Big Art in Kirkcudbright 2011 - about half way

A  couple of blogs ago we saw the start of this year's sculpture symposium. Today we're at the half way mark and for the sculptors who have been here since the beginning things are really starting to shape up. These pictures here cover Monday through to Wednesday.

We'll kick of here with Martha and her knotted rope. Five days, it seems, is long enough for her to start receiving mail in the harbour square.

Not so wee and sleekit, it's quite easy to see what is appearing from Alan's piece. In all the times I've passed by, I don't think I've seen him working with anything more aggressive than a hammer and chisel.

It's certainly more than a hammer and chisel for Nigel, who now looks like he has the basic shape made. Though not pictured here, when I left this afternoon, he had the marking for some of the details chalked out on one side.

Nuala and Toms' piece progresses with just Nuala at the moment. I'm told that Tom was returning shortly after I left today.

One of the advantages of the symposium is that the sculptors are working close together and can interact and learn from each other. Here's Martha having a wee shot at Nuala's rock.

Eldon's piece being shaped and smoothed.

It is of course, not so straight forward to move such large pieces of stone about. Here's the forklift shifting Eldon's for him. I think it was going to get stood up - we'll see the next time we pass.

Chris, who has put a lovely stippled surface on most of her rock, is putting a tartan pattern on the flat surfaces.

The large empty surface you see here from Monday, was well on the way to being patterned when I left today. Being a bit of a daftie, I forgot to take a picture of it.

The light's not being kind to me here but the checks have been coloured with wax.

Andy Breen, who was here last year and is a regular at art events in the town, arrived today and start carving a large cedar log out side the gallery at the harbour. It is his intention to move round to the Greengate gardens once it's small enough to fit through the gate.

Peter Dowden, marked down as absent in the last blog has actually been labouring away round at the museum. Though every time I arrive there seems to be the wrong time - pictures from Peter eventually.

Michelle's lettering is progressing brilliantly - see for yourself.

Ali, who studies sculpture in Italy and whose website I eventually found here, tell's me that the way to carve a perfect sphere is to carve a perfect cube and remove the edges in a contoled manner. Here he's producing a flattened sort of sphere so it's not a cube that he's starting with.

He had a little model of the shape he intends to produce.

Big Art in Kirkcudbright 2011 - Days 1 and 2

This is the second year there has been a sculpture symposium in Kirkcudbright and this year's is bigger than last year's with, if my totting up is right, 11 sculptors. You can find my blogs for the last symposium here, here and here. Although there have been some initial problems in getting the stones moved, at least the weather has been very kind to us, so the sculptors have been able to get started on the stones just where they are.

Here are some of them sitting down by the harbour yesterday before they got started on them.

The first stone here is going to be worked on by Nigel Mullan. He intends to base his work on some local cup and ring markings.

This is his piece as it is at the end of today.

Alan Ward often works on sculptures with his wife Christine but today he's working on this alone (Christine will make an appearance shortly).

Here he is this morning shaping his rock.

This is to be worked on by Martha Quinn.

Google seemed a little reluctant to tell me about her website at first but it did eventually - it's here.

I would say it's from her rock that the first recognisable part has appeared this symposium. She has taken some of her inspiration from a piece of fishing net she found.

By this evening there were more knots.

This piece belongs to Eldon Guay, who has flown over from Canada for the symposium.

By the end of today it has started to take on some shape. I managed to find this piece by him on Flickr

Here are Nuala Early and Tom Allan, who was here last year, standing by the stone that they were working on today. I've been rather negligent and not taken a photo of how this was at the end of today, but those who seem glanced over today will get more attention in a day or so's time.

Ali Thomson, the only sculptor I haven't spoken to yet is working on this piece.

So far it's fairly been reduced in size and well on the way to being squared up.

Christine Ward, whose husband we met earlier, had already done a fair bit of work to her stone by the time I met her. She had been thinking about introducing a tartan pattern to it and has made a wee test piece for this.

Michelle de Bruin's slab was much smaller than everyone elses so she was able to get it into position without the aid of the forklift. She does a lot of lettering in her work as well many pieces based around natural history - have a look at her web site here.

Here she is drawing in the first line of the text of her work.....

.... and starting to carve.

The carving as it was this evening.

The text is to be made up of things she has seen that are connected in some way to Kirkcudbright. The gun in question is the Siller Gun which has been mentioned before on these pages. It can be found near the bottom of this blog.

Not mentioned so far, because they haven't started due to other commitments, are Peter Dowden and Andy Breen, who were both here last year. I'm sure they'll be appearing here in a few days time.

