“I’ve had a colourful life to say the least.”
Early Life
Born in a small, Western Australian wheatbelt town, Melanie spent her childhood in country towns, catching tadpoles and playing hide and seek in the bush-lands around her home. She grew up in a happy, financial family, attending private school and achieving straight A’s throughout her education. Melanie was Champion Girl, and she played national basketball in between professional modelling – it seemed the path of success was set out in front of her, all before she had even finished high school.
Challenges, Turning Points & Lessons
Yet a lack of fulfilment and curiosity prompted her to make some questionable decisions, resulting in an array of challenging - and, at times, unthinkable - hardships. After years of experiencing great loss, potential bankruptcy, drug abuse, coercive control, domestic violence, and single parenthood, enough was finally enough. At Melanie’s lowest point, she chose to take responsibility for her life, looking deep inside and making the choices necessary to create a life that she loved and felt in control of. The lessons learnt were powerful, and included embracing failings and mistakes as gifts to grow, learning that we arrive here with the gift of life regardless of circumstance, and understanding that we must choose our responses carefully and take full responsibility for our choices in order to change our circumstances.
Finding Purpose in Art
Melanie has folded origami cranes for most of her life, always finding comfort in the structure, beauty, and meditative practice. When forced to start her life over, she returned to this practice and soon found herself creating massive paper installations. The positive feedback and acclaim revealed the potential for a new career path, leading her to create 22folds, an ecommerce business offering products created from origami cranes. Designed to empower, acknowledge, and ignite something within others, these pieces act as daily reminders to strive for a life of purpose and joy. In recent times, Melanie has continued to evolve her work through Unfolded Origami cranes, reflecting her belief that there is beauty in both the planning and the journey.
Sharing Her Story
Melanie has been involved in many art installation projects throughout Australia, creating public art pieces in conjunction with charities such as Miracle Babies and Layne Beachley’s AIM for the Stars foundation. Each installation was created to shine a light on the important work of these organisations, raise money and awareness, and impact change. After achieving this, Melanie felt a higher calling to share her story from the stage with a broader audience so that others, too, could come to live the life that they dream of.