The Guga Stone - Study for Fulmars
March 11th, 2013 Doug
Study for Fulmars
Some Beasts - Out Of The Debris, Rich Mix, London 21.2.13
February 23rd, 2013 Doug
On Thursday the 21st of February, Isobel Dixon, Simon Barraclough and Chris McCabe performed The Debris Field for the second time to a London audience, at Rich Mix, in Shoreditch. As with the previous event at the BFI, it was both a chilling and moving experience for the audience. From the skilled performance of the words by the three poets, to the accompanying film by Jack Wake-Walker and soundtrack by Oli Barrett, the finished result was stunning.
For the first half of the evening, each of the Debris Field members presented new or recent projects and collaborations. This gave Isobel and myself the opportunity to perform and present a short selection of poems Fand images from our D. H. Lawrence inspired collaboration, answering and echoing the work in his 1923 poetry collection, Birds, Beasts and Flowers.
Isobel Dixon reading ‘Whalefall’ at Out Of The Debris
Isobel read four new poems, The Bats, Ikizukuri, Wreckfish, and Whalefall. This was the first public airing for the poems and pictures, and it was excellent to get such a positive response from the appreciative audience.
Over the next few months, Isobel and I will be developing new pieces for the project, responding not only to the poems of Lawrence, but to each others new work. Watch out for further posts of poems and images on The Net Mender, and for news of publications and exhibitions from the collaboration.
Click on this link to view The Debris Field website
A new book of The Debris Field has been published by Sidekick Books. Click on this link to purchase your copy, only £7.50 inc. P&P.
Sketchbook study for ‘Wreckfish’
The Guga Stone - ‘Abandoned’ Study for the poem ‘Smallpox Epidemic 1727-29′
December 7th, 2011 Doug
SMALLPOX EPIDEMIC 1727-29
And we thought we were in danger
with seas snarling below us,
winds buffeting like gannets’ wings
while we tore their flesh for food.
And the cold that racked us
as fingers smashed at stone for shelter
was sharp as spume; a blitz of white
that stung us with each storm.
Hirta on the horizon during cloud
- yet when skies were clear,
Conachair sharp with sadness,
Oiseaval a clenched fist out of reach.
Where were the people
who had abandoned us.
the souls who had condemned us
to endless exile on this rock?
Yet when we had heard all they had suffered
- the scorching heat of fever -
we felt half-glad to have been stranded on that stac,
to have endured the chill
Of spring and winter on its stone
while they lacked strength to even dig
graves for those who were not there to greet us
when we returned to Village Bay.
‘Abandoned’
Study for Smallpox Epidemic 1727-20
Poem reproduced by kind permission of Donald S. Murray
The Guga Stone - ‘Storm-Petrel’ Work In Progress
November 9th, 2011 Doug
Work in progress for Storm-Petrel
The Guga Stone - Sketchbook Notes for Storm Petrel
October 28th, 2011 DougI have often said on my blog that I feel privileged as an artist to be given some fantastic texts to work with by some of the countries finest writers. And no exception to this rule is my current collaboration work with Donald S. Murray. The Guga Stone has been a fantastic source of images and ideas for me, and I have had a very enjoyable time interpreting the poems and prose into visual ideas that will, hopefully, compliment Donald’s writing.
Sketchbook notes for Storm Petrel
The sketchbook notes featured here are for Storm Petrel. The poem, one of several with the tiny seabirds as its subject, has as its central theme the birds being attracted to the island by the sound of psalms being sung by the church congregation. But with the abandoning of the island by its inhabitants, there is no longer the attraction of the voices to guide the diminutive sea travelers migration;
Instead, they fluttered blindly,
sight dark as small heads,
the furtive tips of wings,
Hoping to catch an echo
of sermons, lost sound-waves
from dead elders precenting
Lines for a faithful congregation
that might stop these seabirds
flailing
( extract from Storm Petrel )
Sketchbook notes of Storm Petrels and a design for the final image
As with the other images I’ve been creating for Donald’s writing, I’m trying to produce work that will sit alongside the poetry and enhance the viewers experience of the texts.
