This was my first international residency: four weeks in early 2026 at the Bilpin International Ground for Creative Initiatives (BigCi), located beside Wollemi National Park, within the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Greater Blue Mountains, Australia. BigCi was established in 2012 by artist Rae Bolotin and environmentalist and author Yuri Bolton, with a focus on artists who are interested in the environment and ecology.

I filled a suitcase with wood carving and whittling tools, and brought some questions to inform my experiences in the Blue Mountains: How is our world shaped over time? Can time be understood as part of the landscape? How do materials hold together or deteriorate over hours, months, and centuries?

BigCi is on the edge of a very old rainforest, in a land that shows dramatic signs of change: from slow geological processes to rapid wildfire events. I am interested in systems and processes that shape our material world over time. I work with wood collected from urban wind-fallen trees where I live. This residency provided opportunities to work with similar materials in a new place, and to think deeply about processes that change our physical world over time.

At BigCi, I focused my attention on one tree, a Sydney Peppermint (Eucalyptus piperita) that was cut down a week before my arrival. Rae presented me with a beautiful pile of wood, wet from a fresh rain. The centres of the logs were hollowed out and packed with clay, and the wood was lined with blood red gum veins: sculpture gold! I researched trees and insects, in particular the termites who had lived in this cut tree. Through BigCi, I connected with a local pest guy, an entomologist, and a glow worm tour guide. I incorporated physical activities like bushwalking and splitting wood into my creative research. I experimented with materials, and stretched out the length and height of the Art Barn. All this was fuelled with incredible local food, and the company of an exceptional group of artists.

I taught an afternoon workshop, “Making by Melding”, attended mostly by enthusiastic artists and members of the Tree Veneration Society. We discussed the use and value of various common materials, and then combined them into small sculptures.

I produced a series of small carved creatures, reflecting on the flora in a termite’s hind-gut that allow for the digestion of the cellulose. The tactile wood carvings are my way of connecting with and understanding the lives and processes that brought about the demise of the tree. I sculpted “bolus” forms from the red clay that the termites packed into the tree cavities, and some of the tree’s bark. A bolus is an agglomeration of soil and termite fluid’s: saliva and feces. These units of material are collected over time, and they are the building blocks of the termite’s architecture. Finally, I created a large-scale suspended installation, using the hollow rounds of wood produced by the work of the termites and the chainsaw.

This residency deepened my appreciation of the trees and the other life and forces that bring a piece of wood into my hands. I gained experiential knowledge about deep time: geological, human and other biological forces that expand back thousands of years, entangling humans, plants, fossil fuels, and minerals in an ongoing story. My material practice with wood has grown over the last few years, especially with my pursuit of woodturning. Now I am beginning to understand this process.