When Dora Rögnvaldsdóttir's world darkened during the Black Summer bushfires on New Year's Eve, 2019, an idea came to her.
"Everybody was on tenterhooks. It was like we were celebrating New Year's Eve, but we weren't," says the sculptor from Nowra on the New South Wales south coast.
Tense and frustrated, she and her family listened to the radio for weather updates.
"We were just waiting for what was going to happen, you know, [with] ember attacks," says Ms Rögnvaldsdóttir, whose home would be spared from the flames.
Knowing that everyone on the south coast was going through the same thing, she decided to create something out of the experience.
"When the world went black, I felt empowered as a sculptor, a community artist and an educator that I could actually do something that really mattered for other people," Ms Rögnvaldsdóttir says.
The result is Gateway.
The newly installed public sculpture in Ulladulla is the largest in the Shoalhaven region, both in size and participation, and has been a healing process, not just for Dora but for hundreds of people who took part in its creation.
Embedded in the artwork are more than 1,200 ceramics of native flora and fauna, created at public workshops she facilitated over 14 months.
"After the shock and destruction of the 2019/2020 bushfires I was moved to bring our community together to create a large-scale commemorative public sculpture," says Ms Rögnvaldsdóttir, who lives and works on Dharawal, Dhurga and Yuin country.
A house of cards
Ms Rögnvaldsdóttir first sourced photographs from different communities in the Shoalhaven to incorporate their stories.
The images were then redrawn and cut into steel panels that were manufactured locally.
One of the 12 panels is dedicated to the ABC.
"This panel is about the person who decided to stay at home and defend their house, with a pet and a garden hose," Ms Rögnvaldsdóttir says.
"The plane [in the sculpture] has the fire retardant and he/she has the ABC transistor radio there, listening to whatever is happening."
Standing 3.7 metres high and each weighing about 350 kilograms, Gateway's three towers represent the wind.
"They go together like a house of cards, basically," says Marcus Groom, Ms Rögnvaldsdóttir's husband, who has been working by her side since the project's inception.
"After Dora made the first full-scale maquette of the sculptures in wire, we took measurements and put them into the AutoCAD model as well for the fabrication and laser cutting of the profiles," Mr Groom says.
"I did the images for the plasma-cut panels at the base of the sculptures by hand on the computer, but the images were originally taken from photograph."
Because of the height of the sculptures, it was easier to separate each into two pieces and then join them together on site.
"Transporting them at that height down the highway would have required much more attention to how we moved them," Mr Groom says.
Wombats, koalas, lizards and more
The sculpture is also a tribute to the animals and plants lost in the bushfires.
"I made over 100 moulds of native animals and invited the artistic community and anybody who wanted to have a go at making a three-dimensional animal, to join me in the studio," Ms Rögnvaldsdóttir says.
She held workshops at schools and other venues, and her studio was a hub, weekend after weekend.
The trickiest part was coming up with an idea that would include people of all ages and abilities, but she nailed it.
"I fired about 1,200 pieces of ceramic and then [another local] Anne Stuart and I wove the wind in [symbolised by the blue] handmade tiles around all the animals.
"If you look at the animals, none of them actually look alike because people worked with the moulds and then individualised their own creation.
"Now that it's up, people will be searching for their animals so it's going to be very interactive."
Sharing stories on the streets
Installation of the Gateway went ahead in Ulladulla despite the recent wet weather.
The public artwork was partially funded by the NSW government, auspice of Shoalhaven City Council.
And the community is also chipping in.
The project became more expensive than anticipated, and local not-for-profit group Southland Creative Inc has set up a crowdsourcing page through the Australian Cultural Fund.
Bronwyn Coulston, the council's manager for arts and culture, says Dora has done an amazing job of bringing hundreds of people in the community together and getting the sculpture in the ground in just over 12 months.
"We are installing projects across the Shoalhaven of temporary and semi-permanent artwork to encourage people to get out and about, into our open spaces, to enjoy the outdoors and re-activate streets and green areas across the Shoalhaven," Ms Coulston says.
"It's a gateway to Ulladulla, it's a gateway to our community and it's a gateway to the recovery and resilience that occurred after the terrible bushfires that tore through this area over 2019/2020."
