Open Studios Encounters

Encounters is the title of a new series of collage artworks. This is my second year taking part in Open Studios North Fife where over 70 artists open their doors to welcome folk in for a chat and a show. Lots of curiosity last year about what I do with seaweed, how and why. These new works are a shift from 3D entanglements to focus on forms and rhythms I come across in my encounters in the littoral zone. As always my aim is to 'let the material speak with its own mighty voice.'

Below is part of a poem I wrote when making a short film Seaweed Women with Jeanetter Sendler in 2023 which will be shown at the Adam Smith Theatre Kirkcaldy on 29 June.

OUTCAST
Her keen eyes scour the necklaced shore
focused on their intimate chore.
Peering down at pelted rocks spy
peppered dulse and dabberlocks.
Pink crab claw blue mussel shells stacked
black coils of bladderwrack.
Twisted gutweed mottled green
dead man’s fingers slip unseen.
Carelessly churned and hurled at her feet
a tangled world where outcasts meet.

What if she looked round?
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Would the sea stop breathing
and drown?




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