Vortex @ Fernmount 2021/22

It’s been 15 years.  Joey is now much taller than me.  Ian has been gone 9 years.  And in a profound way, new life is beginning again.

i’ve been in a process of transformation for years .. slowly becoming more aligned and more alive.  I’ve got stuck in both comfort zones and unconscious patterns along the way.

My theme for this season is ‘Emerging’ and I feel like I am climbing out of my chrysalis and allowing myself to share my creations and to speak my truth.  It has been seven years since I made the scary tentative steps of putting writing on my blog – each time it felt  like I was walking through Bellingen naked after posting.  Even though noone was reading it.  But it was there.

It’s been a journey since Joey’s birth to now of me finding my strength, finding my clarity, finding my direction, finding my understanding about myself and life, and breaking some really strongly held beliefs and patterns that  It’s been a long journey through a self imposed victim-hood that has had me almost give up so many times.  But I’m finally casting aside my hopelessness and despair (that’s me when I feel like a victim) and taking the mantle of the hero – as I courageously share myself, in all of my imperfection, to the world.  And perhaps I can also be the Guide, as I share what I’ve learned and offer my process of evolving your life to help you get unstuck.

Vortex @ Tamarama 2006

A visual journey of the creation, erection and dismantling of Vortex from a garage in Drummoyne to the beach at Tamarama.

Joey was 3 months old when we started building and 5 months old when we erected it on the beach.

2006 – a new life

2006 was the year my world was transformed and a new life began.  I came up with the concept for Vortex during a fevered sleep while pregnant.  The powerful childhood experience of being tossed around in a wave, dumped and unable to breathe, and then re-emerging for air with a feeling of relief and aliveness, was what I wanted to convey with this sculpture.  The sense of being immersed and re-emerging with a fresh view on the world is  and it represented a symbol of hope.  Since shifting our thinking is how we shift our reality.

Vortex is a symbol of magic, transformation and new life.

Inspired by watching children climb on and explore public sculptures, and the childhood memory of being dumped in the waves at the beach, spinning underwater unable to take a breath, the piece celebrates nature, exploration, and seeing the world afresh.

The intention was that you would walk into Vortex, be brought to your knees, turned around, and crawl out with a new perspective on the world.

The piece was erected for two weeks at Tamarama beach, Sydney, as part of the 2006 Sculpture by the Sea exhibition.

Vortex embodies life, nature and miracles.

Back to life

I am currently (finally!) re-erecting this sculpture (and my life!) after 15 years in pieces.  It’s final resting place is at my home in Fernmount, NSW, Australia.

This has been a journey of understanding and appreciating ‘life’.

I have come to realise that ‘life’ is on the other side of our fears.

Fear is our ego keeping us safe.  It isn’t ‘bad’, but it is ‘life depleting’.

Fear has had me want to give up on life too many times.  It has come so close to breaking me.

But I’ve come to see that fear is contraction, it is staying small, it is the human self (as opposed to the spirit self) caught in patterns that and lots of ‘self development’, at my home in Fernmount, Australia, as I finally break through a mega fear barrier and launch my new ‘business’ of sculpture, writing and ‘life creation’.  It is a celebration of life and represents my journey through fear, confusion, sadness, hiding and self doubt into love, clarity, joy, visibility and self acceptance.

I’ve learned that fear can be an ally – showing you where you need to go (though it likely isn’t where you would choose to go).  Fear is a portal to freedom.

I spent most of my life chasing freedom, and I found it in all sorts of places.  And now I see that freedom is simply on the other side of fear.