Kirkcudbright riding of the marches

Just spent a few days in Kirkcudbright and stumbled across this ancient tradition of Riding of the Marches where 93 riders and horses and ponies ride the boundaries of the Royal Burgh of Kirkcudbright, a practise started in July 1485, and carried out every year since.

They make frequent stops at several pubs and hotels and they are given free drinks.

Kirkcudbright- Jessie King's former studio

This weekend is the Kirkcudbright Art and Crafts Trail .

I have just stayed in Greengate, former home of Jessie King, one of the most famous of the "Glasgow Girls" artists.

The new owners Pauline and Colin Saul are also artists and founder members of the Art and Crafts trail and they let me film inside their studio.

Melodala software

Just downloaded Melodala software to my Ipad. It makes a very quick easy to use interactive drawing tool- designed by guys in the Tate Modern and used in their current inter-active exhibition.

The Gurkhars in Scotland

The Gurkhars were performing at the Alva Highland Games despite the rain, noise from the fairground and an audience that were largely unattentive.

In the circumstances they did very well.

Forth Valley Open Studios - June

Well, I guess it's finally over and we are all chilling out and enjoying some well earned down-time.

But its been a fantastic success! One of the features of the first ever Forth Valley Open Studios were the unusual locations that some artists chose to show-case their work- portakabin, church, marquee, pub- partly because their own studios couldn't cope with an influx of visitors.


David Tapner hired the upstairs room in the Westerton pub, Bridge of Allan and had between 280-300 visitors ! Oh yes and he sold overe 20 paintings too.



Diana Hands from Stirling had a marquee in her garden and this proved popular too.

I had a stready stream of visitors - 82 in all and to be honest I couldn't have coped with hundreds coming through the house especially as I had a sound installation of wolves.

Neighbours complained so I only switched it on when visitors arrived.

Cathy Peattie at Delta Studios

Cathy Peattie, MSP, with Craig McKechnie, director of Delta Studios, Ann Shaw , secretary Forth Valley Open Studios and Lys Hansen, chair of Forth Valley Open Studios at exhibition launch.

(Photograph - Dave Hunt)

Cathy Peattie, the "singing politician" opens our exhibition

Cathy Peattie , MSP, ( bold pattern) with members of the Forth Valley Open Studios committee.


Lys Hansen, chair of Forth Valley Open Studios, with Avril Nicol, Project Co-ordinator
Well it's done!
We have just had the official opening of the first ever Forth Valley Open Studios "taster exhibition" with over 100 participating artists less than six months since we had the idea....and all without any official grant.

This is a totally artist-led initiative, something that the "singing MSP" Cathy Peattie made mention of in her introduction .
Then she sang "Bread and Roses" - to great acclaim.

But we couldn't have done it without a lot of support especially from Craig McKechnie at Delta Studios and Avril Nicol, who acted as our Volunteer Coordinator on the project and, of course, endless support from Gill and Dave Hunt of Perthshire Open Studios on whom we modelled the whole project even using their designer, Rosy Naylor from Edinburgh.

Cathy Peattie singing


(Video -Ann Shaw, photographs - Karen Howard)

Forth Valley Open Studios - June

Countdown to launch on Friday. Everything going to plan. Cathy Peattie, MSP, will sing for us to officially launch Forth Valley Open Studios- apaprently she has an amazing voice.

It is appropriate that Cathy will do the opening because her background is in the voluntary sector where she has played a major role in the community.
Check her out at: http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/msp/membersPages/cathy_peattie/

Cathy Peattie, MSP- gallery opening

Life has been so hectic recently that have not had time to update my blog.
Cathy Peattie, MSP for Grangemouth, has agreed to open the launch exhibition for Forth Valley Open Studios on June 4th in Delta Studios.

We regard this as something of a coup - especially as she has agreed to sing at the event too!

Screenprinting- Glasgow Print Studio

Screenprint right. Original image (left) created on iPhone and printed out as a photograph.


Where is the delete button? I have just completed a weekend screen printing course at Glasgow Print Studio and on more than one occasion I found myself automatically looking for the delete button - I work digitally - so it was something of a novel experience to be dabbling in this ancient technology invented thousands of years ago by the Chinese.


Yes I love screen prints but I found myself asking: why can't this be done digitally? and of course to a certain extent it can. The hand made print is superior to the machine made one but ... I remain unconvinced that it is for me.