Teatime at Cowan Bridge

Pete McCarthy in his book McCarthy's Bar states that you should never pass a pub with your name on it. On This theory, I felt obliged a couple of days ago, to stop at Cowan Bridge for a few moments. In fact when I spotted that they had a tea room, I realised that it was.......

.......Tea time

Cowan Bridge is not a huge village but it has a claim to fame in that the Bronte sisters (some of them anyway) went to school here for a year or so. By all accounts, their year in school there was thoroughly miserable and harsh. Maria Bronte returned from the school with advanced tuberculosis and died (apparently she is the inspiration behind Helen Burns in Jane Eyre) and her sister Elizabeth also died within two weeks of returning from the school. Anne Bronte was saved the misfortune of having to go to school here. The building below is where they lodged in very spartan conditions.

I imagine that this bridge is Cowan Bridge itself.

The water was gloriously amber.

That's it for this very brief blog. It's been a busy old time and there's lots to tell you about. There's the Folk 'n' Ale festival in Dumfries (now what better combination could you get), I was on my way to look at sculpture in Yorkshire with Bev here, so plenty of that, I passed by a great museum in Keighley, there's a bit of stravaiging in Edinburgh and, good grief, there's still stuff left over from Chester and that trip and lots more. Has anyone got any spare time they can give me. I'm off to Dunoon to visit the kids for a couple of days and after that it's the sculpture symposium here in Kirkcudbright, so hopefully you'll join me here to see several pieces of art being made before your very eyes. Tara for now folks.

Caerlaverock castle

A few weeks ago I had to go to the dentist in Dumfries. Not wanting to waste an afternoon, I drove down the coast road for a few miles to one of the areas more interesting castles. The triangular fortress of Caerlaverock that you see today is actually the second castle to bear that name.

The first castle sits in some woodland 200m behind the castle you see above. As you can see from the artist's impression, it was a square castle built in 1220 of stone by Sir John de Maxwell (or Maccuswell) when Alexander II granted it to him. There had been a wooden fort on this point since the 10th century. It had a harbour that led out into the Soway Firth but in the intervening 800 years the sea have moved  and is now about 800 m away.

There's not an awful lot left of this castle now. There appears to have been quite a problem with the damp conditions round about it and in 1277, the then lord, Sir Herbert de Maxwell, had had enough and relocated the castle to where it is today.

In 1882 the great painter J M W Turner painted Caerlaverock on a tour of Scotland. If you're passing Aberdeen, this painting can be seen in the art gallery there. The fishermen in the foreground are a piece of artistic licence - indeed with a net that size they could have had the moat emptied in a day or so (if there was anything to catch in there in the first place)

The gatehouse of the castle. This would have been the most heavily fortified part and in medieval times would have been the main building of the castle. The lords main hall is directly above it. The castle was besieged in during Edward I of England in his campaigns against the Scots, by 87 knights and 3000 men. I'm not sure of the details of the siege. Wikipedia says it was some considerable time and the castle defenders under Sir Eustice Maxwell repelled the attacks several times. The guidebook says it lasted two days (doesn't seem long to me) and his lordship was not at home. Either way when the castle was captured, the English were surprised to find it defended by only 60 men, most of whom they allowed to go free - hanging just a token amount.

Between the siege and other rumpuses due to the wars of Independence, it was about 1370 by the time the castle was properly repaired. But as with all buildings of any age, alterations carry on throughout the ages and Caerlaverock is a particularly good example of different styles of architecture. Below is the building they call the West Range which was a two story lodging built within the castle sometime after 1450.

Just across the courtyard from it is the much more decorative Nithsdale lodging. It was built in 1634 by Robert, the first earl of Nithsdale, and would have provided accommodation much more comfortable and suitable to somebody of his status that the castle had before.

Two illustrations on a board at the castle demonstrate well what the castle would have looked like in the middle ages and the what it would have grown into, effectively a very grand mansion, by the 17th century.

In 1295

 and in 1635.

Alas, Earl Robert's fine mansion was not to last, for in 1640 it fell to a siege by the Covenanters, who in order to make it indefensible thereafter, tore down the back wall. It seems the castle never quite recovered from this and was soon abandoned.

In a completely unhistorical moment but most delight one, I spotted some fledgling swallows sitting on the ruins of one of the corner turrets. Mother and father were flying back and forward with insects they'd caught over the moat. I tucked myself away in a corner for a few minutes to watch them and managed to grab these pictures.

One last shot of the castle from the rear.