Scottish friends and artists

In this blog, we’ll only be able to introduce our Scottish friends to you and to suggest some thematic affinities in their work – not that they comprise anything like a conscious school or group. But even they were surprised in re-visiting each other’s studios to see what common currents were running among them.

One immediate thing that struck us was their common innate sense of the organic continuity between their own creative processes…

…and nature’s creative process as a whole.

They need to hold these beings in their hands intimately.

Finding is not enough.

Observing is not enough.

You have to make. With joy and reverence you have to become a conscious and active element in the ferment of the whole yourself.

Does love come first? Dante once had asked.

Or does vision?

(Click on the image to read the texts.)

We met Frances Law while we were still back home in California.

We met her through her work, which we saw on-line and immediately loved.

This assemblage is titled Over the Ocean.

Even before we had met Fran and her husband John in person, they had set out for us an itinerary through the archaic west coast of Scotland that brought us to Iona.

That was no accident.

Fran walks and works the liminal Scottish coast.

And she and John and their children Uist and Rowan are on Iona as faithfully as a season.

Fran doesn’t find and adfix things.

And it isn’t an accident that her assemblages remind you of archaeological findings.

The archaeology is within ourselves.

Fran is retracing layers and layers of our own history,

…which means that she is re-connecting us with stone and earth and bone and sea.

Iona early morning

If you read our last blog, you’ll be able to gloss this work yourself. It’s called St. Columba’s Tears.

Before we had ever met them, Fran and John had invited us to stay in their Birnam flat in Perthshire.

That’s Birnam as in Birnam Wood from Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

And why not?

Tradition says that Macbeth and Duncan were both buried on Iona, as have been many other Scottish kings.

Birnam and nearby Dunkeld were our first respite from traveling.

This meant that from being wanderers suddenly we had become villagers again.

When we left Dunkeld, John mailed two mixes of Scottish songs and ballads which were to meet us later on the continent.

This means that I can put on headphones in a café in Provence

…and be right back in Dunkeld to type these lines to accompany Debi’s photographs for you.

There is sometimes a literary element in Kyra Clegg’s work

…and a narrative thread that weaves together a series whose interrelationships have been deeply felt.

For instance, Kyra has composed a series called Cabinets for Emily that suggest 19c "curiosity" or "wonder" cabinets that present Kyra's own "collection of things seen in the life and poetry of Emily Dickinson."

We hadn’t left Iceland all that long before we met Kyra, and so when we saw a series she had composed with a poet, based on the imagined visions of an Icelandic seeress, it felt like the images and words suspirated from a land both ancient and familiar.

"Stone"

The smooth quartz pebbles
of our sightless eyes
are seeking you out.

By magnetite and lodestone
we summons you home.

"Salt"

We call you from the burial-mound
with song, and a sweet pipe-tune
-- we, the skull and thigh bone.

You need to look long and deeply for all the interrelationships to arise.

And you want to look that long.

Images (like the images in our own dreams) are skittish beings. We need to give each the time it needs in order to understand the whole.

Shona Leitch gathers and holds and shapes as well. Here her sculptor’s hands are already shaping out of thin air.

She watches organic and geological processes and sees where and how she might enter in.

Perhaps it’s a sculpture that might rest inside a dwelling,

…or an organic and composed landscape outside.

Everything seems to whorl like the DNA and galactical spins that are at the heart of things.

Like Fran Law’s paintings of shells

…and Nigel Ross’s wood sculptures.

Nigel Ross

…and Claudia Wegner are partners. (Claudia is on the left -- with Shona Leitch).

Nigel and Claudia didn’t wonder much how their respective work would look if they placed it together in their workplace.

You judge for yourself.

Among other things, Claudia is an expert on fungus, collaborating with the leading Scottish and British scientific experts in the field of medicinal mycology. An exhibition of her work has just opened at Dundee University. Its aim is to portray the complex beauty of fungi and their medicinal and therapeutic values.

"Trees and wood are a theme that has run through my life," Nigel says.

He was happiest as a child running wild in Hertfordshire woodlands. Later his family moved to Arran Island in Scotland, where Nigel worked in various forestry fields.

