A river memory, cut in steel.
When I began the Native Triptych, I didn’t know I was making a turning point.
I just knew I needed to honour my grandmother—our family’s heart, the quiet strength behind so much of who I am—and I wanted to give shape to the way she lived, loved, and left her mark on all of us.
It was only a few months after she passed.
Grief was still raw.
And I found myself needing to build something that would last—not just in memory, but in matter.
So I turned to what I knew:
The river.
The bush.
The language of native birds and plants that raised us—family holidays, bare feet in red dirt, building huts from tree branches, trying witchetty grubs just to say we did.
That’s what I wanted to honour.
Our roots. Our women. Our land.
And that’s how the triptych came to life.
Three panels, each one three metres tall.
Towering, proud, and completely grounded.
The first holds a kookaburra, caught in mid-laugh—because that sound is stitched into my childhood, into the mornings we woke up to misty paddocks and gumtrees creaking, into the moments we remembered how good it was just to be here.
The centre panel is the soul of it—a bush queen. Regal, timeless, crowned in waratahs, rooted in strength.
Beside her, a tiny blue wren perches near her shoulder—delicate, flickering, impossibly alive.
That bird meant everything.
It was my grandmother’s favourite—always dancing through her garden, too quick to catch, too bright to ignore.
They’ve always felt like omens to me, like reminders. And whenever I see one now, I know she’s watching.
They don’t just flutter. They arrive.
They announce her.
That’s what this panel holds—her presence.
Not as memory. As mythology.
And on the third panel, a black cockatoo.
Majestic. Fierce. Ancient.
Its wings outstretched like the stories of the land itself—unfolding, unbroken, unapologetically wild.
Drawing them wasn’t fast.
It took months.
Every detail had to be considered—not just artistically, but structurally—because I was working in steel, and if one line isn’t connected, the whole thing can fall apart.
I wasn’t just creating a picture. I was creating a statement that had to survive time.
We cut them from stainless, and the weight of them was immense—physically and symbolically.
Mounting them took timber reinforcements and a whole team to get them standing.
And when they finally rose—tall, black, gleaming by the river’s edge—I felt something shift.
Because they didn’t just stand there.
They stood loudly.
Proudly.
As if declaring: “I am here. I was loved. I still matter.”
That was the moment it hit me.
These weren’t just art panels.
They were steel stories.
And that’s when I realised—this is what I’m doing.
This is what VANTA is becoming.
Not decorative. Not trend-based.
But permanent. Present. Powerful.
Steel statements that hold memory, hold identity, hold weight.
This triptych wasn’t just about honouring my grandmother—it was about understanding what I was capable of.
That I could carry emotion across scale.
That I could build in grief, and still create beauty.
That storytelling didn’t have to stay on skin.
It could live in steel.
It could live forever.
Now, when boats drift past and people look up, they see those panels rising from the earth—witnesses to a life, a legacy, and a river that still runs through all of us.
