Farewell Hame, and welcome...

 On Saturday, my exhibition Hame closed. Late in the afternoon, Barry and I headed down to dismantle the show and pack the pieces up.

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly a show comes down, after the time it takes to make the work and set it up!

Rolling up the scrolls and keeping them with their rusty tins.

Amazing how compact they become, after having drifty regally from the tops of their plinths.

Add in the cubes from Rolling the Dice and a folded up Postcards Home and a bundled up The Emigrants in their pouch and the whole show is nearly here!

Bundled and Burnt gets added in alongside the display case for Rolling the Dice. The perspex case for The Emigrants is pretty large; and Travelling Home the wall piece is also of a size so they do add a sense of heft (tho not shown here).

And it is done. We will be leaving the plinths with the Museum rather than carrying them back to Australia with us

And straight away they have a new role in life! I have moved my four hand stitched books onto the main table where they will accompany the work the High School students made in the workshop we did with them. I am so excited for the students that their work will get a public showing.

And on Sunday morning, Tracy, their teacher, and I set up their work.

Once more, the work is all about ideas of home and what it means.

So vibrant and mazing - so much to look at, to draw the eye. I really enjoyed displaying them and showcasing this bit and that...

I love all the shadows and the angles too!

I really want to go back now and have a good look through them. Some of the work was exceptional, sincerely thought through and well resolved and presented. So many complex ideas were considered, and so many creative expressions made of them. Always, young people will surprise you, and impress you.

This showing is on for two weeks, from Monday 7 October until Saturday 19 October. One of those weeks is the school holidays so hopefully more students will get the chance to visit and see their work on display. And hopefully there will be more visitors generally!

It has been a great collaboration between artists, the High School and the Museum. So good to have community working together to showcase art and talent.

Thursday Thoughts...

“Life is art. Art is life. I never separate it.” 

Ai Weiwei

Ahhh, the wisdom of Ai WeiWei. Hard won I am sure, but it is a great place and understanding to get to that art is life and life is art and the two are so intertwined that one could not separate them.

We often say to ourselves - you can't make living out of art, but you can make a life. And we certainly do. We see art and beauty and inspiration all around us. We seek out art and creativity as ways of connecting with people. We use art to express our concerns and our worries and our joys. Art features so often in our daily lives that we sometimes fail to recognise it as such.

We read about art, we look at art, we ponder art, we make art, we talk about art...it is certainly the organising principle of our lives. And for this I am grateful.  

Ai Wei Wei, Sunflower Seeds, New York 2012

Week 4 book, and beginning to think of new ones

Even tho the exhibition is going to be on show for another week, I decided to stick with my original plan to have 4 weeks of postcards and stitch them into a book at the end of each week. So this week, all four books will be on show at the exhibition.

Last week's question was "To make a home in a new place I would..." and I quite liked the open-ended nature of it. I felt it left it wide open for folk to write pretty much all sorts.

There are fewer people around in the Highlands now that Autumn has well and truly been ushered in; many tourists have gone; and the season is edging closer to close, so I was pretty happy to still get 20 postcards completed.

I love how they look displayed together on the herring barrel.

And as is often my want, once things are done or established, my mind turns to new options, new ideas, new things to say, new things to try and express...

One book has been filling my night time awakeness with questions re resolution. How could I? Would it work to...? Can I make this make sense? And finally I have managed to get my hands into the making and testing of an idea.

In doing so, one book became three. It seemed like it made more sense to try to say these things in these ways. One of my night time solutions proved to be impossible for the showing I was thinking of - you just couldn't 'read' the book satisfactorily. 

The front one here was a partial solution, but I knew it was clumsy and not finely resolved. I was sad and about to turn my mind to something completely different when I sat and had a cuppa with B and we chatted about what I was trying to achieve.

And as we spoke I said, I think it could work if it was supported and the legs sort of sat down... so I found a 'plinth' of sorts and tried to see what it might look like.

Quite liking that look, it then made sense that another one of the books could also work to be lifted up a touch.

And the playing around gave me heart to try again. I think here are probably several more prototypes

to go through as I test how to fold the works in and the make covers that work, but I have hope again!

During the week I was gifted these beautiful dried poppy heads by a young friend as we walked along near the Village Hall. The sun was out for long enough to reflect some lovely shadows.