Community Workshop No. 2
Saturday May 8th
This is the second weekend workshop that we hope will encourage members of the community to get involved. Last time we ran it in the local hall, and it was all day long, but this time we learned that it is better to run it all afternoon and it is in the art room at the school, where all the mosaics are laid out, i.e. my studio. Every table has one of the circular mosaics laid out, or the pieces that fit together around the curved sides of the structures.
We had a good day today – a steady flow of participants, most of whom stayed for several hours. Various individuals and families came and helped to create their mark within the mosaics. The bakery very kindly donated a fabulous supply of baked goods, as usual, and some delicious soup, so everyone was very well fed too! We are definitely succeeding!
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 6TH 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” 5th 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 3RD 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.
