Unravelling Shetland

Travelling chaos

I am a volcano victim! I cannot complain as much as many people, who may still be stranded in airports around the world, would be justified in doing, however I was unlucky in having my return flight to Shetland booked on the day the volcano erupted! After endlessly changing my flight day after day, after a week I took decisive action and booked the ferry. So I arrived 10 days late with several workshops postponed, but get here I did! Today was my first day back at the school and I spent the whole day preparing the mosaic tiles. The entire room is now covered in sheets of gorgeously bright, aesthetically pleasing tiny squares of colour.

I commissioned a fellow artist maker in Brighton, Jeffrey Hardy, to make the resin moulds for the toadstool “tops”; works of art in themselves! One good thing about driving up was the eradication of the need to send them up by courier, which would have involved making special timber boxes – they are fairly large! Once we have contracted a builder the bases will be cast in concrete directly into the ground and the tops, also in concrete, will be secured on top.

One pretty major hiccup – the polystyrene forms will not come out of the moulds! A paranoia of mine which this time is totally justified. Jeffrey was trying to be too clever by using latex as a barrier but it had the opposite effect. A cheap splash of fairy liquid would have done the trick. So now I have to fit into my ridiculously tight schedule hours of chipping the polystyrene out. Ouch!

Following the intensive two weeks I spent in Shetland in March, I arrived back in Brighton full of ideas and information and laden with reference material. I laid it all out, turning my studio into something resembling a knitwear resource, with hundreds of images of knitwear, knitting patterns, design work produced during the workshops and, to complete the ambience, an oral history of Fair Isle knitting playing through the speakers.

From this immersion – an intense period of studying and drawing – came these designs. The designs are inspired by Fair Isle knitting – in particular berets – richly patterned and highly coloured, which is just what inspires me, one of the many reasons I am so excited about this commission. I took particular care to pay attention to traditional colour schemes and typical patterns and used the designs the children had come up with as inspiration towards the final designs.

The sculptures have become nicknamed as “toadstools” due to their shape. I have designed five to be sited in clusters in an elongated, meandering row, to take full advantage and make the most of the space.

The view here is looking out over the hills with the school building on the right hand side.