Chalk to cheese

Ex-police forensic photographer turned artist Lee Harrop stands before one of her works at Whitecliff Polytechnic in Parnell. Photo / Babiche Martens

It's often said that people today can expect to have five or more different careers in a lifetime. Not all that long ago the accepted model was to get a job straight out of high school then toil for 50 years for one employer before receiving a gold watch on retirement. But most contemporary workers eschew such a linear and predictable career path.

Barely a thought is given to job security and company loyalty these days. Modern employees look instead for personal fulfillment and the chance to realise their own untapped potential. Imagination and the lure of sheer possibility are more prized than old-fashioned attributes such as length of tenure and seniority.

So while we don't claim to know anyone who has seriously pursued five careers, many people nonetheless are ditching the safety and routine of a regular job to pursue quite different callings - work that allows them to express their inner creativity, even perhaps to contribute to humanity, to important dialogues, in ways that are personally meaningful.

We speak to three women who have left behind a traditional career to forge an uncharted path in a totally new field.

Police officer to artist
Lee Harrop's work as an artist is inextricably interwoven with her previous career as a police officer. Many of her works are confronting to the audience and all of them deal with the issue of violence. "I guess I'm looking at how violence is communicated through and within the structures of language," she says. "My work is most definitely informed from my previous career in the police. That, I guess, drives a lot of my art practice, those experiences."

Through her art, Harrop, 40, uses unconventional contexts to offer different perspectives on ordinary words. "The aesthetic quality of my work's really important to me so I use attraction-repulsion, I guess, as a strategy to draw people into my work." By presenting repeated words in a circular layout she turns "lawful" into "awful" and "here now" into "nowhere".

"Deadbeat" becomes "beat dead" and in her hands "hello hello hello" isn't just a reference to the traditional police greeting. "If you look at it the word collapses back on to itself and becomes "o hell"- "even 'hell-hole"', she says.

"There are so many readings and that's the idea of my work, to give people alternative readings and understanding of words perhaps outside of how they're originally perceived."

The words in Harrop's text-based art are expressed in a variety of mediums. Here now was literally dug into the ground of an outdoor sculpture park. Untitled (Help yourself) consisted of about 115 pieces of glass each uniquely etched with a violent word then stacked in alphabetical order - "because that's the bureaucratic way to do things".

Hello was executed in red reflective vinyl on the floor of the Counties-Manukau police station thus making the setting itself an intrinsic part of the message. The artist's aim is "to create the conversation between all of these works and the institutions that they've been placed in". By its nature much of her art is ephemeral: the vinyl lettering is destroyed as it is removed and audience members were invited to take away a glass panel as a souvenir.

Harrop recalls seeing graffiti which read "Kill a cop". It's a message she took rather personally, being a police officer at the time. "Language and text, it's quite powerful and it was quite visual, quite graphic. Yeah, I found that quite disturbing."

Harrop, who spent 10 years as a frontline police officer before becoming a forensic photographer, was awarded her long-service medal after 14 years and most recently served in Tauranga. She exhibited and studied art while in the force but tendered her resignation in 2005 with a lingering sense that the police establishment did not wholeheartedly accept her artistic inclinations.

Now, having completed her masters degree at Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design, she finds immense satisfaction working as an artist based in Waverley, South Taranaki. "Ironically my work is still looking at those same issues that I dealt with while in the police.

"It allows me to have a more personal and a stronger voice about some of the issues that I address in my work - which I don't think was available to me within that institution.

"I think the surprise for me is art's ability to offer an alternative view and therefore a better understanding of violence."


Marketing director to kinesiologist
Eight years ago Terese Mudgway made the shift from corporate life to first studying, then practising kinesiology - which developed out of the chiropractic discipline and involves a holistic three-pronged approach to health and well-being with a focus on a person's physical, emotional and biochemical components. "It's not symptomatic. It's looking for the cause. To then deal with what is causing the symptom, we work to put the body back into balance to heal itself," says Mudgway.

"I facilitate what needs to occur for your body to heal yourself, for your mind, too."

