What inspired the creation of this years installation?

This year I wanted to continue the theme of ‘resilience’ of people and plants. I’m very passionate about preserving our precious bushland areas and one of the important factors with conservation is educating people about what exactly is in the bushland. It can very confusing for people trying to identity plants. So this year I decided to make the window an informative platform for people of all ages to learn a little bit about how to identity our local native trees. Hopefully this will help them form a connection with these special plants.

What does your creative process look like?

The process always starts with lots of research. I volunteer at the local bushland near my home and we’d been identifying trees in the area. I took a lot of photos and created lots of different sketches of the leaves, bark, flowers and fruits until I was confident I could see the difference. Once I’ve drawn the leaves and flowers they are digitised and converted into a type of file that can be used to cut vinyl. I have a window template so I can plan the design over the 12 windows.

What is your favourite tree and why?

They are all my favourites for different reasons. Every tree holds some sort of special quality. I obviously love Banksias for their flowers but also because they take turns and flower at different times and have some amazingly textured bark. I tend to obsess about one particular type until I know everything about it, my current focus is Eucalyptus todtiana because I really hadn’t noticed it until recently!

What message do you hope viewers will take away from this work?

Simply to fall in love with local native trees and learn how to spot them. I’d like to think that every local tree in Perth is part of this artwork. They inspire my art practice everyday — share your new skill with family and friends! Use Kings Park Botanic Garden as a classroom, many of the plants are labelled and more you look the better you get at identifying them.