Good news and a trip to Orkney

A week or so ago I had the pleasure of asking my Dad to post off my book "Red Card" to Artspace Mackay as it has been selected as a finalist in The Libris Awards - Australia's premier artists' book prize.

It is an honour to have your books selected for this show, and when I look at the catalogue I am impressed by so many of the books that will be there.

The show opens, and the winners are announced, not long after we return o Australia so we won't be getting on a plane and heading north for it which is a bit of a shame, but we will watch with interest from afar!

Red offers the segue to the few days we had in Orkney through the week. We love visiting the islands and get a real fix of art when we are there and because we are here in Summer time, we also got to see places that have often been closed on previous visits.

But also, the flowers are out and how good is this red poppy? It was the size of a bread and butter plate and was bursting with its vibrant gloriousness.

Apart from art we had many a good coffee, cake and meal... and managed to do our Biblio twice!

And we wandered and wandered the streets and lanes and closes and wynds and piers of Stromness...

As ever, we really enjoyed our visit and are already planning for when we next return to the cottage, to pop over and do some new and different things.

Promotion Plus!!!

 It has been a time of so many things!

A little while ago I was advised that a piece of my work had been selected for the Annual Juried issue of Letter Arts Review.(LAR). LAR is the pinnacle of lettering arts journals across the world and I have been rejected three times; and then I gave up.  For whatever reason I had a notion to enter one last time and was as surprised as all get out to be told that one of my Grief is A Stone pieces had been selected as an example of some of the best lettering arts going around in the past year!

I know that these things cannot really be representative of the best of anything - in fact they can only show the best of what is submitted; and then the definition of best is so subjective and if your work speaks to a judge, then it might be selected, if not it might be rejected; and yet the quality of the work is there in both. So I know all that, but it doesn't take away from the feeling of being super chuffed to have been selected!

Here are some links to the process of the making of this piece.

A neighbour recently mentioned that my jewellery had pride of place in the window at Maleny Additions, and I thought I should have a quick peek. Sure enough two pendants and two pairs of earrings were on show - looking lovely and twinkly.

And the last little bit of something was that the seminar I am teaching in NZ in September is out and about and being advertised.

Here is the link to the video if you'd like to watch it.

P.S. it's a video about me, not the workshop!

Grief is a Stone in sandstone

 I have had two of my Grief is a Stone metal calligraphy pieces cut into Corten steel, which should weather and rust.

My plan is for them to be outdoor sculptures that might sit in a garden, tucked away and folk might come upon them quietly.

So I have popped them outside to get the rusting action happening a bit more quickly - we have had a fair bit of rain! I got one of each style cut.

And they are beginning to rust nicely on the front.

But I have had to turn them over to get a bit more happening on the back.

 Barry cut the groove for me in a couple of small pieces of sandstone we had set aside for another project.

Broadly speaking, I think they are going to work well, they just need little bit more time weathering.

Innerpeffray and a twist in the tale of Sannick Bay...

 Well, we are back in Australia and settling in to things here, and gradually de-fuzzing our heads from jet lag.

We meandered our way back down to Glasgow over a couple of days and left as Storm Babet was beginning its run. We managed to skirt the edges of it most of the way, but there was rain, wind and the rivers ran high.

As we crossed Sutherland in the rain, the soft greys and browns were at their best.

We spent a couple of nights in Crieff, which meant we could re-visit Innerpeffray Library and Chapel which we happened upon so serendipitously last year. Always so special, and I hope to make it a regular visit whenever we are there.

Again, we were fortunate to have Lara, the Keeper of The Books to show us around and talk us through the collection and the displays.

We also spent some time in the school house where some lovely displays had been made - the stories of children at the school, and the books they had borrowed, were on all four walls.

But back in the Library itself, after having seen the magnificent Register last year, dating from 1747, I had wanted to know how many women had borrowed books? Lara said there were quite a few, and that in fact,  on the very first page of the Register there was a woman, called Beatrix who had borrowed a book. Not on behalf of her Master or Mistress, but for herself. And that made me happy.

Her name is the very last on the page, and I think the book she borrowed was something like Following Christ the way, the truth and the life. And she returned it.

Then. 

We mentioned to Lara the words of Pablo Neruda carved into stones on the far north coast of Scotland, and the magic of that discovery. She asked had we visited the Corbenic Poetry Path (we exclaimed, we had! Just yesterday!). And then Barry mentioned the second stone we had discovered way up North. I tried to recall some of the words and said something like - "and put my body back together...". 

Lara immediately said "The Marquis of Montrose"! We said "Yes! Something about On the Eve of My Execution". She went straight to a room next door and brought out a book - The Poetry of the Marquis - and read the whole poem to us.

