Christmas 2005

Hi!
This looks like being the last entry before I am submerged in "The Family Christmas".
So, what's up? Well Karen Howerd and myself are organising a one day conference on Art and Technology in the 21st. This is under the auspices of NAN -National Artist Network- set up by Artists Newsletter magazine to encourage networking amongst artists. New Media Scotland are also involved.

This will take place on Saturday January 28th in the Changing Room gallery, Stirling.

Watch this space!

Childrens Drawings

Some stills from a film I made based on childrens drawings in The Park gallery, Falkirk during the Lys Hansen exhibition.

Art @ Kilbryde Castle, Scotland

This is the fifth art exhibition to be held at Kilbryde Castle, near Dunblane showing the work of a number of local artists.

We drove for miles down remote country lanes and eventually arrived on a wild dark wintry evening with gale force winds howling around us at this huge isolated private castle.

Pictured above: "Chicken" by Gill Wilson, "Burning" by Jim Wylie.

Tate Modern - Rachel Whiteread

Just visited Tate Modern in London and saw Rachel Whiteread's amazing installation of the inside of cardboard boxes cast in white fibre glass.

Healing Medicine exhibition, Edinburgh

Three Oncologists
- painting by Ken Currie in the current exhibition Healing Medicine at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery , Edinburgh.

This astonishing work of art celebrates the power of paint in the hands of a master.

It is of Professor R. J Steele, Professor Sir Alfred Cuschiere and Professor Sir David P Lane of the Department of Surgery and Molecular Oncology, Ninewells Hospital, Dundee

Lunch-time music, Stirling University

Martin Davies ( piano) and Ian Ainsworth (bass-baritone) gave a free lunch-time concert in the foyer of Stirling University.
Their recital"Musicians, Poets and other Animals" included Apollinaire's Le Bestiaire and a selection of English songs.

Their polished performance gave much pleasure to a large lunch-time audience.

Both are former members of staff at the university.

Lys Hansen art exhibition, Smith gallery, Stirling

Lys Hansen has two exhibitions opening this weekend - one at the Smith gallery, Stirling and the other at the Park Gallery, Falkirk.


Artist Anne Wegmuller (centre picture) gives Lys a helping hand with hanging the exhibition.

Robinson Crusoe

How's this for a bit of serendipity.
While driving along the Fife coast I pulled in at Lower Largo and stopped outside a house where Alexander Selkirk, the man who Daniel Defoe modelled Robinson Crusoe on, was born. Now they have this statue there to commemorate it.
Next day the newspapers are full of an international expedition who have found the actual campsite where Alexander Selkirk lived for four years on a remote Chilean island in the Juan Fernandez archipelago.
They found traces of Selkirk's camp with animal bones and holes that appeared to have housed poles for a shelter.

Wallace - Smith Gallery, Stirling

Is it possible to get TOO MUCH of Wallace?
I ask this question after attending the book launch of "The Wallace Muse" at the Smith gallery, edited by Lesley Duncan and Elspeth King. The book's fine, a gathering together of poems inspired by Wallace. The Provost had recently returned from New York where a quarter of a million people had viewed Wallace's sword - taken over from Stirling for Tartan Week. In the gallery was an amazing installation of a coffin, it looked like a regal lying in state devoted to Wallace .Our national hero ( "thank you Braveheart") died some 700 years ago and never got a burial- he was hung drawn and quartered and his limbs dispersed around the country. Now he is to be a proper burial....

Prague

Having a few days in Prague. Stop off at the cafe used by Kafka, in the Jewish Quarter, and now named after him.

Walking along Charles bridge listen to an unusual rendering of Fur Elise- played on wine glasses.

They say the Sex Museum is the top tourist attraction in Prague and that the city is rivalling Amsterdam as the sex capital of Europe. In the night the city is heaving with hen and stag parties.

Having already been robbed on the underground in Chicago and Paris I was on the alert in Prague. Just as well cause I spotted that we had been targeted. Three men followed us on to the Metro then once they realised we were watching them they jumped off.

Discovered Black Theatre. The Wow! theatre group were opposite our hotel. Amazing!
(www.wow-show.com/wow/main.html)

Old Man of Storr

Environmental artist Agnus Farquhar created the most amazing noctural art project on the Isle of Skye this summer. It involved walking to the top of the Old Man of Storr- at midnight! Well, you set off at 11pm to be precise. I was there two days before the launch and walked up in daylight. There's a fantastic view from the top- which you wouldnt see if you did it in the dark. However, I can well believe that the memory of the experience of doing this walk, tricky in daylight and even more perilous in the night, would remain with you for a very long time.

Ian Hamilton Finlay

Some pictures taken during a visit to Little Sparta, a remote hilltop where Ian Hamilton Finlay , an international artist who is finally getting the recognition in Scotland that he deserves. He's in his 80th year and has three retrospectives in Edinburgh.

Whisky in Scotland

Sometimes it's the unexpected that turns out to be the most interesting. I had gone to Dufftown to see the artists in residence at the Glenfiddich Distillery only to discover that they did not open until noon.
So I went to the Speyside Cooperage to kill time and spent the entire morning there. Here skilled craftsmen make and repair around 100,000 casks, or barrels , a year. They work at a fantastic pace and are paid peace-rate.
(www.speysidecooperage.co.uk)

New Orleans

Where are they now? Hurricane Katrina is about to hit New Orleans, the worst in its history. This guy runs the Voodoo Museum with his collection of exotic snakes. What's going to happen to them in the forthcoming hurricane? he can't escape and leave his snakes behind....
I made a video some time ago in the Voodoo museum and a small section is included in my mini movie which I have entered for the first ever Guardian's laptop movie competition.
New Orleans is below sea level and waves of around 20 feet are expected.
(www.artcom.com/Museums/vs/mr/70116-31.htm)

Francis Bacon exhibition

After a week of video-editing I needed a break from the computer and decided to look at some paintings.....so I visited the Francis Bacon exhibition at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh which everyone is raving about.
Yes, its interesting but hardly riveting. He seems to have spent his life painting his succession of gay lovers. And they all looked the same.
Somehow it all looked so old fashioned. Are we really expected to stand there and admire in silence a bit of canvas on the wall? somehow now in the 21st century one expects more of art.

And I got that out in the corridor where I saw the gallery's newest purchases, a set of Damien Hirst medical prints. Now I could identify with that!

drawing

still trying to figure out file format for uploading drawing images...seems tif works.some more of my drawings can be seen on my website (www.annshaw.net)

Edinburgh Festival

Visited Edinburgh Festival.
Wanted a "cheesy" photograph of an icionic Edinburgh view and one of a piper. During the Festival there appears to be a piper on every corner so I followed the sound of this one to Princes St and found it was a blind piper with his golden Labrador. Feeling very guilty and voyeuristic I threw some coins into his box and took this photograph. Was I right to do so? if he had been sighted I would not have hesitated.
This raises again all the moral dilemmas about photographing people in public.

Paradise flower

This is just an experiment to find out what the new Blogger imaging software will upload. Photos are OK but drawings are not. The image is of a Paradise flower I was given which I have used as a motif for some thank-you cards.

Evening view from my home

This photo was taken last night from the kitchen window.

Katie, Changing Room gallery, Stirling

This is a photo of Katie watching a video I made of her grandmother's hands for a week I spent last year in the Changing room gallery, Stirling, part of their innovative scheme of inviting artists to come in and create work in the gallery. I chose to work with members of the public inviting them to have their hands photographed. (www.stirling.gov.uk/changingroom)