HELEN Maurer had plenty of possibilities for her site-specific installation when Illuminating York's art directors, Hazel Colquhoun and Andrew Knight, invited her to take part in this week's enlightening event.

"I came up to look at various sites, such as a big market trading hall and gatehouses on the city walls, but then I looked at Holy Trinity in Goodramgate and I instantly connected with it," Helen recalls. "There was a tour of the church going on and there were several things that I engaged with straightaway.

"Initially there were several different strands that informed my ideas for an installation, especially the pews in the distinctive boxes that you can sit in.

"I also noticed when I was talking to a volunteer that the pulpit was raised to twice the normal height and that everyone there was experiencing the church as much through sound as through what they saw."

Taking such diverse thoughts as her starting point, Helen then spotted the most significant inspiration for her installation, a union of glass and projection that she has entitled re Connecting re Creation. "There was a fragment in the stained glass window behind the altar of a garden scene that looked to have been designed in a different period, rather than the medieval one.

"It depicts a tiny house and what looks like a tropical garden, and it was pointed out to me that from the ground it just looks green but when you look closer, you see the garden scene."

Helen duly photographed it and set to work on her installation, which draws on the church's history, architecture and atmosphere to create a work in light, glass and mirrors, not to mention overhead projectors with flowers on them and wind chimes that respond to cooling fans hidden in the boxes.

"I like the different scale of things," says Helen, explaining the possibilities released by her use of projection from ground level. "One story I was told was that when one king came to York everyone had been asked to put their clothes down on the ground for him to walk on, just like the idea of palms being put down for Jesus, so I had this idea of putting things on the ground and on the projectors."

She likes the ideas of seed beds too, and how things grow from that and establish themselves in a garden, like a congregation can grow in a church. From little grows large, which suits Helen as she works out of a tiny studio in Blackhorse Lane, north London, three metres square with a corridor outside. Here she begins her small-scale ideas that can then grow and be magnified through projection, for example.

In the case of her Illuminating York installation, she has created glass gardens that multiply in size when light passes through the overhead projectors and images then form on the church walls.

"I had a van full of plants that I brought up to York to make the installation on site, and in a way it's the most daring work I've ever done as it was really important to configure it in the church, not beforehand, projecting on to the walls and lots of quirky alcoves and stone in differing colours and seeing what worked best."

Should you be wondering why the installation has the title re Connecting re Creation, let Helen explain. "I'm reconnecting with projection which I hadn't used for a while and reconnecting with my Sunday school days too," she says. "And with the garden scene, I wanted that sense of Creation and re-creation."

Helen Maurer's installation re Connecting re Creation can be experienced at Holy Trinity Church, Goodramgate, York, as part of Illuminating York, tonight until Saturday, 6pm to 10pm. Admission is free.