Unravelling Shetland

MUCKLE ROE

In eleven days I have managed to have two half days off, and I went for a fabulous walk to the Hams at Muckle Roe. The hams is a stretch of coastline in the western part of Northern Mainland, not far from Brae, which is five miles along Olna Firth from Voe. The road to Muckle Roe winds along high up above the coastline with fabulous views across the water the whole way along, dotted with houses. The road ends and from there it is a 4km walk across a desolate, beautiful heather clad landscape with the reward of spectacular views across to Northmavine. It was also one of the only spring-like days we have had since I arrived!

WORKSHOP 6^TH MAY

It feels like we are moving on now; things are coming together. It no longer feels like a mountain still has to be climbed. One mosaic is finished; a second is looking good, getting there, a third is about half way and the fourth, well, it’s just beginning! I have decided to concentrate on four mosaics in total. Five would be pushing it.

An important reason why I am feeling optimistic is because after many weeks of my very attentive and marvellous manager Frances making enquiries with no positive results, suddenly I have found a builder who is willing and able to cast the concrete for me, this week, no less! And the price is most definitely right. He is going to use recycled glass as the aggregate and other green products, which is also good news. Martin picked up the fibre glass mould today to start casting the “tops” and is coming on Saturday to cast the bases on site, which is prefect timing as I am running the last community workshop there that day, so people will be able to look at the designs, the mosaics and the concrete being prepared and hopefully properly understand what will be installed very soon. I still have to secure a tiler, but I now have a couple of hot numbers in my pocket! The plan is to allow the concrete as long as possible to go off (about 4 weeks in this scenario) and then come back to oversee the tiling, which could be fairly complicated. This is because the shape of the structures is quite demanding given that they need to be clad seamlessly with many composite parts of mosaic. It is especially challenging because I do not have the full polystyrene forms to practice on, so in a sense I am doing my best to calculate the exact size of every piece, however I will not know what they will look like until the structures are in place, which will happen after all the tiling has been finished. I am confident they will look good in the space.

“FAMILY WORKSHOP” 5^th MAY

Today was great. Seven parents turned up, with several small children/babies in tow, and it was lovely to see families sitting and working creatively together. By now, many of the participants have got into the swing of mosaic making, in whatever contribution they are making: cutting, arranging and sticking tiles, helping, making tea! We achieved a lot and finished the first of four large mosaics. A lovely day!

SECOND WORKSHOP 3^RD MAY

Today was good and very busy! I worked with the peerie class (primary 1-3) in the morning and the big class (primary 4-7) in the afternoon. A few parents came to help out, as well as my new volunteers, Iwona and Chloe, who were a great help. I arranged two different activities and it was much more satisfactory as each class was split into two, so I had half the number for half the time and then they swapped over. One group was working on the mosaics while the other group was painting the clay plaques they made last time with underglazes. I plan to fire the clayworks in the local secondary school kiln. Although working in ceramic was not possible due to time constraints for this project, the school were very keen on clay, so I managed to include some clay activities and each pupil will be able to take something home.

After running two workshops with the younger class, I requested that we concentrate on involving the older class from now on for two important and very logical reasons: I have a lot of work to do to get these very labour intensive, detailed mosaics made before my ferry leaves and the older class are better able to help me achieve this. Secondly, the younger pupils are not only too young to use the tile cutters, but their attention span is short, let alone for a two or even one hour session. I still have three workshops to go, one of which was meant to be for the wee ones, but we came to a happy conclusion: I would work with the older class and all the younger ones whose parents attended.

FIRST WORKSHOP APRIL 26^th

All the school and community workshops programmed for the next few weeks are “family” workshops, therefore parents and relatives have been invited to attend with their children.

The first workshop was with the peerie class (peerie is Shetland dialect for “small” or Scots “wee” and ubiquitously used). This was slightly challenging, because I had the whole class – admittedly only 13 pupils, but more than double the number I would happily work with for a mosaic workshop with this age group. The arrangement had been made before I arrived and so I decided to stick to it, and it went well, although of course the wee ones are too young to use the tile cutters and their attention span is fairly short, even though I had various activities to occupy them with. Several parents came along, so there was at least one adult on every table, and the adults were kept very busy cutting tiles for the kids to stick in arrangements on to fibre-glass mesh. This mesh is a new discovery for me. For years I have been making mosaics using the reverse method by sticking the tiles face down on to brown paper, which is applied to the cement and then peeled off afterwards and grouted. The invention of this mesh means that it is possible to work face up, which is far preferable, and hence no hassle of removing the paper afterwards.

A main aspect of this project is the number and length of workshops, which was set in stone at the bidding stage as part of the funding requirements and therefore established before the artist was employed. Nine full day workshops are required, which, once I started working on my schedule, I quickly worked out would leave me with very little time to actually make the mosaics. Paid time, that is, for an undeniable fact is that in my line of work, it is very difficult indeed to stop oneself from working overtime, usually a lot! It is easy enough to prepare a timescale, but the reality is, once the creative process is under way, one would have to be extremely hard headed to decide to stop because the working day is over. This is definitely a factor relating to why most artists do not earn enough, even those, like myself, who are always working on paid commissions, to the extent that a usual working week is at least 6 days and too often up to 14/15-hour days. The monster needs to be fed (money) and given that for every day I get paid for, I work about 2 more unpaid looking for the next job, marketing, etc. It never stops. That’s the reality.

Anyway, the reason there is a problem with having so many days taken up running workshops for the kind of projects I do is an intrinsic irony within the marriage of public art and public involvement. Almost every public art project includes a key element of community consultation, which is, of course, essential for the resulting artwork to be owned by and a source of pride among the local community. There are many ways of involving people in this consultation process. The problem I am referring to is when I am required to involve people in the production of the final piece, because it means the quality of the artwork is compromised. Most of the commissions I work on have a specified life span of around thirty years, although life span aside, a professional piece of artwork is necessarily of a professional standard. The irony is that this involvement is a necessary and important aspect of the commissioning process, and yet it means the way this involvement needs to be carried out must be specifically suited to the medium employed and the artist’s working method and too often it has been designed with a “one-size fits all” attitude.