Time is moving along briskly, and there is much to do, people to meet and there is only 5 weeks until I need to pull together the 3 proposals for the sculpture. Mild panic arrived today, or maybe more a reminder of the need to focus and sift through ideas to develop, there still feels so much to find out. I think it will always feel that way, 10 weeks is nothing compared to hundreds of years of history.
The Fish Van Collection is building momentum with some workshops in place over the next weeks and the facebook page growing. I have visited Ocean Kinetics, a potential fabricator, felt good to be in a workshop,with metals and machinary and works in progress, these are flotation tanks.
Shetland either bewitches you or you never want to return someone said to me this morning and today was a bewitching day, it cast it’s magic, the land was lit by the late afternoon sun, showing the black scarring of the peat lines cut in the amber, lilacs and browns of the autumn moors.
The sun is setting about 4pm, it is like a race to be a part of the fading light the last of the day before the night takes a hold, another day passing, today was a glorious one with blue skies and that special light of these isles, like crystal, reflected from the sea. I need to take time to just absorb this land, it is a place of edges, textures, darkness and light, beauty and foreboding.
The biggest tree I have found in Shetland yet, it is lying on a beach like a wooden whale, the roots have been cut as has the trunk and somehow it has been at sea and washed up on this shore. It is so windy here that many of the photos I take with my phone camera are often out of focus, the wind is enough to make my hand shake, but I love this one it is SO out of focus it has made a fantastic painterly image.
This afternoon I went to the Shetland Food Fair, in search of what I thought might be some interesting fishy food delicacies to discover. Slightly disappointed to find there were no fish stands, lots of breads, cakes and fudge, the products closest to the sea were some Ocean Oatcakes from Unst made with sea water, which were duly purchased and are delicious and Frankie’s fish and chips! Famously the UK’s most northerly fish and chip shop.
http://www.frankiesfishandchips.com/
I am also compiling a list of Shetland words associated with fishing and weather, the favorite of today of is brennastyooch – fine spray of breaking wave.
