Why "Artist At Large"?

I’m a traveller, born and bred. My whole life, I’ve never lived anywhere longer than three years. My pink satin-covered baby book that my mother still has, somewhere, details the several thousands of miles I’d traveled before my first birthday, crossing the Atlantic a couple of times. By the age of six months, I’d been aboard these vehicles: car, bus, train, plane, ocean liner, and submarine. I’d guess the last would be a show-and-tell by my proud Navy dad, home at port.

Growing up, I attended four elementary schools in Nova Scotia, two public-school equivalents in England, and high school in Quebec. This produced huge omissions in my education. I have little knowledge of Ancient History, for example. Every school I went to had either covered that the year before I got there, or would be going onto it in the next grade, by which time I’d moved again. On the other hand, I studied the Industrial revolution, the Tudor period, and early Nova Scotian history in microscopic detail.

Let’s not even talk about math, shall we?

My mother has been married three times, and my father is on his fourth (and presumeably last) wife. This gives me a somewhat jaundiced view of the concept of permanent relationships, though I try to get past that.

I love to travel. Whenever I have anything like extra money, I don’t buy furniture or clothes- I buy plane tickets. Two years ago I wised up and got on a frequent flier plan- I’m now less than a thousand points away from a free flight anywhere in North America.

Longtime friends learn to either write my current whereabouts in pencil, or set aside a whole page in their address books for me. The line "permanent address" on some government forms makes me laugh.

So when a friend with a printing house offered me a run of 500 of very own business card, I didn’t bother submitting an address or phone number. It had simply my name and degree (the only time I’ve ever used it), and the title "Artist At Large". What a pretty card it was- black serif lettering on a deep cream laid stock, with a Victorian-style curly border in a happy turquoise green. I’d write whatever address or number applicable on the back.

That card saw me through maybe a dozen moves in as many years.

So, why "Artist at Large" online?

Well, there's a few reasons. It is, as Viv so elegantly put it, a gift to my older self. I look back through old journals and reading the words brings back whole days in perfect detail. This will be like that, only more so.

Keeping an active journal is a way to keep my writing muscles from getting flabby. I've got this whole leftbrain/ right brain dichotomy going on; journals end up being drawn in, sketchbooks are filled with words. This can be both- soon as I get a scanner, that is.

It's also a way to keep in touch with friends and family everywhere. I've got no blood relatives for 1000 miles in any direction, and friends from travels and moves all over Christendom.

Cameron Perry is my nom-de-net, in a True Lies kind of scenario.

Cameron really is one of my birth names, though not the one I'm commonly known by.

Perry is a matriarchal family name. There's a tiny graveyard overlooking a lake in Nova Scotia, where almost all my mother's people are buried. One of my favourite tombstones is a round slab of black granite, with the name PERRY carved bold under an etched portrait of my great-uncle's Cape islander fishing boat.

If you know me in real life, or think you do- welcome. I'd appreciate an email to let me know you're reading. But I've always thought it both churlish and futile to post a big if you know me GO AWAY in an online journal-

I mean, it's more of a c'mon in but don't tell me you're here, isn't it?

There's a big difference in what one writes in a private paper journal, and what one posts on the Web for anybody in the world with a modem to take a gander at.

Having said that, I don't want a casual web search under my real name to turn up my journal to, say, potential or even present employers. I'd like to be able to write about my work without getting blacklisted from sets and such.

So here's the compromise- Cameron Perry, alive and well and making a living as an artist in Toronto, Canada.

Welcome to my world.