In a light-filled studio in Northcote, zombies and wrestlers jostle amid soft sculpture houses, evergreen landscapes and buckets crammed with paintbrushes. Every week, more than 150 artists come here to practise their craft. Surely one of Melbourne’s busiest studios and galleries, Arts Project Australia supports neurodiverse artists to pursue their creative passions. In its 50 years, it has changed contemporary art in this country by widening the parameters of who can be considered a serious contemporary artist.

Artists from the studio and gallery are exhibited and collected everywhere from the National Gallery of Victoria to Canberra’s National Portrait Gallery and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. In this 50th anniversary year, works have been or will be shown at the Melbourne Art Fair, Mona Foma, the Australian Tapestry Workshop, Tarrawarra Museum of Art and the Washington Embassy.

Ahead of a range of anniversary celebrations, including a studio open day this month, we asked six Arts Project Australia artists to tell us why they create.

Eden Menta

Art is my life. It’s a way of communication and showing how I feel when I can’t explain how I feel. I find it a safe outlet for me when I’m not doing so well, and I believe art can help people come together and make the world a better place. It helps me feel safe when I’m scared. I also love to empower people who want to draw and have fun with it! Arts Project feels like my home. Everyone is so kind and encouraging. They give me inspiration to work.

I love doing art with people, like [contemporary artists] Richard Lewer or Janelle Low. When you do an exhibition [alone], you feel naked. Richard and Janelle are my heroes. I love talking to them about work. I’ve learnt so much from Janelle – we are friends, we talk all the time. Richard is funny, he makes me laugh. We have a similar sense of humour, and his work inspires me to speak my mind. I have a bit of a Monty Python sense of humour – the sillier, the better, the weirder, the better. I’m also a macabre artist. I like a lot of dark, gory subjects.

Georgia Szmerling

Art is relaxing and calming. It makes other people happy. They enjoy it and I enjoy it. It makes me feel good seeing my work on clothes [Szmerling recently collaborated with fashion brand Gorman]. I like seeing people wear it and knowing they enjoy my work. It’s something nice, happy and colourful. I like landscapes and beaches. Nature is really peaceful and relaxing ... I like the quietness – not the busyness.

I get good support at Arts Project. It’s a safe place. I get to do murals – I like murals because it’s something different. You also get opportunities to exhibit in shows at the gallery and do commissions, and work with other artists.

Jordan Dymke

Art-making helps me to tell the world what I’m feeling. I enjoy making art. Creating helps my sanity. If I didn’t do anything creative, I would go insane. Art is sometimes my therapist. If I was at home, I would get too distracted by everything else. Here at Arts Project, I get distracted, but then I can come back and focus on what I’m doing.

I’m working towards a self-portrait solo – that’s always playing on my mind. I’m working with a lot of mediums, I like the possibilities of different mediums. You can see one thing in painting, and it might be the same image in a different medium, but it can mean a totally different thing.

One day, I might have a look on my face that is totally different to the next day. And the different mediums can help me portray that.

Chris O’Brien

Making art makes me happy. I get to sew, and do drawings, printmaking, and painting, and make art on computers. I’m working on a 3D program designing a house. I get photos of houses, and green-screen myself in.

I like [portraying] houses because my friend at the old Arts Project building used to be an architect. His name was Clinton. He would help me in the morning. I used to make houses out of cardboard with him. I like old crappy houses. Ones that no one wants any more. They’re like me – unwanted Christopher.

Sometimes I find houses [by] walking past them. Or I look on the internet, I type in “unwanted houses”. My dream artwork would be to make a real house. I’d get the plans of a house I like from the owner and copy it. Not out of cardboard, out of wood. I’d put in nice furniture. I’d have two little dogs – mini foxies. It would have three rooms, like in the 3D program. I’d get the builders to help me. It would be in Sydney.

Mark Smith

I was told by doctors I’d never walk again. I was in a wheelchair for one and a half years due to a serious car accident in 1995 and now I walk. So, exploring through art how amazing the human body is, and can be, will always be a strong, personal passion. I find communication of any kind fascinating. [Smith creates words in soft sculpture and ceramics]. Even though the true definition of words are found in the dictionary, language has so many nuances. My artwork first visually attracts the audience and then keeps them pondering and fathoming the artistry and the word.

Arts Project has fuelled my passion for art and greatly assisted me as a professional artist. For me, being an artist is continually mind-opening, educating, and freeing – and satisfies so much curiosity. It’s heaps of fun and exceptionally amazing. I like everything about it – I like drawing, I like making zines. I tell stories. I can make good ideas.

Adrian Lazzaro

I do drawing downstairs, and on Thursdays I do printmaking. I draw zombies, teddy bears, whatever comes. Zombies are funny. I like the original zombies, not those Walking Dead, yucky ones. Not the modern ones that run. The slow ones are better. The slow ones are more scary – that’s how a dead person should be, not all quick. Think of a dead person in a hospital waking up, they can’t even run.

[Creating with] fabric is good. I’m the best at what I do. I like making zines. I made a zine about making fun of actors’ names: Sylvester Sta-home-lone, Sylvester Sta-leave-me-alone, Brad Smelly-arm-pitt.

Sometimes it [art making] is like a fantasy. I can pretend what I’d do if I was rich. Apparently, my [ability for] independent-life skills are what’s holding me back from having a special someone, so I just write about it instead. Life is pretty interesting. Sometimes you can’t do what you want. Being an adult is harder than being a child.

Arts Project Australia’s Northcote studio open day at 24 High Street, Northcote, is on March 24. Eden Menta’s solo exhibition, The little things we fight for, is at 35 Johnston Street, Collingwood, until March 23. https://www.artsproject.org.au/