Background

6th Generation South Australian, and 20 year local of the Limestone Coast, born January 1975 in Loxton, South Australia as Jody Simone Arnold.

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Jody's paternal heritage stems from three large first settlement pioneering South Australian farming families: Wurst and Eckermann (in the Mid North Manoora Saddleworth districts) and Arnold (Barossa districts of Tanunda and Riverland districts of New Residence and Loxton).

Jody is 2nd generation Australian through immigrating maternal heritage established from many centuries old merchantry and creative aristocratic families in Britain (Woodroffe), Western and Eastern Europe (De Bry) plus established clergy and farming family roots in Republic and Northern Ireland (Kerr and Meenagh).

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Having had a very deep and meaningful symbiotic relationship with both indigenous and agricultural landscapes, Jody grew up having a very grounded close intimate connection with the great Murray River, its native environments and wildlife as well as the generational life that comes with pastoral, orchard, viticulture, horticulture, dairy and livestock farming.

This humble background was also blended with deep exposure to the traditional family international influences, by means of cultural traditions typical such as carpentry, international equestrian industry, the merchant trades, technology and creative arts.

Jody's natural musical abilities (primarily piano, recorder, glockenspiel, kalimba, synthesiser) stem from her German and Silicean (now Prussia) roots and was first recognised at a very young age (toddlerhood) by her maternal grandmother, Mona Arnold (nee Eckermann) when as a three year old, Jody was obsessively drawn to the family piano and able to consistently naturally harmonise and play complicated classical piano by ear. 

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It was this revelation that ensured that throughout childhood, music theory and technical practice lessons, plus opportunity for on-demand music self-therapy was made available in the home, and was a creative outlet opportunity that was encouraged, implemented and maintained by her father Rex (who also happened to share his own significant talent of guitar and love for big band, cult classic independant music artists and timeless global rock bands).

Jody's natural visual creative talents emerged in a similar fashion and reach back to influences of Belguimese grandfather Theodor de Bry; an certain genetic lifeblood that has now evolved through the generations and become shared as a dominant natural trait by many members of the modern generations.​ Concentrated time spent with two maternal aunts who were also creatively talented and shared this same lineage, meant that natural artistic influence was considered normal and everyday, and thus influentially inescapable.  Emerging early age talent was recognised, embraced, cultivated, cherished and celebrated, through the influential passionate hands-on mentorship of Jody's great grandmother Marie Louise de Bry.

Overall it was particularly this evident duality of deep seated natural sense of genetic based artistic creativity that was recognised and nurtured within the home under the encouragement and support of Jody's father, Rex Arnold.​

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Ultimately all these immediate strong influences across a broad range of demographics and walks of life have meshed together to create the authentic person which now defines Jody; an exuberant but friendly empathic personality that when creatively unleashed onto the world, is often described and experienced by others as ‘the moJo effect’.

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