mneTV have now moved to the ground floor of the STV offices at Pacific Quay together with Kairos and The Hour. As part of the installation they translate the words from the exhibition brochure. I think its great - I think mneTV are great gaelic patrons:

Kairos

Ruithidh i mar leanabh Zeus,
a ruith aon uair air chorra-biod,
’s air a mhala dosan airson
breith air san dol seachad.
Ruithidh i dhan a h-uile duine
a ghabhas ris a’ chothrom àraidh,
a’ phrìomh mhòmaid, an aon
chothrom, an tiotan falbhach

An Uair


Tìm is bòidhchead suainte
còmhla.
Chan nighean òg i,
ach boireannach.
Fhathast brèagha, na tàmh.
Fighte ri a h-uair
ach feumaidh fiù ’s ise sùil aithghearr
a thoirt air ais.

For four days only

I'm setting up the exhibition in the garden of my home in Ardfern for four days to coincide with the open studio event that I am taking part in From Friday 7th August to Monday 11th August.
I have draped a canvas over the branches of a large lime tree and suspened it over the figures as a canopy.
I still need to set up the sound and add the sand - hopefully it will all be fiished by Friday.
The open studio event is run by a group of artists in Argyll - www.artmapargyll.com. I hope we have some visitors - we are a bit off the beaten track - some local visitors would be great too. Anyway, Its a good excuse to tidy up the studio and to take stock of the succeses and failures, in artistic terms, of this last year.

This weekend Andy delivered the exhibition back to my studio. The end of an exhibition can be a painful time but, for me, it was made better by the timely arrival of a very generous review emailed to me by one of the gallery visitor:

There Is a Tide
Taigh Chearsabhagh Arts Centre
Lochmaddy, Isle of North Uist



There Is a Tide. The exhibition title catches my eye and an inner voice continues the quotation “… in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune …” Coincidentally, that quotation has been on my mind a lot of late.

I glimpse a lissom figure stepping across the shingle outside the café. She appears pale in the flat, grey light - pale blue. Her hair, close cropped, is Titian red. She has her back to me and her right hand is raised. Maybe she is greeting someone I cannot see. She trembles a little in the wind. I want to know more about her.

I head up the stairs to the Gallery unsure of what I shall find. I read the artist’s statement. I am relieved. I understand it - I think.

As I enter the Gallery I am reminded, fleetingly, of Antony Gormley’s figures on Crosby Beach, but the enchanted creatures here are not solid or grave or mysterious. They are exuberant, full of life and colour - the very particular translucent sea blues and greens of the Hebridean shallows on sunnier days, splashed and studded with orange and yellow, red and green. They have an existence which transcends the net and string of their construction. They have tales to tell.

Later I discover the stories of Gigha; The Engagement; The Running Man; The Hour; and Kairos and realise I have experienced a Kairos moment.



Lesley M Smith
Salisbury
20 July 2009

Berneray

We've just returned from a week in North Uist while I set up the exhibition and ran a few workshops. Its been a brilliant week. Staying in Berneray - the little island of the north of North Uist - has, as always, been a pleasure beyond telling. The sun shone relentlessly and we got plenty of time to visit the Traigh, and Sheabie and old friends. I gave a talk at the opening night and was delighted that people came and seemed to enjoy the exhibition. Gigha has been placed outside the Arts Centre. That was a bit of a headache, making sure she could stand up to the winds. I hope she lasts throughout the exhibition period - she is fragile but, I am optimistic. Afterall, this is what its about.

