail or shine,’ Jo tells me. ‘There’s something about standing out in the cold air under hot water. It’s just fabulous.’ In contrast to the busy interior, the exterior of the home is quiet and unassuming but it too has a story. Jo continued the original timber cladding, managing to get her hands on cypress boards milled from local trees. The living room extension is clad in cypress from trees felled in Victor Harbor, while the timber for the detached art studio (added in 2011) came from a tree that once towered over Strangways Terrace in Port Elliot.

The daybed was made by Jo from repurposed timber. Styled by Little Road Home.

The cat, Trevor, sees us off.

Jo’s studio is full of colourful supplies.

Moving through the studio, I feel a little like I’m stepping directly into Jo’s artistic imagination. There are shelves stacked with every colour and shape of bead for jewellery making, spools of thread in every colour of the rainbow, small palettes of water colour paints next to a stack of prints she intends to turn into greeting cards and perhaps most bewilderingly, a bird’s wing hanging from the ceiling – turns out it used to belong to a young albatross Jo found washed up on Bashams Beach after a storm. ‘I thought it would come in handy as I was drawing birds at the time,’ she explains. ‘Photographs don’t really show the details of a wing, so having the opportunity to have the real deal for reference was too good to pass up.’

While idiosyncratically Jo’s own space, the studio is also a place of community. The project was only half-finished when difficult personal circumstances brought building to a standstill. ‘One day my neighbour came over and said ‘You need to paint, you need your studio – this is from all your friends to finish it’ and she gave me an envelope of money,’ Jo recalls. ‘The coast built this studio. Isn’t that amazing?’

I notice an old CD with an etching on the underside. A remnant of a school art class, ‘it’s about looking for beauty in the things other people have discarded,’ she tells me. ‘But also, I try and encourage the kids to take it one step forward and look at the people society has discarded … you’re going to come across people your whole life who just seem to have fallen out of the community. Don’t let them be discarded, they’ve got beauty too, you just need that bit of love and care to bring them back.’ Words to live – and build – by.

Story by Kate Le Gallez.

Photography by Heidi Lewis.