Sarah Dingwall & Lachlan Scallion

Winter & Colour - Light & Mist


Glass artist Sarah Dingwall and Photographer Lachlan Scallion were artists in residency during winter 2025.

Using the old tradition of lampworking Sarah creates beautifully crafted glass jewellery, small translucent shapes that hold light and colour designed to be worn and loved. She has been making a simple suite of new work as she has spent time walking around the land and in the hills and village during her residency.

Of her residency in Poatina Sarah had this to say:
"I’ve been flame working up at the Arts Centre, I have a little desk set up there. In the first couple of weeks it struck me how it’s a different pace and different rhythms from back home. It changed my pace of creativity... [it's] slowed down. It’s like a low tide season in the terms of creativity.
Looking at photos I’ve taken while here [I] started to draw together the colour palette of what’s going on in winter in Poatina. The creek… the grey of the stone, the warmer stone colour with the water… it’s exciting to me, all these colours work together so well. [I] have tried to emulate some of that light amber-y watery-ness. In the last week, bright yellow has been included with all the wattle that’s burst into light."

For Lachlan, a commercial photographer, this residency has also given him time and space to be in the environment, looking at what was around him in the immediate environment of Poatina. Lachlan was captivated by the winter conditions, the light, fog, mists that circulate around Poatina as they drift over the Western Tiers Mountains.

He says this about his time in Poatina:
"I like the frost and mist, though there’s no colour saturation. I liked how the power lines acted as dead trees in some of them… structures... I like the way that light motivates things like a street sign.
Every morning I’d shoot the street we were staying on. It was different every day.
I love the muted tones with fog. It shifts so quickly.
It wasn’t my aim to have a finished work. ... I really wanted it to be about the connection of Poatina to nature, in a way that any resident can access on foot.
That’s how I thought about it - be local, capture what’s around."