Clients have come to Mudgway with a wide range of concerns including hip or shoulder problems, depression, insomnia, migraines, weight or self-esteem issues and problems with relationships, careers or finances. She has also seen children with learning disabilities and even newborns unable to settle. Kinesiology is often described as the point at which Eastern medicine philosophy merges with Western anatomy and physiology.

"We use a thing called an indicator muscle which is a biomechanical feedback mechanism which indicates to me where there is a stress," she says.

"It could be an incongruency with something that you want to achieve in your life which you're subconsciously sabotaging. There could be a muscle or a meridian that's stressed."

The 42-year-old New Zealander, who moved to Sydney in 1998, was marketing director for an Australian homeware brand when she sensed an increasing dissatisfaction with the demands of the corporate world. High stress levels and long working hours were taking a toll. Mudgway recalls a particular meeting in which she and other senior executives were debating the width of a band of colour on some new packaging. "And I sat there thinking: 'Is this what my life's about?"'

At around the same time her chiropractor told her of a kinesiology course being offered at a well regarded Sydney school of natural therapies. "It was just synchronicity. I'd made a decision in my head and it all just fell into place so easily," she says. Mudgway instructed her assistant to cancel the day's appointments and enrolled immediately to study at Nature Care College. After completing a four-year diploma in kinesiology in less than three years, Mudgway undertook teaching qualifications in the field.

"I loved it, absolutely loved it. It felt like I was home," she says.

Today she has a transtasman practice, with clients in Bondi Junction, Sydney, as well as St Marys Bay, Auckland, where she works for about 10 days a month. And though there are some things she misses about her old job - "the big budgets and the very sociable marketing department" - the rewards run deep. "I consider it an absolute privilege to do what I do. I have people tell me things that they've never told another human being," she says. "It's just knowing that you make that much of a difference, to be a contribution to another human being." www.teresemudgway.com

Unsurprisingly she is a strong advocate of positive career changes. "The sacrifices have been so worth it. I'm the master of my life, the master of my destiny. I get to say how it turns out."


Foreign exchange dealer to fashion designer
The fashion industry is far removed from the financial markets, yet Claire Barker has successfully navigated both worlds. Until recently the 37-year-old was a foreign exchange dealer; today she has her own label and flagship store in Auckland's O'Connell St.

Earlier Barker had been a futures broker in China, trading predominantly green beans, oil and treasury bonds. She freely admits she was excited by the high stakes and in turn was naturally drawn to buying and selling currencies on behalf of clients - a job she performed here for six years.

But she began to worry about the effect that regularly staying up until 3am to keep abreast of the US market was having on her. "I think that's really, really harmful to a woman's beauty," she says. Barker also began to doubt whether the possibility for career advancement existed - even if she stayed in the same job for 10 or 20 years. "I think it's pretty horrible if I know this is what I'm going to do for the rest of life."

So she resigned at the end of 2005 and made the shift to fashion design. Although she's had no formal training, as a child growing up in Shanghai she had always helped her mother, a keen amateur seamstress, sew garments for the family. Her mother was, and still is, a fashion model and her father established a fashion business in China.

"Fashion is always a huge part of my life," says Barker.

As an avid consumer of fashion in New Zealand Barker noted that the offering tended to be at one extreme or the other. "Either you buy a designer garment which costs quite a lot or you buy from chain store," she says. With her own label she aims for a middle ground that delivers designer pieces in silks and delicate fabrics without the eye-watering price-tags.

"I really want to make a label which is affordable but well made and a good design," she says. "I think a fabric is everything. How the fabric sits on your body ..."

Barker says that in Shanghai in the 1980s the local television stations fed viewers a regular diet of old Hollywood movies. She fondly recalls watching such classics as Gone with the Wind and Waterloo Bridge.

"In my idea of Western society everybody is so beautiful; people's manners are gentlemanly and ladylike," she says.

And from her current collection - featuring demure ruffled blouses with dainty bows, floating skirts and coats with precise silhouettes - it's clear her initial impression of the genteel Western sensibility lingers and influences her designs today.