Worth revisiting

 

On most of our stays at the cottage Fiona and I take a trip to Orkney - it is one of those places that simply speak to us. On a few occasions we have revisited Gurness - an iron age broch village. We visited Gurness again yesterday and were fortunate to get great sunshine between rain showers. The broch and surrounding buildings sat on the very edge of the coast as you can see from the opening photo.

It has been estimated that the broch was built somewhere between 500 and 200 BC. Information says the broth was about 10m in height and probably took 20 people over 6 months to build by hand.

As you can see from the following photos the village was an amazing solid complex that would have supported a sizeable number of people.

Further photos show some of the homely and complex aspects of the broch including the double walls - there were steps and passage ways between the walls. Most inner walls and storage spaces are stone.

It is just amazing what the builders achieved such a long time ago. The last photo is from the Gurness shoreline looking across to another broch village on the island of Rassay.

Saw piercing and inlaying metal in stones

It was grand to get time in the Wee Workshop (aka garden shed) today so I could experiment with jewellery saw piercing on a few pendants. Piercing is a fiddly technique where you cut the design into the metal using a very fine saw blade and a starter hole in the piece of metal. In my case I intend to use recycled silver that I have melted, formed in moulds and flattened by putting it through a hand operated roller mill. 

The opening photo is a close up of one of the pieces from today - a dandelion seed head on a stem that grew out of a piece of stoney soil. I was using the hole and organic formed edges of the metal created in the rolling process. I have yet to drill a hole for a jump ring and give the pendant a good clean and polish. The pendant is about 50mm long and 20mm wide - 1mm thick metal

Some process photos follow. The sawing is time consuming as one has to be careful of breaking fine blades.

I had time to use a diamond blade in the angle grinder to cut grooves in two small pebble from the cove. I have glued solid brass rod into the grooves. Both pebbles will require sand and then oiling to bring out the colour. Final photo is oft two pebbles and two pendants in the rough.

An enjoyable day in the Wee Workshop out of the cold and breeze.

Of stones & sculpture

 

We are so fortunate to be able to walk to the stone shore of the cove to enjoy the stones and collect a few for art - see cut stones above. 

During the week I got to take such a walk on a blue sky day and enjoy the shore at low tide; and immerse myself in stones - see below.

I chose those stones that will have metal inlaid into them and cut the grooves into them with the diamond blade in my angle grinder - see following photos.

Today I started the process of bending and cutting 1.5mm metal wire-rod (silver and brass) and fitting it into the grooves in preparation for glueing.

On Saturday I had a young 8 year old lad from the village join me in the workshop aka garden shed to assemble a sculpture he wanted two make for the garden at his family's place. He chose the bits of timber and rust from our stash; and he decided the layout himself. Together we assembled the piece. See photo of the piece below - completed on the work bench.

He had specifically chosen a heavy metal bracket that could hold the piece on another heavy block of timber so that the work would sit at an angle and could be moved around the garden - See photo below of the completed piece open the gravel outside the workshop.

The piece was delivered yesterday afternoon and installed in a spot in the home garden he had chosen. What a grand thing to start creating art at such a young age.

Almost ready for the Pop-Up Art Show

 

Fiona and I have been doing the last bits of making and sifting and sorting for our  Pop-Up Art Show in our local (Armadale) village hall over the weekend (Saturday 17 and Sunday 18) 11am-4pm.

The opening photo shows my watercolours spread out on the second bedroom bed for inventory purposes. Of all the framed works I brought across from our Maleny home the glass was broken in only one. 

Since I have been here I have added to the stash of watercolours including the two below finished yesterday - the rushed photos don't show the colours accurately. In all I have about 35 watercolours for show and sale. All my watercolours are based on my own Scotland photos.

Fiona will be showing a stash of her pebble inspired earrings and pendants. Both of us will supplement our main bodies of work with other pieces including leaf inspired pieces, small metal books, small metal boats - and I have completed local stones with inlaid silver and brass rod and a couple of small birds carved from local birch wood.

This afternoon we have spent time on price tags, road signs (see photo below of F working on road signs) and sorting presentation materials including slates.

After I launch this blog post we will pack the car and head to the village hall to start the set up!!!!  

Visiting Peace in the Trees

 

The Peace in the Trees sculptural walk was launch some 9 years ago - the link takes you to Art 4 Place's blogspot and a scroll through it will give an insight into the background to this work. 

Fiona and I visited the sculptures on a recent walk. Though some get vandalised a bit from time to time it is still good to see the sculptures aging in place and fitting so well into the landscape. My sculpture  (Imagine Peace) pictured above is growing some mould and is surrounded by trees and plants just as it was designed to do.

Some more images of the sculptures follow.

It is good to see that these pieces about peace and the environment can still add to the conversation today.

Commission and connections

 

Many of us carry bits and pieces with us as we go through life - including stones. I carried one such stone for probably 60 plus years. My memory of it was that it was found by my prospector grandfather and given to me as a young one probably because I had shown interest in it. Over the years I gave it a clean, ground rough edges off it and wonder if there was anything else I might do with it apart from carry it forward because it connected me with my grandfather. It was not a precious stone in monetary terms; and had flaws in it. I understood it was a piece of Chrysoprase.

Last year Fiona and I commissioned Lindsey Gallacher to make a pendant for Fiona from a flake of Scottish stone that we thought connected us to a place and events. If you check out Lindsey's site you will see she does beautiful work with stones that connect people to place and people.

Fiona and I decided to take the Chrysoprase stone to Scotland this year and commission Lindsey to make a pendant from the stone so that I could gift it to my niece to make another connection - to my grandfather and myself. As you can see from the opening photo Lindsey did a great job making the pendant - 20mm in diameter - with flaws and all. I love the swirls and almost green moonlike image that has emerged.

After cutting the stone there were four corners left. Fiona suggested that we might ask Lindsey to make four small pendants or charms (1cm diameter) for my four young grand nieces. The resulting four pendants are in the photos below. The group of three are for three sisters.

All that is left of the original stone are small fragments - below. These will be gifted with the five pendants.

Lindsey's skilful work has enabled me to pass this stone on with the links to a  my prospecting grandfather. Maybe the pendants will continue to carry forward family connections for another 60 plus years!!!!