Over the next few weeks I’ll be developing this and other images which will be forming our book and exhibition for The Guga Stone. Again, many thanks to Donald for allowing the reproduction of his poems and prose on The Net Mender
The Guga Stone - Sketchbook Notes for ‘Mackay’s Last Sermon’
October 26th, 2011 DougMACKAY’S LAST SERMON
After visiting the homes on Main Street,
Mackay’s mouth was awash with the best Lipton’s tea,
that brown liquid swishing round his tongue
while he preached on Exodus that morning,
the fine words of his sermon flowing
over the heads of worshippers till he spoke
of the Red Sea parting,
when the dam of teeth gave way
and, complete with grains of tea-leaves,
that sweet infusion spilled from lips,
gushed from throat,
trickled from his finger-tips,
till flooding down the aisle.
it swirled around his pulpit,
swept up an unused baptismal font,
the bowls used for collections,
and Gillies and MacKinnon took
the polished wood of pews
and hammered out a vessel
that sailed through the open doors of kirk
sending him into exile,
out the mouth of Village Bay.
Sketchbook notes for Mackay’s Last Sermon
The Guga Stone - A Collaboration With Donald S. Murray (1)
October 25th, 2011 DougA new book and exhibition collaboration with Donald S. Murray, author of ‘And On This Rock’ and ‘The Guga Hunters‘
SMALLPOX EPIDEMIC 1727-29
And we thought we were in danger
with seas snarling below us,
winds buffeting like gannets’ wings
while we tore their flesh for food.
And the cold that racked us
as fingers smashed at stone for shelter
was sharp as spume; a blitz of white
that stung us with each storm.
Hirta on the horizon during cloud
- yet when skies were clear,
Conachair sharp with sadness,
Oiseaval a clenched fist out of reach.
Where were the people
who had abandoned us.
the souls who had condemned us
to endless exile on this rock?
Yet when we had heard all they had suffered
- the scorching heat of fever -
we felt half-glad to have been stranded on that stac,
to have endured the chill
Of spring and winter on its stone
while they lacked strength to even dig
graves for those who were not there to greet us
when we returned to Village Bay.
Sketchbook studies of Hirta and Boreray for the poems Smallpox Epidimic 1727-29
Over the past few months, I have been working on a new collaboration project with my friend and poet Donald Murray. For anyone who new to the blog, Donald and I have worked on several projects in the past, including one where i designed the cover for his book ‘Small Expectations‘.
For the current collaboration, I have been creating images and ideas that will form not only illustrations for the book, but also an exhibition to showcase both of our works. As with previous collaborations, it is a pleasure for me to be working with Donald’s writing. His work is full of wonderful imagery, and is a gift for an artist such as myself.
The book has a subtitle, ‘Lies, Legends and Lunacies from St.Kilda’, and you can take it from that that the stories, though loosely based on fact, aren’t always ‘true’. The story is told through Calum, an ex-islander returning to St.Kilda and visiting the empty houses of the former inhabitants, and his experiences take the form of a series of poems, prose and short stories. During his visit, Calum starts hearing stories and talking to the people who used to live on the islands Main Street.
“It wasn’t long, however, before the people in the houses started talking to him again. At First, it was the women peeking out of the tartan shawls they wrapped around their faces, sqeezing out a word or two. ‘It’s a fine day, Calum…A fine day.’ After that, made bold, perhaps, by their wives and mothers talking, it was the turn of the men to begin using their voices…Or others talking about how they had lost sons on the cliff-faces, trying to capture the sea-birds that still reeled above his head. They were the ones who had coped. they were the ones who had survived in this place. Slowly the tales and verses began to echo, the words he had heard in all the different houses Calum visited on the island…”
It is Calum’s (or should I say Donald’s) stories that i have the great pleasure of working from, trying to create art work that will do justice not only to Donald’s fine writing, but to the mood and spirit of the islands.
Over the next few months, I will be posting notes and sketchbook ideas illustrating how the project is developing. We are hoping to have the book published sometime in 2012, and the exhibitions of the work should take place in 2013. Please make sure you pay a return visit to the blog, and follow the progress of the project as it develops.
