It’s been an intense week. 

Out of that intensity is slowly emerging clarity.

OBJECT. My obsessions centre on an intimate exploration of objects. To truly know an object, to create that familiarity that only comes with time.

SITE. Without site the object is homeless. This is a re-connecting, a re-using, a re-examining. RE- (this prefix will appear more frequently than ever in this blog in the near future)

MEMORY. This informs the object. Informs the intimate, the curiosity. 

Some of the highlights in Clarencefield:-

Joan Dodd. She sits on the local community council. She couldn’t have lived it down if folk had turned up from out of the village to see an untidy phone box. She also keeps the bus shelter (on her patch). From her concern about the phone box’s fading paint – over the weekend an appreciation for the peeling paint emerged, as a representation of the dying object. She didn’t think environmental art was for her until she came to know the phone box project.

Two ladies recounted their experience to Fiona (the fantastic volunteer) of both squashing into the box together and laughing at memories gone by of their times as girls squashed into phone boxes.

To Suvi goes my utmost thanks. Having travelled from Finland to witness the Festival, on her last morning she caught the various public transport required to drop her in Clarencefield, in a short gap before the return journey. It was great speaking to someone with a similar passion.

The longest queue in Clarencefield. I have since heard rumour of other, shorter queues throughout the weekend. Someone waiting behind my granny in the dampening weather on Friday gave up eventually (my apologies), but to all 11 of you in that queue on Friday – thank you for your patience! 

If you didn’t catch it at Clarencefield (you may be off my Christmas card list) – there will still be a chance to catch the next evolution of the project as part of the Wigtown Book Festival at the end of next month – just enough time to get organised!