Some projects take time. They simmer away slowly, or are sat down and picked back up gently over time as their final forms take shape. I’m also terrible without a deadline looming. Works often take on a strange emotional toll, becoming intertwined with our lives in all kinds of ways. With public artworks, releasing them into the world is a strange final moment where they begin to live autonomously from the maker/s, and this week has been one of those moments of release.

Shortly before taking a pause for maternity leave last year, and with Stove co-founder Matt Baker who has been both mentor, collaborator, co-conspirator and friend over most of my professional working life preparing to step down from his CEO role, and from the wider Stove Network team – he and artistic director Martin O’Neill concocted a final collective work, a live metal pour as part of Matt’s last big gig with the Stovie team. Naturally, late-stage pregnant or not, I made sure to elbow my way in to help. This project has been a collective gift – it wasn’t a funded endeavour but more a way of bringing together our shared loves and leaving a little mark on the special place that is 100 High Street.

After Matt and Martin came up with a design (and a favourite anagram), I quickly made some patterns and then some sand molds (working between my studio and up at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop) and brought them home again ready for the pour. Once my baby was 6 weeks, and Matt’s departure date loomed, a gathering was hosted by the Stove team and Roddy Matheson agreed to come down with his Mobile Foundry to pour the molds for us on the street outside the Loreburne Hall. This felt nicely nostalgic as we had last worked with Roddy during my first proper working experience with the Stove, casting a new bell for Creetown with lead artist Will Levi Marshall. That time, Roddy had set up in the old smithy building on Creetown’s main street to cast the bell. It was a lovely thing to be part of and is fully google searchable, starting here.

A year has passed.

Not that I wasn’t thinking about this work, more or less constantly, but one way or another the finishing and install got pushed back again and again. In the Springtime this year, the Stove facade was given a facelift, with a new paint job and repairs to the front of the building, so with that finally concluded the bronzes were given the green light.

They are currently reminding me of something of a threshold marker – crossing between them to enter, or brushing alongside them like some kind of variation of a traditional Victorian finger plate, or a pair of amulets hung by the front door as a form of protection to those who enter.

RECLAIM – MIRACLE.

A lot has come about since 2011, and hopefully, this marks just a moment in Stove history – less of a finale, and more a closing of a chapter. I’m already looking forward to getting Roddy back in ten years time for the next one…

As ever – these projects are not completed in isolation. Special thanks to Roddy Matheson for his brilliant casting (and for putting up with my chaos over more than a decade!), to the ESW technical team for their support, Martin and Matt for being the brains behind the work, and the Stovie team for putting up with such a long running deadline.