Community
5 July, 2024
Facility to gain stained-glass artwork
SOUTH West Healthcare’s new aged care facility is set to feature a large stained-glass window artwork thanks to a donation made by the Rotary Club of Camperdown.
To celebrate the club’s 75th anniversary, Rotary donated $20,000 to go towards the artwork, which will feature in the new facility’s reflection room once completed.
SWH Camperdown Residential Aged Care appeal manager Suzan Morey said the artwork would be located at the entrance of the reflection room on level one of the $39.6 million 36-bedroom facility.
“We’re very excited to announce artist Rachel King has accepted our invitation to create the stunning design for the $20,000 artwork being so generously funded by the Rotary Club of Camperdown,” she said.
“Rachel lives in Barwon Downs (near Forrest), is currently exhibiting at Barwon Heads, and had a beautiful painting of Lake Purrumbete and the Mount in last year’s Corangamite Shire calendar.
“She’s fascinated by color, composition and form and her creations explore figurative abstraction, the natural environment and markers of time and place.
“Her paintings are born from real places, objects and natural forms and sit just on the edge of recognition. “
Ms Morey said the finished piece will measure 2.7 metres by 1.7 metres, or nine feet high and six feet wide.
“Rachel’s design for our Camperdown Residential Aged Care will be a calming landscape of local landmarks and, on its completion, will then be handed on to a very skilled glass artist in Melbourne called Wesley Vine,” she said.
“It’s Wesley’s job to interpret Rachel’s vision in glass.
“The Rotary Club of Camperdown’s donation of this substantial gift shows, once again, its love for, and commitment to, the Camperdown and district community.”
Former Rotary club president James Carter said the club’s support of the project was reflected in the unanimous decision when it was brought to a Rotary meeting.
“It was moved, seconded in no time and every hand went up – it was all over,” he said.
“Rarely in Rotary does something go through like that – usually there’s someone talking to it and someone talking against it.
“I’ve been a stained-glass person myself, and there’s a lot of medical benefits about people being calmed down by seeing light move through coloured glass. There’s PhDs written on it.
“It’s something that’s going to be there as long as the management thinks it should be there. we didn’t want to put it into something like a barbecue or something that’ll burn out in five years and go out to the scrap metal yard.”
Mr Carter said the club was looking for a project which would last to celebrate their 75 years of service to the Camperdown community.
“Seventy-five years is a significant amount of service to a community,” he said.
“The club had been looking for a project to mark its 75 years of service to the Camperdown community, and this project was unanimously indorsed by the membership as the project to celebrate this milestone.
“This ticked a personal box in that I enjoy lead-lighting as a craft and understand through the ages the significance stain-glass artwork and the benefit to the residents of a building.who will have the benefit of this form of artwork in their lives.”