He sculpts beautiful and unexpected abstract forms from the lengths of fallen trees – work that appears in homes, woodlands, parks, and gardens across Europe and the US.

And there is a functionality in his work that arises from the abstract design, rather than conflicting with it.

Don’t worry. Your body will find that function

...if you allow it its own natural spontaneity. And time.

Sources

We could only introduce these friends and artists to you in this blog. To see more of their work, visit their websites.

Frances Law

Kyra Clegg

Shona Leitch

Nigel Ross

Iona

Our last blog was about leaving a place, but that was a long time ago.

When we arrived in Vézelay (France), we found ourselves being led to a room in a prayer-house with this view of the basilica.

Tradition says that relics of Sainte Marie-Madeleine are in the crypt here.

And Vézelay has remained one of the most important points along the pilgrimage route through France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

But to tell you how we arrived here, we have to go back quite a bit.

In fact, like Marcel Proust, perhaps we should go all the way back to childhood.

This is Proust’s room in his aunt’s house in the village of Illiers, where he used to go for summers as a child – and which he transformed into Combray in Á la Recherche du Temps Perdu.

Á la Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called a novel of the self.

But don’t we all write novels of the self ?

A madeleine. Perhaps a little armagnac. And we are on our way.

In 1971, the hundred year anniversary of Proust’s birth, Illiers renamed itself Illiers-Combray.

But even when you’re walking in the streets of Illiers, you sense that Combray has always been more real than Illiers – and that, as Proust says, his novel is an optical lens wherein each of us might read ourselves.

He also said his novel was like a cathedral – which is another lens through which we might read ourselves.

But let’s not go as far back as childhood – at least not yet.

Let’s go back to the island of Iona instead.

Iona is one of the important places on this journey we haven't talked about yet,

…one of those places that feel like they will never leave you.

Even when you cannot keep pace with yourself, they still remain waiting for you faithfully – waiting for you to dip that madeleine into a little tea or armagnac.

And we keep landing in places that ask for a lifetime to begin to know them.

So how can you keep pace with that?

Debi keeps saying, "Come on, let’s go – or else we’ll never reach all the important places we want to go."

Of course, there’s always one more photograph to be taken.

"Can I photograph your sheep?“ Debi asks the crofter.

We wish we could play for you his Scottish answer. It would be worth more than all these other words.

He called his dogs,

…and in short order

…all the sheep

were front and center

…while all the time I was thinking,

"Are you really so sure there’s anywhere else we want to go?"

And both of us feel that way about Iona.

Of course, you‘d have to wish away the relatively modern, restored 13c abbey – because it wasn’t there when Columcille arrived in 563 ce.

St. Columba is Columcille‘s name -- Latinized.

And if you could travel back to the Iona of his day, what you would see would be beehive-shaped timber and turf cells, surrounded on three sides by the vallum, a low stone and earth wall to mark the precinct of the Celtic monastery.

The fourth side to the monastery is the sea.

The monastic cells wouldn’t have looked quite like this caseal which is old enough, but of course it isn’t timber and turf. All that would’ve burnt back to the good earth long ago.

Nor for the same reason would they look exactly like St. Gallerus‘ oratorio on the Dingle peninsula in Ireland.

But click on the photo and look at the genius of this architecture. Not a spit of mortar. No roof-cribbing. Just precisely hand-laid, tiered stone -- watertight for a milennium.

But on Iona, what you still can see is the vallum, even 1400 years later. It’s the diagonal line in the earth just beyond the grazing sheep.

And if you would have crossed these waters a couple centuries after Columcille did, you’d have found a cluster of high crosses around his tomb – to mark the important pilgrimage site.

Tradition says that his tomb was where the small chapel in the 13c abbey is now – which you step into through the small doorway in the upper left of this photo.

And tradition says that Columcille’s own cell was on the very knoll before you – Tor Abb.

And this high cross has been keeping watch here for 1200 years.

High crosses are sacred markers.

They connect heaven and earth – and fuse pre-Christian and Christian elements.

They arise in the ancient lineage of menhirs, standing stones.

Some say that once there may have been more than 300 high crosses on the small island of Iona.