I have printed off tiny booklets to use as mementos. This wasn't too hard - thanks to the printer - www.inkylittlefingers.co.uk.

taigh-chearsabhagh

Taigh Chearsbhagh in North Uist have invited the exibition to come to their Gallery 1 during the summer. The dates are 30th May to 18th July. I draw a scaled plan in the garden and check how the figures will sit within the space - It looks good. I'm looking forward to seeing them in Uist for lots of reasons; Taigh Chearsbhagh is an exciting contemporary Arts centre and I have enjoyed visiting it whenever I have been in Uist; My husbands falmily is from Berneray, North Uist and it feels a bit like coming home; some of the string has been collected in Uist and, of course, Simon, my nephew who the exhibition is dedicated to, is buried in South Uist.



http://www.taigh-chearsabhagh.org/

The Party

On Saturday, AnTobar held their Christmas party. A marvelous affair with local musicians and great food, generous discounts off their shop stock and a talk by me. What more could anyone ask for. A few friends came along - Miriam, Maggie, Jane and Lizzie came over to the island and we stayed the night in Dervaig. There was a Race Night in the Dervaig Village Hall that we were sad to miss but you can't be in two places at the same time. Here is a summary for anyone that is interested and couldn't make it to the talk.


I thought it would be good to take each piece in turn and mention what was in my head when I made it, what is in my head now as I reflect on it - a sort of pit-stop tour of my state of mind.

The Engagement
The first figure. All the figures in the exhibition are moving in a direction. But she is pulling against the hand of the running man and turning round to the door. To the gallery visitor. She wants to engage with you.
For me, all art is about the anticipated engagement. ..While working on a piece, I am anticipating an engagement with you and preparing for a dialogue. We have all heard the expression, for a piece of my work to become art, it must be experienced. For me, it is more than that: for a piece of work to become art it most be made to be experienced.

And the dialogue I am preparing for is between me the artist and you the perceptive observer. I am using a traditional form of grammar for this dialogue – the grammar of sculpture. But I want to add something to this – a new language, new words. I use the string like words. These string words carry the encoded meaning. But what meaning can be embedded in a piece of string? It could be colour. The colour red for stop, for danger, for love, green for go, for the environment, yellow for happiness, blue for stability and peace. But these meanings are only shared within our culture. For example, if you went to Korea then the colour pink would be used for stability. And there are other meanings, more like associations that I hope some of us share: The sand, the sand on your feet the string under the sand, childhood memories, nostalgia, the fishing industry, fears for the fishing industry, fears for the environment, the salt water, the beach, the sand, childhood memories of looking for buried treasure.

I think that the most wonderful about making art is that it allows us to have dialogue with people we might not otherwise meet and to have these dialohues across normally exclusive time zones. This dialogue is between the artist at the time of making the piece and the observer at the time of perceiving the piece. These two time zones can be merged together in one piece of art. So, I can go to the Rothko exhibition now, for example, and engage with Rothko at the time he painted the panels.

The next two pieces also deal with time.

Kairos
In Olympia about the 4century B.C there was a sculpture and it was written about by writers of the time because it was so beautiful. It is of a young man, possibly the youngest child of Zeus, on tip toe, running, he has a razor in one hand. He has a lock of hair on his forehead and he is bald at the back. He represents opportunity, the crucial moment, the special time. Seize his forelock as he approaches because he cannot be grasped from behind. His name is Kairos. This string woman is my Kairos. She is running for everyone who is prepared to grasp the opportunity. Perhaps she is running for the person in crisis – the person looking for a life changing experience - the traveller across continents. But she is also running for the person who is not in any obvious crisis but who is sinply living their lives - for me, perhaps, getting a letter offering me the opportunity to try for an exhibition in AnTobar. not sure if I am ready for a solo exhibition. Not sure if it is the right time.But knowing if I let this chance go by I will never get it again. Knowing that this is a special opportunity. I did seixe the opportunity and I am glad that I did. Artists need to be able to identify these significant moments and act on them. We all need to.

