Not Just Ladies Who Lunch: Jasmin Charters
Getting to know some fabulous ladies who work in the arts!
Welcome to the Monday series Not Just Ladies Who Lunch. This will be an ongoing addition to the blog, meant to introduce you to some arts professionals. Their jobs will vary from freelance graphic designers to music composers, auction house specialists to cake decorators. Be sure to check back every Monday for a new profile. If you would like to be featured, please do send me a note! I am opened to suggestions as this piece evolves. Here goes week six:
Meet Jasmin!
Jasmin and I were in the same year at Mount Allison University – but we never really knew each other! Our friendship has blossomed [almost exclusively over twitter] over the years because of a shared love of things such as kittens and Ryan Gosling. Jasmin has tumblr, twitter and pinterest accounts, be sure to follow her adventures. Here’s what she had to say:
I attended Mount Allison University, a small but mighty liberal arts school in a tiny town on the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick, Canada. I majored in Art History, eventually narrowing my focus to women in art and minored in Classical Studies with an emphasis on epic and lyric poetry.
I am a gallery coordinator for Heritage Auctions, a collectibles auction house out of Dallas. I deal with anything from ancient Greek and Roman coins to letters and notes written by the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Martin Luther King Jr., to $100,000+ Hermes Birkin bags and Norman Rockwell paintings, to the suit Gene Kelly wore in Singing in the Rain, to rocks from space and desks used in the Senate when Lincoln was President.
I currently call Los Angeles, California home.
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
I wanted to be an archaeologist and an astronaut, respectively. I still desperately want to go to space (Richard Branson, I’m over here!), and every year I have grand plans to be an astronaut for Hallowe’en, but then I get lazy and I end up being something mildly punny and not at all funny. At one point I wanted to be a film critic, and then a casting director, weirdly. Film is in my blood (dad is a DP, sister is an actress/writer/director, brother is an operator/DP, mother is an editor/director/artist), so I wouldn’t be surprised if I find myself back in that game.
What is the best piece of advice you were ever given?
The director of an art gallery in LA once told me to “do your research and it will reap dividends” following a disastrous phone interview. I was infuriated with myself, mortified at my inability to answer his questions with confident ease and prove to him I knew my stuff. Nerves tend to get the better of me, and as a result I shut down; it’s my greatest weakness. I believe these things happen for a reason so ultimately it worked out beautifully. But I do think about it sometimes and I am grateful to him, in spite of how small I felt in the moment. His advice made me so angry because I didn’t think it applied to me. I thought it was idiotic. The truth is it applies to everyone and everything and honestly, it’s so stupid it’s genius.
Malik Sidibé, Fighting with Friends
Can you name your biggest success and/or failure in your career so far?
The learning never ceases, so I’m not sure I have reached the pinnacle of either extreme. Before I was offered my current job, I worked at an art gallery where I was underpaid, under utilized and utterly miserable. Within the first week I wanted to quit. That said, I vowed to stay at least a year, having just endured too long on the job hunt. In the near two years I was there, I learned heaps about the art world, and incidentally quite a bit about myself. I might have failed myself in a way by going through the so-called trenches, dreading every single day, wishing I was anywhere but there, but in choosing to stay I understood I could be courageous, hardworking and determined. I can’t begin to describe the insane things I witnessed, the incredible artists with whom I worked, or the opportunities afforded me but I’m honestly grateful that part of my life is over. I made wonderful friends, so in the end no regrets. Hindsight is an interesting gift.
Name a tool you can’t live without.
I can’t live without 0.5 Muji gel pens, particularly in black. I write with nothing else. They’ve been my go-to since my first trip to Japan in 2005.
Do you have a mentor/Who would your dream mentor be?
Griselda Pollock, easily. Or Sir Peter Ustinov, if only to have him read Ovid out loud to me everyday.
Tell us about your favourite picture/photograph/sculpture/etc.
This kind of question is cruel! At the moment, I’m desperately in like with fashion photographers Petrovsky & Ramone, and I’ve just discovered the work of Malik Sidibé. I cut his photograph Friends Fighting With Stones (1976) from a magazine I picked up while visiting Paris Photo last year and taped it to my wall without knowing who it was by. I decided to frame the image only recently, and in doing so began this whole journey of discovery. I love that.
