Supported by FRRR Strengthening Rural Communities Grant  /  2025

The Blackwood Art & Ecology Club was formed in 2025 with the support of a FRRR grant. The group gathered once a month throughout 2025 in the forest hamlet of Blackwood with a program of visual art workshops for children, adults and families based around an ecological themes. The themes playfully explored facets of the local natural environment and cyclic systems of nature.

The club continues to foster local community connection, knowledge sharing and creativity with new projects, workshops and gatherings including the yearly costume making sessions in the lead up to the Blackwood Easter Carnival parade.

https://blackwoodartandecologyclub.myportfolio.com

• Fungi Town /  2023  /  Funded by Macedon Ranges Storm Recovery  / Travelled to: Kyneton, Woodend, Riddels Creek, Lancefeild, Newham Primary School, Knox Fest at Feerntreee Gully Arboretum , Edenvale Community Farm, City of Yarra, FRL Festival, Blackwood Easter Carnival for Mooraboo Councill, Art for Social Change Exhibition at Incinerator Gallery

Fungi Town

This artwork was developed with the belief that ‘art for social change’ needs to reach people (not just art gallery visitors). It is purposefully aesthetic and on wheels, so that it can travel and appeal to broad audiences. It was developed for the community of Macedon Shire who suffered damaging storms that brought down many large trees in towns and forests. Fungi Town is presented to the community as a way to shift the sense of loss for the old giants and replace fear of the forest with a sense of wonder. The hot pink caravan opens its doors to reveal a diorama of the forest floor where fungi is the star attraction. The wonderful array of colour, form, texture and function of mushrooms allows a reframing of the damaged forest as instead a banquet for fungi that will set to work recycling the lignin and cellulose into fertile soil. Drawing attention to the details on the forest floor is a way to lure those who have residual trauma back into their natural environments through the discovery of the ephemeral and somewhat magical appearance of mushrooms. I bring along fungi books, art making activities and enthusiasm to Fungi Town appearances. This life-form is having a moment right now and Fungi Town can be considered a proud bright bandwagon that helps share this new knowledge of the important symbiotic relationship with plants and their role as decomposers. Bringing audiences closer to understanding and appreciating the cycles and systems of our world is fundamentally important to me. I beliieve that humour and playfulness are a great way to reach people and this work does not shy away from being a joyful expression of the enchantment of fungi.

• Bendigo Conservatory / 2019  /  Re-Imagining Bendigo Creek Installation

RE-IMAGINING BENDIGO CREEK

There is a project underway to improve the ecology of Bendigo Creek by increasing animal habitat, improving water quality and creating a riparian environment that the community can appreciate and enjoy. The plans to rejuvenate the creek have included the consultation of the local Dja Dja Wurrung community.

The values that the Dja Dja Warrung people hold for their Country are shaped from their belief systems that all things have marrup (spirit) – water, birds, plants, animals, rocks and mountains. Dja Dja Warrung people see all the land and it’s creatures in a holistic way, interconnected with each other and with the people. The rivers are the veins of the Country, they had a name and song and were celebrated as part of Country and Culture. Waterways provided food and medicine, and places to camp, hunt, fish and hold ceremonies. European colonisation has left the legacy of a degraded waterway, the ‘Reimagining Bendigo Creek’ project is an opportunity to restore Bendigo Creek as a vital and cherished place for the whole community in consultation with the Dja Dja Warrung and their knowledge of Country.

This installation uses knowledge sharing through creative and playful activities to help inform, inspire and connect communities to the Bendigo Creek rehabilitation project.The beautiful glass Conservatory in Bendigo’s Rosalind Park was transformed into an artful world with giant pop up books full of fauna sourced from early naturalist imagery, the endemic Whirrakee Wattle was marked with a collaborative Pom Pom Tree that grew over the timespan of the exhibition as people contributed to it. There was a giant sugar glider nest, a specimen table, a sound work and lots of great hands on activities.

Built on the back of a trailer, this performance space is a tiny hideaway inside a hand-built caravan. With headphones on, those that stop for aMoment are transported into a parallel world of ample space, time and future-gazing as they step inside the somewhat magical caravan. The entire experience lasts 5 to 10 minutes and has received smiles, tears, hugs and praise in response. This beautiful and whimsical interruption to daily life was created in collaboration with theatre artist, Alex Desebrock. This poetic world on wheels has travelled far and wide.

