This photo I took last September of my Pop (91 here) and my dying father (61 here) highlights the solitude in the connection with community we felt while we cared for our dad. We always felt this through our family, friends, palliative care nurses and everyone who loved him.

This is a celebration of my home town and how I have found myself in a community that creates and sustains an environment that enables people to explore the possibilities of their lives. This image is constructed from things I value in my community. A sense of place and interconnectedness, history and story telling. It also reflects that when we are born into strong communities that strength stays with us wherever we find ourselves in the world.

Being a full time carer of a person with Alzheimer's Disease, a terminal illness, is a painful, isolating and lonely journey. It takes one person to make a difference. Carmel, the Pastoral Associate at the aged residence, where my friend goes for respite, is a familiar, welcoming, reassuring face. Also a personal friend, away from work, she is always fully present to me with her listening heart.. We feel gifted by this seamless support and contentedness through both community and residential care. I In this portrait I have tried to capture the compassion and gentle wisdom of Carmels beautiful personality.

Frangapani for Life is reflective of my own feelings for my mother and my connection to the community I live within. Mum lived in the tropics for all of her life, the frangapani is representative of mums community roots. My mother had the strength to withstand tough challenges and we shared an intense love and a ever lasting bond as not just mother and daughter but best friends. Her spirit and immortality through my artwork will span multiple lifetimes. My artworks message is; Being delicate and beautiful doesn't mean you are weak or incapable of rising to meet a challenge.

I salvage the wing of a Tawny frogmouth on the side of the road. When I discover a piece of driftwood washed onto a south coast beach, I know it is where the wing belongs. Together they form a connected pattern of soft feather and hard bark: a resilient memory of life that also honours the role of death. I sculpt porcelain vessels, a community that observes, and in observing knows that we are all part of the nature of things. Through this connection we are one being, never departed and never alone.

Humans are intricately connected to one another. We cannot help but be. Effects ripple out like waves upon the surface of the water. We may have a sense of community as the spiritual nectar of life, yet we still feel alone. What if instead of watching the beauty and interconnectedness of community as if from behind a lens, we chose to get our feet wet, just jumping in. Of course, it is only when we choose to do so, we discover we have the power to bring change into that reality and they and us will never be the same.