Tuesday 14th August
Filmed the huge rotor blades for the Lochcarnan Community Windfarm being loaded onto lorries today. Beautiful, sleek aerodynamic forms that twist and curve into the wind, they reminded me of the bodies of whales, perhaps because I’ve just spent a week with artist Claudia Losi who has made wonderful works with the forms of whales, her Balena Project in particular. See her website. Andy MacKinnon at Taigh Chearsabhagh said that the rotor blades looked to him like bones – the bones of birds – a very evocative image.
Monday 13th August
A wonderful chance meeting with archaeologist Kate MacDonald today. She showed me some of her recent finds including a fragment of iron age pottery which had the indentations of finger prints in the clay. Placing my fingers in the grooves was a profoundly intimate physical experience, ‘feeling’ the touch of a person made so long ago. It made me think of my father, who was a watch maker, he would talk about opening up watches to repair and finding the marks, notes and sometimes ‘tags’ hidden in the inner mechanisms, made by watch makers who had mended the watches many years before, left only to be seen by the next watchmaker to open up the case.