We shared with her how our Librarian friend Liz had done the research and made sense of the words for us, and were excited to think that we had discovered the words and they were so well known and recalled. But as we stood there, Lara turned to the cabinet I was standing in front of and said "That's his Bible. And those are his seals".

Can you believe it? 

Sure enough - The Innerpeffray Library Collection holds the Marquis of Montrose's Bible and some Seals. How uncanny is that connection? How serendipitous the conversation? How amazing are Libraries and Librarians?

We all had a little shiver as we thought about it.

On the left hand page at the bottom, you can see his name Montrose.

And two seals from letters he had written in 1639 and ?1650. I still shake my head at the thought of it.

On our previous visit it had been pouring rain and we didn't venture out into the gardens and grounds at all, just made mad dashes between buildings. This day was glorious and we wandered along a short path and down to the river.

Along the way, we found this.

So many moments of coincidence and serendipity, we marvelled upon them for quite some time.

We hope to return to Sannick Bay to continue our quest to discover more carved stones; and to Innerpeffray Library where there are always magnificent discoveries to be made as well. What a lovely coming together of special places.

An update - the Stone at Sannick Bay

 Who would have thought that a follow up post about the most recent find at Sannick Bay would need to come with a trigger warning, but I think it should. The words inscribed are quite graphic with some violent imagery, so please take care if you proceed.

At the end of the most recent blog post I welcomed folk to come along the journey with me to try to interpret/translate/transcribe the words.

I had worked out several of them, and was surprised that this stone was engraved in English, which at least made it easier for me to pick out the occasional word.

So, I got an email from my blogging friend Liz Ackert who had done some googling. 

She had put these five words into a search: ashes, hopeful, recollect, confident and just. 

And from this search she arrived at these places:

Lines Written on the Eve of His Execution

Jame Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose

So here is what I had thought I had found:

8 lines

1. Let

2. (Open) all my

3. 

4. (then place)         upon

5.                    my ashes (throw)

6. Lord since thou knows    here all these (alon)

7. I'm hopeful once             recollect

8. And confident           with          the just

And here is what I think I can now read on the stone:

8 lines

1. Let them bestow on every earth a limb

2. Open all my veins, that I may swim

3. To thee, my Maker, in that crimson lake

4. Then place my par boiled head upon a stake;

5.  Scatter my ashes throw them in the air

6. Lord since thou knows  where all these atoms (alon) are 

7. I'm hopeful once  thou recollects my dust 

8. And confident thou'll raise me with the just      

 So, pretty weird and pretty interesting.

In the end the discovery by Liz of these words has made me now wonder if all of the stones are different - do they each involve a different person's quote? This is clearly not a Pablo Neruda poem as we found on the first visit! The contrast between the two sets of words is intriguing; both I think are about death. One seems beautiful; one macabre.

So the mystery deepens, and the desire to return and discover more increases. That, however, will have to wait for another time as we have started slowly wending our way back to Oz...

With many, many thanks to Liz for her enquiring mind and expert googling!

Grief is a Stone

 One of the joys of being in Scotland is the access to stones, and pebbles and rocks. They are such a feature of our north coast and I revel at all the different types and how each beach or cove offers particular 'types' of stone. Or so it seems when we go looking.

We are possibly the only folk I know who head off on a beach wander with a metal tape measure in our pockets, picking up stones and giving them a quick measure to see if they will be fit for purpose.

As mentioned previously, I brought the Grief Is A Stone calligraphy in steel with me, and we have been searching for rocks that might suit the work.

Barry has kindly carved a straight line the length of several rock stones to test the idea. We have learned a lot along the way.

The groove needs to be cut 1cm deep so it is important that the stone has enough depth along its length.

I enjoyed playing with pebble placement afterwards.

Different rock, different pebble play. I do like how it echoes and references the 'o' in stone.

Same stone, turned around with the wording towards the back.

This slightly different calligraphy is longer (about 20cm) which has made it that much harder to find stones that will let it shine.

Having a flat surface for the full length of the stone is also important, otherwise some of the lower bar sits too proud, but this one works pretty well.

Because we have so much driftwood and so many timber off cuts in our shed here, I couldn't help but wonder how it might look in a long length of timber, and Barry obliged by carving a recess into this piece.

If you look closely you will see how beautifully the curve of the 'o' in stone references the rusty staple in the timber. I do love those moments.

And of course piling pebbles alongside to see how they might balance the work, or balance themselves is fun as well.

We collected a stash more stones on Sunday afternoon and are beginning to think we have enough to go on with!

There is also the choice between brushed and shiny metal to work my way through. Any thoughts on whether shiny or brushed works better would be welcomed!