Lismore-based creative Sasha Matteucci is more well-known for her CampFire Leather Balm (a blend of lanolin, beeswax and essential oils). This leather-care product is also nourishing timber and is popular as an anti-mould deterrent. Sasha sings, plays piano, electric harmonium, and guitar. She can also weave on a traditional loom, silversmith and loves witchy-essential oil concoctions.

Sasha Matteucci met with Justine Poplin on a blue velvet longe in her sunroom to tell her Sunday Profile life story.

After a really long stint of living overseas in Berlin, I moved to the Northern Rivers. I lived and worked in Berlin, Germany for 15 years.

I was born in Sydney and I think until the early 2000s Sydney was progressively Avante-Garde. After that, the creative scene, I felt, was dying in Sydney for me. It was getting extremely difficult to just live and survive there as an artist.

I visited Berlin and just fell in love. There was a lot of opportunity in the creative scene, it was thriving. I was interested in costume design. I am a self-trained designer, but my background is in Art Education and Fine Art in Sydney at UNSW COFA. I graduated in the mid-1990s and realised that I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to do teaching. I wanted to do something more hands-on so with practice, practising art rather than teaching art.

I commenced a jewellery course and focussed on costume jewellery and corset design. I was an apprentice actually, an apprentice course/trade course where I learnt fundamental skills silversmithing skills. I loved working with my hands and manipulating metal and also found that I loved to work with textiles and combined them.

(Costume Design – Sasha Matteucci)

The drive to manipulate fabric was a strong drive, so I again began to teach myself a new skill of how to sew. As a base for constructing simplicity, I used some really old patterns and found that was a really good point of departure. I did a lot of embellishment to make things quite spectacular - unique pieces of art really. Once satisfied my skills were savvy enough I entered wearable art in competitions, and fashion show shows around Australia. I was pretty much happy with my practice just before I moved to Berlin.

It felt good to be in Berlin. It has the same grit as Sydney in the early 1990s. In Sydney, after venues began to shut down, places that used to perform live music were turned into pokie palaces at the end of that decade. The momentum of Sydney in the 1990s stopped… but I wanted to keep going. So, I took myself to Berlin - so much good stuff in Europe at that time and I travelled a lot basing myself in Berlin.

I went to Turkey where I learnt how to weave on loom handmade Turkish rug. On the Azores Islands, I approached local women weavers and asked them to teach me. In Portugal, I went to Pharos and learned ceramics there in the same way with a local exchange - again I connected with amazing artisans. Most were willing to take me on for a month and teach me, I dearly love that exchange of skills and culture. 

In Berlin, I connected with some really amazing people from The University of Performing Arts Ernst Busch who were about to graduate. That University is really quite famous in Berlin. It’s one of the best you can go to. We became friends and we started to collaborate. I began to experiment with sound, got into sound that way a bit too because I did some soundtracks for their performances plus making costumes for their puppets.

One of the shows I was involved with premiered the day after Gaddafi died. It was a satirical puppet show starring a Gaddafi puppet! My friend Mary who is a puppeteer had created all different costumes and I was involved with the sound. We did it for little money, but for the love of being able to work on such amazing performances and they would go into great theatres in Berlin and across Germany.

(The puppeteers Anna Menzel (L) and Annemie Twardawa (R) with the glove puppet of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi are pictured during the rehearsal to the theater puppet show 'King of the Kings' by Bosnian director Ivana Sajevic at Sophiensaele on March 9, 2011 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)

I stay connected with the puppeteer’s very good friend Evana for the rest of my time in Berlin. Evana asked me to work with her on her own project, which was entitled Love Fuckers and that was super avant-garde. So yeah, I was just pretty impressed about the creative scene in Berlin. the theatres and opportunities for cutting-edge works - also just the acceptance of really offbeat concepts that were very political.

Living in Berlin I began to miss the nature of Australia and its magnificent landscape. I missed nature. I also felt like I’ve learned and travelled a lot and was ready to take on a different pace back home.

I made a lot of music over there as well and performed a lot so that after a while - I think that became a bit taxing. There was so much music in Berlin and some paid gigs. I had a big band, so it was minimal pay - I didn’t really get BIG - just stayed small scale and played on independents. Yeah, I just think I sort of felt like “I got it all out over there” and I was ready to come back to Australia and just get back to nature and retire a bit.

(So Low Suicide Music Video Still: Costume Design and performance – Sasha Matteucci)

I already had in my mind that I’d probably move up to the Northern Rivers, but I had to go to touch base in Sydney for a while.

My father lived in Sydney when I returned home, but sadly he passed away in 2020. In Sydney, I worked in the Bead Shop in Newtown. The woman that runs that beautiful shop is a really good friend and I stepped in to help her out when she had to go overseas. I’ve been able to work there on and off every time I’m in Sydney. I could never live in Sydney again.

I’d been visiting the Northern Rivers since the late 80s as there were tons of great bands playing up here and there were lots of great venues. My good friend lived up here, it was just a really nice retreat for me from Sydney. I came up often and saw the changes through the decades. Lismore has still retained its charm and kept me returning – to the lifestyle that I remember. The most amazing nature and it’s really underpopulated in Lismore (perhaps becoming even more so now). I really, I love the dynamics of the variation of people that live here - it’s very diverse. The pocket I live in is amongst the trees and it’s quiet. I live with my partner and dog Una.

I had the opportunity to do a small business course when I initially returned. That’s when I conceived Campfire Leather Balm the same base elements of lanolin and beeswax all locally sourced and mixed with different essential oils. There are four balm types and they also have antifungal properties for leather. I have a home workshop and have a few other local businesses stocking it. There are several other products that are in the range, colloidal silver liquid and gel. I’m also branching out into doing some weaving, baskets, earrings and jewellery where I cut the stones and insert them into leather. Just trying out stuff and seeing what people like and what I like to make. 

Lismore in 2022 saw a lot of mould growth. Leather balm is not just for leather but great for wood as well and then the Colloidal silver was a suggestion after the floods. Shops weren't open, and people couldn’t source it without travelling far and it’s really expensive when it’s sold in chemists and health food shops. We wanted to do it as cheap as we could so that we could just have it available for people. 

The benefits of colloidal silver liquid and gel are amazing. It’s just an incredible anti-bacterial for stings, and it’s an excellent treatment for mild to severe burns. They actually use it in the burns patients at the hospital for 3rd degree burns, it’s a scar-less healer. I use it on stings and it’s also great for acne and eczema. Some people ingest it as a tonic and they’ve sworn that it helps prevent getting viral infections or contagious infections. They took it to ward of Covid.

Other people have taken it as a tonic internally for cancer treatment. I mostly just have a liquid, so it can be ingested, and I have the gel which is just topical, it’s great for pets as well. Saves a lot of vet fees for animals if they get cuts. It’s sort of like a really handy thing for the medicine cabinet.

I love doing the Farmers Market - that’s been a great connector for me. Louise has been running it really well and it’s a very relaxed and organised market. I mean there are plenty of markets, but the markets have suffered a lot in Lismore. It’s been a little slower at the market for me as people are buying the basics at the market – the beautiful fresh produce which is fantastic. I like that feeling, to be a local in the Lismore community where locals come together and are great at supporting each other.