The Hour
In common Greek the word for beautiful came from the word for hour. Beauty was "being of one's hour" Perhaps that was because they thought that a woman had a specific hour when she was most beautiful. Or perhaps it was because they thought that a woman could be beautiful whatever her age as long as she was "of her hour". I like to think that it is this. I think I am beautiful because of my age. The traditional sculptors may have preferred young girls, thinking that was when a woman was most beautiful, but I think a woman can be beautiful at any time. I think all women are beautiful and I like the way they look as they get older, I like the way the hips are, the chest is longer the legs are thinner or thicker or whatever. I use myself as primary model because I want to show this in my work. Beauty is important to me. I want to create beauty. For this, I use the string material in the same way as I would use oil paints. There is not much difference between the pigments suspended in oil and the pigments trapped in the oil of plastic. Also, you need to apply the same discipline with colour. Some colours, yellow or red or orange, can be strong. When you stand back, to look, they have warped a shape. You have to be aware of their strengths and exploit them. Also I like to think that the string is similar to brushstrokes, just as you may enjoy looking at a brush stroke repeated again and again in a painting, so the same string appear again and again in the sculptures ( a thin green one 0.5m long ) and become for me like a brushstroke, Like when you look at a van Gogh painting and see the same stroke repeated again and a again It is like that.

The Running Man
I think the material make-up of a piece of art is important. I’d like to talk now about how it all began. It was one Sunday and I was beach cleaning. I was looking for something exciting to make a sculpture. So I was looking through the seaweed and through the string looking for this special thing that I would use. I was thinking of maybe driftwood or metal or something. Then suddenly my perspective changed (like a "road to Damascus experience" ) I found myself not looking through the string, as I had een, but at it. The string was the material for the sculpture. I knew I would use the string. I made a small figure and then I made this running man. Although he was not made as part of this exhibition I have included him in the exhibition because of his significance as the first life-size figure. IN the finished piece, I want you to look at the material not just look through it.

If we take for example the Mona Lisa, few people dwell on the material makeup of the painting, they travel through the medium into a world where a beautiful woman with an enigmatic smile is looking at them and that’s good.

Likewise, when we watch a good thriller film, and maybe there is a woman in the bath or the shower and someone outside or in the shadow. We are not aware of the physical film or the textures of the image. We are not thinking about the shiny scissors cutting and splicing at the reel – we are more interested in the shiny big axe that’s about to smash through the bathroom door or the shadow of the knife on the shower curtain.

I don’t think that is the case with Charlotte’s film that is running Gallery two. Although there is an underlying narrative, we are invited to look at the surface of the film too. I was delighted to see Charlottes film when we were setting up the exhibition. I think she is doing, in film, something similar to what I am doing in sculpture. I want you to look at their makeup, not through it. I want to force attention onto the substrate

And that brings us onto the sound. A very similar thing happened with the sound as with the string. When I was planning the exhibition, I thought I would put the figures in context. I was aware that there weren’t any windows, no fresh air and it seemed that since they were of the sea and had been made by the sea that I would like some reference to that in the exhibition. I was thinking of maybe the sound of the waves. So I tried to record the waves and one morning about 4 o’clock ( because that’s when I tended to do it). I set out for the Lagoon, a beach close to where I live. But the wind picked up and by the time I got there I didn’t get a good recording so I headed back home. Just as I was coming up to my front door, I heard a noise that I had only listened through up until then, A sound I have listened through while I was trying to get my wave sound. It was the sound of the wind on the halyards and masts of the yachts on the Loch. I realised that was what I wanted and I recorded it and that is what you hear in the exhibition. I tried to make other recordings but I preferred this one made at the time that I heard it.
Then I put some music behind my sound. I chose a piece by John Cage who was an experimental musician who was active around the 1950s. He had been a source of inspiration to me when I had been making the visual piece but not for his music more for his philosophy. The piece was called the dream it had been made for piano but I found a recording by a great percussionist Justin Stolarik from New York. I think that it is a beautiful piece. It’s hard to describe but the quality of Justin’s notes and the spacing between the notes reminds me of the quality of the individual pieces of string and the spacing between them.

But "wait a minute" you might say. Doesn’t this expose a dilemma? One minute you’re classical and the next minute you’re experimental. You have to get off the fence. But I say "no!" I don’t have to. I am not living in the 1950s; I am not living in classical Greece. These artists and movements are my teachers. I need to take from them, and here is the challenge: I need to move forward with my art, produce my own.


