Stone cottages for Skerray

 

One of the pieces I want to make for my exhibition Betrayal and Loss will be an installation of about 5 stone cottages hewn from stones gathered from 5 fishing coves along the north coast. Earlier in this visit I cut a cottage for Armadale cove. More recently I was able to collect a couple of stones from the rock beach at Skerray harbour. Quite a number of the stones on this beach have pink and beige tones. As you can see from the photo above I have done the rough cut for two cottages.

I keep the chipping-offcuts from the stone cutting as these will be part of the installation - to tell the story of the hard work the cleared farmers had to create their cottages on the rocky coastal plots of land they were cleared to. Below is a photos of the two cottages and clippings stored on a shelf in the garden shed-studio.

Following are photos of the cutting process. Cutting has to be done outside - lots of fine stone dust - there were scudding tiny showers as you can see from the droplets of rain on the stones. The pinkish stone below is quite crystalline in nature.

I have yet to gather stones from 3 other coves - but that will need to be left until I return.