I work with community groups to create and design books with children that empower them as authors and illustrators. Creating books that children identify with, and feel proud of, and act as vital aids in early literacy. Projects include the creation of books in mother tongue languages in East Timor (where non existed before), books with patients at the Royal Children’s Hospital, a book about worms and composting for the introduction of green waste collection in Albury, an early intervention book with the centre for non violence with thoughtful gender portrayals and relationships. And a residency tour through five remote towns of South Australia from Coober Pedy to Ceduna, led to the creation of five new books for regional kids that don’t get many artists travelling through their desert towns. I create programs of artistic activities that engage the children on topics and create the content for these publications, showcasing children’s voices and artwork in quality publications that I then design.

The Seeds of Ideas project introduced 80 urban children many of which live in high rise flats around Melbourne, to the world of seeds. The project looked at the life cycle of seeds as both inspiration for art making, and conceptual thought. A series of exploratory art workshops and activities were held at Artplay and locations near the Yarra River.

The design and structure of seeds was explored with the help of conservationist Kirsty Skilbeck, to gain an understanding of the way that seeds catch the wind or travel to find their new home. After viewing the nature table the children made their own flying seeds out of paper and tested the design and flying ability of their seed sculptures by casting them off the Artplay mezzanine.

The notion of seeds as a metaphor was introduced where seeds are the beginning of things, things that grow, like an idea. The children wrote and drew a ‘Seed of an Idea’ that they would like to send off into the world. Little boats were made from natural materials that held these ideas onboard, in search of a place to grow. They were then placed in the water and floated away on an unknown adventure, travelling down the Yarra River for somebody to find, like a message in a bottle. Setting the boats free became a ceremony that took place on the Yarra River during excursions to native bushland on Herring Island and the vegetable patches of Collingwood Children’s Farm. These were the places where we touched the ground, made earth art and viewed seeds during various cycles of growth. Many of these children live above the ground in small apartments and the experience was an opportunity to get acquainted with things that grow and places that are alive within Melbourne’s urban setting and to gain an understanding, through play, of the life cycle of seeds.

This interactive gallery space was created for, and with, patients of The Royal Children’s Hospital. It is a moveable structure that can sit beside hospital beds for interaction with confined patients, be moved around wards and function as a public exhibition space for children’s artwork. It is an intimate and immersive experience, where children can view works created by their peers on the gallery walls, find sculptures inside drawers, and watch children’s video works on a small screen installed behind cupboard doors.

The inaugural exhibition was created with patients at The Royal Children Hospital and opened by Minister for the Arts Heidi Victoria

The Artist in Schools Program at Christmas Hills Primary School was joyful, creative and extremely rewarding experience and most importantly the children took complete ownership of the ‘Imaginarium project’ and were actively engaged in the entire process from concept to completion.

I took the position of facilitator, artistic director and project manager in this collaborative project. My priorities were to honour the creativity of the children while creating a permanent and interactive sculptural work. The delightful students of Christmas Hills Primary School developed ideas, concepts, and planning through a series of workshops including site specific earth art, casting, model making, landscape planning, clay sculpture, construction and drawing. They developed a concept of what the Imaginarium could be through discussion and visual inspiration, and contributed their ideas through sculptural form and drawing. The final sculptural works included a nest, a teepee, a bridge, a wind chime and a village, all set within a landscaped garden of various textures including boulders, stones, pebbles, sandpit, mulch and plants. The children helped in the construction and installation of the final works. They measured, mixed, painted, landscaped, cast, carved, wove, tightened nuts and bolts, planted and landscaped with energy and enthusiasm and watched their ideas come to life. An amazing bunch of parents were the heros that helped with the hard work to complete the project.

It really was a special project to be a part of, with an outcome that I believe we are all proud of. This permanent outdoor work is interactive, it is part garden, part playground and part sculpture and an enduring imaginative space for the children of Christmas Hills Primary.

• 2018 / Melbourne Knowledge Week  /  Tech Lab Collaboration  /  ArtPlay

Shapeshifters was a collaboration with audio visual artist Georgie Pinn Electric Puppet, Daniel Calvo Mosster Studio, and dancer Fiona Cameron. Using technology we explored ideas around myths and hybrid creatures to create an immersive experience. I worked on body altering costumes made from rescued industrial materials and second hand clothing to evoke animal embodiment. Children were invited to move and dance through the techno-natural environment of interactive floor projections and sprite-emanating silhouettes in what I thought became a contemporary pagan ritual that celebrated connections to nature and animal kin.