Gigha
This all leads us on to another art movement that I find inspirational. In the mid 1960’s a group of young Italian artists began to produce art work that was using cheap inexpensive material. The movement became known as "arte povera" "poor art" not because they were poor but because any poor person could get involved – because of the nature of the material. I like this idea. Sometimes it can be messy, not here because your beaches are lovely and sandy but further south in Argyll sometimes on the beach it is so messy it’s like walking on a rubbish tip. At those times I feel as if I am scavenging on a rubbish tip like the other scavengers of the world. Except I have a nice warm house to go home to at the end of it. But we are all trying for the same thing – they are scavenging and struggling to stay alive because life is beautiful, and sometimes they are making art because art is beautiful. I am scavenging to make art because art is beautiful. This is why this exhibition is dedicated to the memory of my nephew Simon McKernan who used everything he could to stay alive because life is beautiful.

Installation

This weekend we set up the exhibition. The usual last minute panics and happy concerns. AnTobar staff were consistently patient and sensitive. The figures sit well in the space and AnTobar has provided great floor trays to hold the figures in a base of sand. The sand was more time consuming than I expected but nobody seemed too cross. I am happy with each piece and because of this I want to relax and enjoy these last moments of knot tying and checking.. Now is the time to contemplate it all, to gather what has been learned and experienced before heading on to the next piece of work. Gordon helps me perfect my sound piece. I meet an old friend Jenny Soep who pops in to see the exhibition http://www.jennysoep.com/
I come home and tidy up my studio.
The exhibition runs from November 13th to December 31st. There is a christmas party 13th December evening and I hope some friends will come to here me give an artists talk then.

Kairos

An Tobar came on Sunday to transport the figures to Tobermory. The studio now seems so empty. There are paintings hanging and stacked up against the wall and there are scraps of string everywhere. I sit and read among the chaos half wanting to start another sculpture and half enjoying this moment of inertia in the project. In the middle of this, Lee from AnTobar phones to ask some difficult questions about the artists statement that I sent her last week. She is preparing a Gallery text and some phrases need clarification. To answer her questions meaningfully, I feel that I need to be less ambiguous about my reasoning and ideas which, although painful is a good exercise. Also, I find myself deliberately leaving some things unsaid, filtering my thoughts to try to stay coherent. and I think that this voicing, editing and reiterating of ideas is important and it is great that AnTobar supports an exhibiting artist in this way.
Later, reflecting on the conversation two words still seem key to it all - "Time" and "Optimism". This sits well and I spend some time thinking about my fourth sculpture figure "Kairos"

Kairos (or Occassio), the god of the “fleeting moment,” is always running. Mark R. Freier writes
"…. refers to the right time, opportune time or seasonable time. It cannot be measured. It is the perfect time, the qualitative time, the perfect moment, the "now.".... It is not an understatement to say that kairos moments alter destiny. To miscalculate kronos is inconvenient. To miscalculate kairos is lamentable.
http://www.whatifenterprises.com/whatif/whatiskairos.pdf

Me and Mr Saatchi

Sympathies towards the Arte Povera movement of the seventies makes me wonder what materials are free in these new times. Yes, string ofcourse but what else?

Data and information mountains are gathering all around us - fortunately data bits are conveniently small - and as more and more people across social and economic bands have access to computers and the internet, much is free - is this another inexpensive media for art and where are the best rubbish dumps?

Mr Saatchi has a good site - http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/. So I make use of it. I put an advert for my exhibition on the "events page" and enter the showdown exhibition where artists come head to head.

