Anita Denholm is carving a 2-metre-tall statue from grey granite that she says will be "fairly permanent".
"This piece will outlast all of us, being the granite that it is — it's one of the hardest stones in the world," Ms Denholm said.
The statue will, she said, last as long as the Earth.
"Because when the planet gets absorbed by the sun [in the distant future], it will melt with the bedrock around it," she said.
Before that, Ms Denholm hopes her close descendants will visit the statue and take pride in the work of their "nanny or great nanny."
"Everybody wants a bit of permanence, and this is my legacy," she said.
The fun of rock-shopping
Ms Denholm, whose "day job" is as a registered nurse at the Launceston General Hospital, said she was "like a kid in a candy store" the day she went to choose a slab of granite to sculpt.
Touring a mason's yard in northern Tasmania, Ms Denholm said she inspected various blocks that were "sort of right".
"[The challenge] was finding that Goldilocks one — not too big, not too small, with the right dimensions," she said.
But, on spotting a large, "very pretty" slab of grey granite lying on its side, she immediately knew "that was it".
The "5- to 7-tonne" block had been quarried on the east coast of Tasmania, the site owner explained.
"He [the mason] said the block had some bits of pink in it, and I thought 'Yes, that's good, it's a little bit unusual'," she said.
"That's me. I go against the flow."
Destined to watch over the bay
A few months into sculpting the stone, Ms Denholm has "pulled" a distinctly human face out of it.
"It's a person. It could be you. It could be me or somebody from ancient times," she said.
When finished, the statue will stand on the edge of Georges Bay, in the east coast town of St Helens.
It will be unveiled in mid-June during the Bay of Fires Winter Arts Festival and join two other large-scale artworks in a sculpture trail initiated by Break O'Day Council.
Jayne Richardson from the council said if funding could be secured, statues would eventually be positioned all along the trail, which runs through St Helens and connects the town with the nearby network of mountain bike trails.
"The idea was to add another element to the trail, to give it more interest … it's another reason to walk the track," Ms Richardson said.
Ms Denholm said her contribution to the trail, her statue, would pay homage to the people of the east coast, present and past, and appear to look contemplatively across the bay.
"Longing for times past, looking out for a fisherman returning, or just yearning to be out on that bay fishing."
Turning tungsten to liquorice
The most difficult part of the carving process, Ms Denholm said, was making the first cut in the stone.
"Because once you've cut, you've committed," she said.
"You have to really know where you're going because if you take a bit of stone off, it's not like clay where you can put it back on."
Ms Denholm mostly works on the project with an angle grinder and mini jackhammer
"I've had to get in touch with my inner power tool person," she said.
But Ms Denholm said her tools were up against it, being used to carve the very hard granite.
"I've worked in sandstone before, and this is next level," she said.
"Diamond-tipped and tungsten tools have a really hard time, so I'm churning through those quickly," she said.
"I can turn a tungsten-tipped drill [bit] into liquorice in about 5 minutes, so [granite] is pretty tough stuff."
Ms Denholm said her carving days were long and included few breaks.
"I just keep going flat out at it, and I am absolutely knackered by the end of the day," she said.
"It's physically really demanding, [but when] I start building up the muscles, it gets easier and easier."
Statue on the move
Ms Denholm's mid-June deadline may be looming, but she says she is happy with the progress on her piece so far.
She said the remaining work mostly involved adding definition to and polishing the statue.
However, Ms Denholm said transporting the heavy piece to its final destination would bring certain challenges.
The sculpture will be lifted onto a flatbed truck in Launceston, driven to St Helens, and then unloaded and set in place by contractors with some "big bits of machinery".
Ms Richardson said that due to the statue's weight, the council had identified two potential spots for it in case getting it to their "number one location" proved impossible.
Excited about the statue reaching its final destination, Ms Denholm said after its unveiling, she would enjoy visiting it and be interested to learn what others thought of it.
"That'll be fun to wander past and hear comments — hopefully, all good," she said.
Groundbreaking work
Ms Denholm said not everyone had been supportive of her current sculpting project.
"There were people around saying 'very ambitious' and wondering whether I could actually pull it off," she said.
Ms Denholm said when she saw her granite block standing upright for the first time, she knew she had bitten off "a lot to chew".
"But once I actually got one cut into it I thought, 'Yep, this is me. I can do it'," she said.
A female stone carver working on a large project is a rare thing, though, she said.
She said there were "not many people" sculpting stone around the world, and very few of those were women.
"Sculpture is seen as being more of a blokes' thing because they're strong [and it involves] the wielding of hammers and tools," Ms Denholm said.
"But I think I can hold my own with most blokes in the strength side of things.
"[It's also a matter of] working smarter, not harder, so instead of having large tools, I use a scaled-down version."
As for women sculpting granite, Ms Denholm said they were even more scarce.
"[So] I'm breaking ground [figuratively and] literally," she said.