Perhaps that number is an exaggeration.

But still there can be little doubt that Iona is a very thin place

…which means that here you can pass between this world and another as easily as dusk.

They say that Columcille washed ashore at Port a’ Churaich – the Port of the Coracle.

Perhaps he left his beloved Ireland in penance for partisanship in a dynastic battle. He belonged to a lineage of Irish kings.

And this is a familiar Celtic motif: to embark on a pilgrimage as penitence.

So the two of us made our own pilgrimage-within-a-pilgrimage as well – from Tor Abb to Port a' Churaich.

Not a step of the way is marked. Not one sign or letter or arrow anywhere. You have to find your way feelingly.

And yet this is the most named landscape that we know.

But the names are wisps that someone has spoken into the air, and that then someone else has re-spoken, until you begin to hear them, too – and then, at least for this one day, you can begin to leave history behind as well.

Many places have two names existing side-by-side -- or else one overlays the other. But the older one is still visible and percolates from below like a spring or holy well or foundation stones.

A hillock is Sithean Mor – "the big fairy mound.“

It is also Cnoc nan Aingeal, "Hill of the Angels,“ because Columcille would go there to pray, and one night, against Columcille’s wishes, a monk had followed him, and from a distance had seen Columcille visited by angels while he prayed upon the hill.

Often Columcille would best, or correct, Druid wizards with his own spiritual power, which came from God.

But Columcille often appears like a Christian wizard himself – with telekinetic powers and prophecy and the healing of bodies and souls.

One of the traditions in Celtic monasticism is for a monk to set out upon the sea in a coracle without any oars at all, accepting wherever the sea and the good Lord would take him.

It is thought, for instance, that St. Brendan the Navigator, or his followers, reached Vineland, which archaeologists make out to have been Newfoundland, more than 800 years before Columbus reached the continent.

Undoubtedly, Brendan sailed in a relatively bigger, wooden boat.

But the curaichs themselves were framed with pliable slender branches, and then they were covered with hides that tautened around the frame as they dried from their initial soaking.

A curraich is one of those simple, elemental creations so elegant that it takes your breath away

…and so seaworthy that it can still stand up to fierce Hebrides currents and weather.

Now they are covered with canvas, not hides. But you can still press your fingers between the ribbing and feel how thin the shell is

…and then shake your head in wonder at the sea-journeys made within them.

The technical similarities between curraichs and Celtic monastic cilles and oratorios might have already occurred to you – in addition to affinities with the watercraft and dwellings of other indigenous people around the world.

When you arrive at Port a' Churaich,

…what you see, and what is immediately apparent,

...is how beautiful the stones are – and how rugged is the sea.

Pilgrims build cairns and other markers here.

We left simple ones, as well.

The tradition is that you find two stones for yourself. One stone you choose for something that is binding you or holding you back -- something you need to let go of.

That stone you throw into the sea.

The other stone you choose as some resolve or intention or inherent goodness within yourself that you want to keep and deepen. That stone you carry home with you.

It’s not part of the tradition, but we threw and kept many stones for you. Not that we’d presume to know what you’d want to be freed of, and what you’d want to deepen,

…but "Scott,"one of us would call, or "Robin," and another beautiful stone would go far out to sea – and its twin within a pocket.

On Iona, you can learn all four seasons in a single day.

And the island has been writing its own novel of the self longer than there has been anyone to remember it.

And just when you think you’ve mastered the grammar of stone and sea and cille and solitary cobbled shore

…you have to master this as well – that next to his monastic cell Columcille had a writing hut as well,

…and that Iona, or I Chalium Cille, or simply I (as the island has variously called itself) has written the most beautiful book the western world has ever known.

The Book of Kells.

Umberto Eco calls The Book of Kells "the product of a cold-blooded hallucination.“

Scholars know that the illuminated manuscript, probably written about 800 CE, ended up at the Columban monastery of Kells in Ireland after the Vikings raided Iona.

But they don’t know if the book was begun at Iona and finished at Kells – or if it had already been completed at Iona. But either way, it was transported from Iona to Kells in a curraich for safety.
Inseparable from I, I Chalium Cille, Iona, the manuscript is another place where the world is thin.