I post the image above in the showdown area and think and write;

These life-size string women down by the waters edge have been made from string washed up on our beaches. They represent both the immigrant arriving and the beach wanderer who has been here for generations. They are markers of our joint defiance in the face of poverty and environmental crisis

Will anyone vote for me on http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/showdown/index.php?showpic=175248

Congratulations and thanks to Charles for an excellent artists site

Dream

I’ve found what I’m looking for – a brilliant version of John Cage’s “Dream” performed by Percussionist Justin Stolarik ( now Dr Stolarik ) . I found it on youtube http://www.youtube.com/datimpster after searching the web ( and other places ) and almost immediately recognised something familiar and long lost and perfect for "There is a Tide". It is everything I wanted and more - The music is rhythmic and melodic that will find a good place with the rhythms and movements within the sculptures - it has the undisturbed quality and sweet tone that should sit low beneath the sound of the wind in the masts - and it has its own energy and sense of experiment. I approach Justin to check that he is happy for me to use the performance and he is very generous in his reponse. See http://www.justinstolarik.com/ for more information about this wonderful Conductor, Percussionist and Music Educator . I can't stop smiling - how strange that a musical piece of work by another artist should bring about the same sense that I am more familiar with when I deliver a colour or a shape or a stroke that becomes the key to a visual piece that I am working on. I am so happy too that John Cage should revisit the process having been a main source of inspiration when I first considered sound as part of the exhibition. Now, for my part, all I need to do is to get a good recording of the wind in the masts - some early mornings ahead.


Clare McNiven

Rethinking Sound

I've been thinking a lot about the aspect of sound in the exhibition. I'm not sure that reproducing the sound of the waves crashing, or trickling, on to a beach is really what I'm after - even if I could achive it with my limited recording experience and equipment. Yes, I want to invoke the particular feelings of space and air and optimism that can be experienced near the sea but I'm not sure of the value of reproducing an atmospheric that may be better suited to a yoga studio or a reike room. I think if the sound is to be part of the exhbition it needs to bear the hallmark of art - or at least experiment. With the string sculptures almost complete, I allow my self some time to experiment - digitally manipulate the beach sounds and layer significant sound that I find around me. I stay close to home, this time, for my sound inspiration My daughter has a natural musicality - like many children she sings with nonsense words - language is abandoned and only the notes and herself and their relationship with each other take on value.On the other hand, on the sea loch outside my house the yachts rest in the natural harbour - early in the morning the wind drives up the loch and howls through the masks rattling the halliards and the mainsails. The sound it makes is random and musical and full of the air it carries with it. This is my sound of the sea. This is where I will look to for the base of my exhibition soundscape. But still something is missing - something beautiful - I know I will recognise it when I hear it.

Sound

Working on the soundscape for the exhibition. I want to have a piece that is musical in nature but not instrument-oriented. I hope that by incorporating the sound of the sea that I can give a feeling of dimension rather than oppression to to the gallery visitor - to let them breath a little in the windowless gallery space. When confronted by the string in its new form, the spectator may need to to re-evaluate its meaning and re-align the relationship with the material. I think the sounds provided at this time may provide a key to that activity. So, I am trying to remove the oppressive dull whirring type noise that I have picked up onto my recordings of the sea. This recording was made at Port-no-Ba on Mull. I have found two ways, using audacity software to remove them. On way is by carrying out 'noise removal' which strips a particular selected noise from the track - I can select what I think is the bad sound and try to remove it . This leaves a nice tingling sound that I think is quite melodic - if just a little bit digital sounding Another technique I am exploring is to minimise the gain and restrict to only left hand sounds. This gives a dull, peaceful rhythmic sound that I thinks of as the base line. I think I'm moving in the right direction

Today, down past Kilberry, we hunt down a tiny beach because we think that its bound to have string on it. We scramble through the rain and the tall,wet bracken down the cliff side. When we get there we find one piece of string. This is a bad harvest, but at least it is a nice piece - about a foot long and an unusual mossy shade of green. The sea, on the other hand, is being very bountiful but when I try to record it, I find it almost impossible to cutout the wind and get any definition. I think to record a wild sea I would need better equipment. I don't mind coming back with next to nothing because sometimes the process is enough and I hope that today will be present somewhere, if only subliminally, in the piece. the way back up to the road is easier and less treacherous because Katie leads the way.