What finally convinced me was that towards the end of the two day course I was about to print my fourth colour and accidentally picked up a squeegee left by previous student who
asked to take my place in the queue ("I will be very quick" he promised but of course he wasn't -).
The result? You've guessed - he had red paint on his squeegee, which turned my yellow into a burnt orange..
And there was no going back.
If only there had been a delete button…

Short list - medical book award

Carole Reeves and Ann Shaw taken in Carole's office at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of medicine, UCL


Well, we didn't win an award for the "Children of Craig-y-nos" but, along with four other runners-up, we received a certificate
commending us "for excellence in communicating medical and health information in a book for the lay reader".

The prize was awarded to "Medic: saving lives - from Dunkirk to Afghanistan by John Nichol and tony Rennell - a very worthy winner.

The Open Book Awards are given every year by the Medical Journalists Association.

Children of Craig-y-nos on shortlist - book award

“ A powerful story told in words and pictures assembled from first-hand accounts…reveals shocking details of children’s lives in a Welsh TB hospital.”

That’s what the judges say about “Children of Craig-y-nos”.

Well, I guess I never thought of it in that light. To me who spent four years in Craig-y-nos as a child it seemed normal. I didn’t know anything else.

It is only now with a distance of more than 50 years I realise in writing this book, along with Carole Reeves, that it was far from normal.

There are five books short-listed for the Open Book Award and the winner will be announced on Tuesday evening at a special presentation to be held at the Wellcome Foundation.

The others on the shortlist ( General readership, category) include “Manufacturing Depression, the secret history of a modern disease” by Gary Greenberg, “An Infinity of things: how Sir Henry Wellcome collected the world” by Frances Larson and “Medic: saving lives – from Dunkirk to Afghanistan” by John Nichol and Tony Rennell.

So you see the field is very strong…the miracle is that we have even got as far as the short-list!

I will be travelling by train from Scotland to London tomorrow…

Forth Valley Open Studios - June

iPhone drawing

Great spread in local paper - Wee Country News of our Forth Valley Open Studios.


This is a weekly freesheet and it updates its site tomorrow so will put a link in then.

Music pets - way of the future?

Are music pets that you train to go and fetch you favourite music the way forward? check out this new app.reviewed in Wired magazine.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/04/virtual-worlds-real-money-can-social-games-solve-musics-woes?

It says:
"The goal of Music Pets is to entertain a virtual pet by training it to like the music you like, then using points to send the pet out to find more music to add to your collection. It sounds silly, but this cartoon-ish virtual world includes every element of the real-world music experience: getting recommendations, deciding whether you like songs, collecting music, and going over to your friends’ “houses” to play songs from your collection, which, as with just about everything else, requires that you expend points."

Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/04/virtual-worlds-real-money-can-social-games-solve-musics-woes?#ixzz0kymgA5bI

Forth Valley Open Studios - June

Phew!...our brochure is almost ready for the printers. It has been a steep leaning curve! What started as an idea between a group of friends at Christmas time has snowballed into a major arts event for the Forth Valley - by the way some folk don't know where that it . We are between Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Now we are going to start on the publicity and promotion for it....watch this space.

Book award- short list

I have just heard that our book "TheChildren of Craig-y-nos" which I co-authored with Dr Carole Reeves, has been shortlisted for the annual medical journalists book awards.

Winner to be announced at a special reception in London on April 27th.

Stirling arts festival

How about this for a piece fo serendipity- our first Forth Valley Open Studios project coincides with the first joint Stirling /Galway Arts Festival in June.

Watch this space.

World TB Day -"The Children of Craig-y-nos"

My co-author Dr Carole Reeves ( Outreach Historian with the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine UCL), will be talking this afternoon on the search for the lost children of Craig-y-nos as part of UCL seminar to commemorate World TB Day.

Forth Valley Open Studios - June

We visited our designer in Edinburgh on Monday and handed over all our information for the Forth Valley Open Studios brochure- on two digital sticks! Once upon a time...well a year or maybe two years ago this would have involved huge folders and required a bulky briefcase , even a suitcase, to transport all the information.
Today the stick slips into my handbag next to my iPhone...such is the changing work environment.

We have all been astonished at the response - nearly a 100 entries, thats well over 100 artists.

Scion House exhibition

"Joy" iPhone art

It is always a bit sad to take an exhibition down though this one has been up for over five weeks. Feedback has been good though little sold. Part of the problem is that people are reluctant to pay money for something they see that has been through a computer even though you are using the same thinking process as if you were doing it physically.

The question is: what to do with the work? it is currently stored in the spare bedroom....maybe ought to sell it on E-bay? only joking.