The good folk at the Royal Scottish Academy have awarded me the opportunity to spend a month up at the SSW in Lumsden. It is a fantastic place with all of the possibilities for making. I am dabbling in a few things while am here, as well as wandering the woods following the trails of feathers, on the hunt for beautiful objects. The staff at the SSW are exceptionally knowledgeable and helpful and also as crazy as you could expect. (Stories of using a trebuchet to sling molten iron into the neighbours’ field are the standard.)

I am humbled again to have been given the support to continue to make the things I do.

Smaller and smaller scale – I am wanting to scale up the work but my fingers keep telling me otherwise. fun to try and hand carve these little gears. Accuracy be damned.

Heading out for many walks in the surrounding woodlands has been very productive, in getting into touch with the place and to find all these wee skulls. This poor guy had his head pecked by someone a lot more vicious than him. The frayed bone is beautiful and still holds this story. In trying to reanimate the bird neck it occurred to me that the mechanical solutions were similar to those of angle-poise lamps.

A few more skulls that I have found on walks through the woods temporarily mounted on wood samples.

Balancing working life and art creation is never going to be easy at this stage of my career, but through opportunities like this I’m so grateful to spend time reconnecting with the practice and feel imagination and hands opening up to all the possibilities.

Sunrise walk up the hills behind the SSW. The beautiful burning colours of the broom.