Visit to Mull

This weekend, I get the chance to visit Mull again. At An Tobar, I meet Lee and we lay out the sand-tray templates on the floor. Two visitors to the gallery join us and Maggie, Louie and Lee, and these two beautiful women, all take their poses on the templates. I am amazed, as always, at how wonderfully poetic women are and how fluid. Clad in walking boots and rain jackets they manage to conjure up their magic and I am satisfied that the five string figures, standing just so, in the gallery will work. I hope my string women will live up to these life models.
Again, the staff at AnTobar are very supportive and encouraging and generous in their advice and direction.
Next day I have a go at recording the sea, at Port na Ba. Of all the beaches on Mull, I think I love this one the most. I use a mini disk and have borrowed an extension lead from AnTober keep my little mic away from the disk mechanism. I baffle the wind with a sponge and my Donegal tweed cap. I stay close to the waters edge down where the rocks and the sea meet the sand. Its not a wild sea atall the kind of tide full of little giggles at the end of its story. In the distance I can hear the soft rumble of the wider sea but I know this will just pick up as a rumble on my recording.
back home, i use Audacity to try capture the sound and I try to remove some of the ugly background noise - I'll work more on it tomorrow.

Making A Plan

With the string figures made, I place them in their relative positions to plan how they will feel together. I mark out a rectangle in the garden the same size as AnTobars exhibition space and arrange the figures. I make paper templates on the ground to be used for making the sand trays later. John Reevie, a friend, passes by with his camera and takes a couple of photos to use as a reference when we set it up for real.

September - I take stock

Early September
With the figures almost ready and the beaches increasingly mean with their string, I decide to turn my focus to the other aspects of the exhibition. I want to create a sense of place, a context in which the figures and the visitors meet and understand each other. I imagine an installation rather than an exhibition. I decide to spread sand on areas of the floor space around the figures. This will cover the bases on which they stand and allow the figures to stand in sand but, more importantly, it will protect the visitor from any overcrowding of the figures. It will keep a sense of calm. Also, I will start to prepare a soundscape. Initially, I plan that the sound of the sea on the shore will form the base and that additional layers will form what could be a sound sculpture or at least the hint of a sculpture. The last thing I want to do is to take the sea shore and manipulate it. Sculpture is often about transformation – taking one thing and creating another and this is the case with the string. But I don’t want to create another thing from the sea sounds or from the sand. I think that to attempt to sculpt the sea is stupid and to sculpt the sand is silly. The sand can lie as it is. As for the soundscape, I think that I have two choices: either I record the sea and present it as is - as good a recording as I can get with my equipment - but at least honest. Or, I take elements of sound that may or may not be extracted from a recording of the sea and I transform these into something that references the sea and aims to invoke the feeling of being near the sea.
Gordon frm AnTobar emails to offer equipment for the soundscape – I will take up his offer when I spend a weekend on Mull later this month. In the meantime, I will explore the potential of soundscapes further.

Taking Photographs

Mid August
We organise an expedition to the shore at the end of Craignish Peninsula. I want to photograph the figures. I live right beside the sea but it is a sea Loch It seems to me that it would be best to take them to the open sea. We ferry them there and then photograph them. Gordon Thomson, a photographer friend brings along a camera – I bring along a picnc and the art. The string figures look great and I get some good images to work with.

There Is A Tide

The Story So Far

Early August

This is the first year of Artmap Argyll open stuidios weekend. I open my studio to allow visitors. The figures are well accepted and people seem to be genuinely excited by them One visitor writes “ I hear music when I look at your figures.” There is no music. I wonder what it means to hear music and what kind of music it was. Is it rhythm, or harmony or an anticipated movement of the figure itself.