At Trinity College library in Dublin, for security reasons, they never announce in advance the day when they will turn another page for you to view.

It doesn’t matter.

You can wait there for the page to turn as happily as upon any shore.

The two of arrived back at Tor Abb late at night and went into the abbey for compline.

The story didn’t end there, though,

…because the island keeps writing chapters even when you sleep.

Sources:

1. Personal visits. Iona: November 6-8, 2008. Book of Kells at Trinity College, Dublin, November 21, 2008.
2.Adomnán, Life of St. Columba.
3. The Book of Kells CD-ROM. Trinity College Library, Dublin.
4. Bernard Meehan, The Book of Kells.
5. Geoff Holder, The Guide to Mysterious Iona and Staffa.

Farewell, Kraków

It was very difficult to leave Kraków.

Perhaps it’s getting more difficult to leave each place we stay.

Or perhaps like several of you have told us…

“Every now and then, you’ll just need to stop and rest awhile.”

So that’s what we have done in Kraków.

The crowds and holidays had been exciting.

And we’ve described what it’s meant to be re-connected with our kids and our Polish family.

But now we were on our own again – with no particular place we had to be…

…or time we had to be there.

One translation of the verse on this famous Kraków sundial could be: “Our days are like shadows on the earth, and none is abiding.”

Whether Chris has translated this verse accurately – or composed a new one of his own – this is how we’ve felt in Kraków.

The crowds were gone – and we wandered the streets like Krakówians ourselves.

Perhaps that’s how you really begin to know a place -- wandering without an agenda and without even imagining there’s a need to dream one up.

In the meantime, as Marcel Proust says, habit distills the essence of each moment into its own container – exactly when you might have thought you weren’t paying any attention at all.

Some of our moments in Kraków have been poignant

…and sublime

…while others have been filled with the memory of genocide -- in Kraków itself

…and not far outside of it.

On our last night, we wandered for a couple hours around the Rynek Główny, Kraków’s market square.

By now the details of each building

…had become dear to us.

When you’re sitting at a café or elsewhere on the Rynek Główny, you’re supposed to turn your seat so that you always have some view of Mariatski Church, dedicated to the Virgin.

A trumpeter had once announced the approach of an invading army from Mariatski’s tallest tower. The trumpeter was pierced through the throat and killed as he played, but his warning had come in time, and Kraków had been saved.

On the hour now, a trumpet plays this hejnal out into the four directions once again – and cuts it off short each time – in honor of the trumpeter of long ago.

Farewell, Kraków, the trumpet seems to say.

A few hours later, in the early morning, we crossed the Rynek Główny a final time, made our way to the airport -- and then waited on the runway for awhile.

When the plane lifted off, Kraków fell as far away behind us

…as if it had only ever been a dream.

But Debi wants to remind us that Kraków is a city of angels.

…and that angels can appear at any time and in any form.

We crossed the Rynek Główny at 6 am the day before yesterday.

That same afternoon, we found ourselves walking in an entirely different land.

In the matter of a few hours, we had come from one land of the Black Madonna

…to another

…from Mariatski Church in Kraków

…to Notre Dame de Chartres.

Maciej Syrek - Krosno, Poland

It’s been awhile since we’ve introduced to you an artist that Red Egg Gallery will be working with…

photo by Staszek Materniak
…so let us introduce you now to Maciej Syrek.

Marciej studied in Krakow and now lives in Krosno in Galicia – not far from Łazy.

photo by Staszek Materniak
Maciej works in different media – but his greatest passion is to work with bronze. When doing so, he feels the 4,000 year old tradition of humans working with this alloy…

…and, in fact, his studio feels like nothing so much as it does an alchemist’s den…

…a continual connection between the present and some distant past.

Maciej timed things so that he would be firing on the day we were to visit.

Here his assistant is stoking the furnace into the blazing heat…

required for the molten bronze…

with which his sculpted molds are filled…

and in this case then taken out into the snow…

to cool…

and become angelic…

and religious…

or something more contemporary…

meditative…
photo by Staszek Materniak
…historical…

or often frankly comic and ribald.

photo by Staszek Materniak