Sketchbook study for the Prologue
‘After all that, some sheep and Fulmars had even succeeded in getting into number 12 and fouling the place. The birds had built their nests where old men and women used to perch for hours, chatting about all that was happening in the narrow confines of the world.’
The poem and extracts above are reproduced by kind permission of the author. To find out more about Donald’s previous books, follow the links at the start of the post to view the Birlinn website.
Sea Travelers - Arrival from the Southern Hemisphere
March 31st, 2011 Doug
Recently, I have been developing a new body of works called Sea Travelers, a small sequence of carved images of long distance migrants such as Arctic Terns and Atlantic Salmon. As part of this work, I am being helped out by my friend, wildlife illustrator and textile artist Kim Chater. (see previous post Sea Travelers - Beachcombing and Collecting)
Kim lives with her husband and family on New Island, part of the Falkland Islands, and has been collecting driftwood for me to use in making the carved elements of the Sea Travelers. Yesterday, the postman delivered a package from the Falkland’s containing new pieces of driftwood, ready to turned into whales, eels, shearwaters, salmon…..only the form of the wood will tell!
Watch out for future posts of drawings and images of the Sea Travelers as they develop, and in the meantime, please take some time to visit Kim’s Sea Felts page on Facebook to see examples of her fantastic nuno felt work.
Kim Chater’s photograph of sea sponges, and her felt work inspired by their beautiful colours.
Sea Travelers - Beachcombing And Collecting
February 12th, 2011 Doug
A small collection of whale bones
One of my favorite pastimes, particularly when I’m back on the west coast of Scotland is walking the beaches, searching for interesting objects and fragments of driftwood that can be carved and included in art works. Over the years I have created many objects from wood and various flotsam found on our coastline, from the Poem Boats carved from reclaimed 150 year old timbers of Stornoway Harbour pier, to the assorted beach trinkets collected from an islands bays in Souvenir Of Cumbrae.
Souvenir of Cumbrae
As part of a new sequence of work I am creating, I have enlisted the help of various friends in far flung island locations to help collect pieces of driftwood which will be carved into the objects for the new assemblages. One of these friends is Kim Chater, an American textile artist and illustrator who currently lives on New Island, on the west side of the Falkland Islands group. The beaches around Kim’s home island are full of a wide assortment of materials which have been washed up by the wind and tides, ranging from trees and wood from South America, to a wide assortment of cetacean and other marine mammal bones.
Top and above - The Colliers, New Island
In a conversation I had with Kim, she referred to these pieces of flotsam and jetsam as ’sea travelers’, and I have adopted this as the title for a sequence of work I am going to create using the collected driftwood. I am planning on developing a series of carved assemblages featuring famous sea travelers from the natural world, species such as Whales, Salmon, Shearwaters, Eels etc, and particularly those species such as the Arctic Tern, which travels annually between the Southern and Northern Hemispheres.
Tangles of wood and weed
I’ll be continuing to collect and carve materials over the next few months, and looking forward to the arrival of interesting parcels bringing new materials from the distant island locations of the Atlantic. So far I have driftwood carving materials I have collected from the Outer Hebrides, and the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland, as well as a selection collected from the Falkland islands in the far south by Kim. I’m hoping to gain some assistance from some of my Icelandic friends in the north, as well as trying to develop contacts in the Scandinavian islands of the Arctic Circle.
Mortar and pestle rocks
I would like to give heartfelt thanks to Kim Chater and family for their friendship and beach combing skills on the Falkland Islands, and also to the wildlife illustrator Jane Smith, for her assistance in transporting some of the sea travelers over the vast distance of the Atlantic Ocean.
Rosie and the Protector
To see some of Kim’s textile design work go to Sea Cliff Felts Facebook page, and click ‘like’.
For Jane Smith’s blog Wildlife Art, follow this link.
And to see more of the fascinating features of New Island, visit their website here.
All photographs reproduced by kind permission of Kim Chater