End of July 2008

On Sunday this week, on a visit to Mull, I got a bagful of string at the stony beach up at Quinish point so that will help me give my fifth figure her legs. I love working on her. She is half leaping and half twisting and I think she makes nice shapes. Its really such a pleasure just now to see them coming together and soon I will be ready to tidy up the feet and hands and faces. I came to ANTOBAR on Monday with five of my family and they stood in their places, acting like sculptures, so that I could get a feel for the space – we had to be discreet because there was another exhibition on - I didn’t take photos - perhap I should have. I am sure that five is the right number. I have a few decisions to make. Garry Fabian Miller was exhibiting at AnTobar when I visited. It was a beautiful exhibition, full of peace and wonder. I wasn’t sure what process he was using, and it seemed petty to spend any time labouring this natural curiosity. Wasn’t it all enough just to look. What he has created goes beyond the material and set me thinking about my own work.Yes it is important about the source of the string and the the process but I want to create a thing that is beautiful almost regardless of its material not because of it. Yet , at the same time, I want to exploit the voice of this new medium in my work. I think, by its nature, the string is heavy with shared meaning and I want this to be part of the whole experience of looking at this work. But, more than anything, I want it to be beautiful.

July 2008

More work on the string figures ( and a holiday in the Lot Valley ) keep me busy. I begin the third new figure. I also have started to build my web-site - I think it would be good to have it for the exhibition - and maybe I can get it mentioned in some of the publicity. I reckon its pretty well deconstructed and as anti-IT as I can make it - I like it a lot. It has two urls http://www.bycmn.com/ and http://www.topasrtist.co.uk/

Mid June 2008

My nephew and godson, Simon, has died. He was diagnosed with Leukemia towards the end of last year. His death challenges everything and leaves me in the dark. He is buried in South Uist, in a stunning cemetery made of sand with the open sea within yards of his grave. After the funeral, we pick some string on the beach for the sculptures and in the evening we have a barbeque with his university friends, The relentless ebb of the sea tide and their young lives make it all almost bearable, almost good.

Early June 2008

June 2008 I’ve spent the last few weeks collecting string from the beaches and working on the sculptures. I need to rework the running man – he was my first full-size sculpture and I want to incorporate him into the exhibition. His string is dirtier and more matted than the others and he has no supporting frame. I will put a bar into his leg to hold him up and I will try to drive a metal spoke through his torso to make him stronger.I need to saw his leg off to allow me to add the bar. He is old and weary and will eventually hold the hand of the young girl figure that is near complete. I imagine him holding her back as they run towards their destination. He is a burden to her, yes, but he does not stop her on her journey. She turns back towards the gallery visitor in the doorway, pivoting at the waist while her legs still move forward. She beckons the visitor to join her, to move with her, not to compromise her progress, to join her on her hampered journey. have made a plan of the exhibition space on one of my drawing boards. I need to be able to see how the figures would work together in an enclosed space. Will there be room to walk round them – will they interact with each other or, indeed, with the gallery visitor. I use pipe cleaners to make scaled models of the figures as I imagine them to be when they are made. Five figures stand well together. I think any more would be too crowded – especially if there are a few visitors in the room as well.The pipecleaner figures are pretty pleasing and I wonder should I do the whole exhibition with tiny pipecleaner sculptures – – an exhibition for another day perhaps.

May 2008

This week I responded to ANTOBARs invitation for artists to submit a biography and an exhibition proposal. I wrote:This should be an exhibition of optimism and beauty, just a stones throw away from the sea and prevalent global issues.If selected for the opportunity, I would immediately begin work on a series of life size figures – visiting beaches, collecting and cleaning string then creating the pieces.To afford the gallery visitor some breathing space, and because the string comes to me from the sea, I would like to build a reference to this into the exhibition – this may be achieved by introducing some large seascape paintings or perhaps by introducing some other media. The details of this aspect would develop as I worked on the project and considered the dimensions and nature of the gallery space.To be honest, selection for this opportunity is a daunting prospect. But I suspect that it would be a significant event in my career as an artist. This is the opportunity, the tide, that An Tobar is offering and I, for one, would love to take it at the flood.

The name of the exhibition would be:There is a Tide

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries

William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar