Ullapool Art Advenure

Bullock's Bottom and Boots Sue's h usband has brand new RED power sawing boots. I am supposedly working on a project about shoes. I had not been out of the village for eight weeks and the  village is largely closed down until the first of March now that Hogmanay  is done and dusted. The weather has been awful: three named storms,  snow, ice, hail, rain and more snow and rain and hail.  The first dry weekend I escaped to stay with Sue, one of the students who has turned out to be a soul mate. She lives in a very beautiful home with her husband, seven chickens and 64 rare breed sheep on the outskirts of Inverness. Phil h ad been practising his manly moves wearing said boots in the hopes that I was indeed the foot fetishist of his fond imaginings. Trees on their land needed sawing, he was the man to do it a nd I was supposed to be the artist imm ortalising him.  Their house is unusual in that they have two private railway crossings on their l...

Step We Gaily, On we Go, Heel by Heel and Toe by Toe We are already at the end of our first week. We have just seven weeks left of this four month experience. It has gone incredibly fast. Between New Year and our first day back I had to come up with a personal project. I fiercely rejected life drawing. I can't see the point and it has no interest for me.  There, I said it...now I am just waiting to be struck down by a wrathful classical artist.   One of our themes is Identity so I dithered over that for a while.  Should I concentrate on a subject I know really well? Me, myself and I? Did I really want to expose myself like that? What about archetypes?  O r portraits? The museum has a lovely quilt made in the 1990's by twelve women from the village. I bet I could make a lovely art quilt based not on the village but on the women who made that quilt. I distracted myself by making a couple of artists books roughly on the theme of Identity. I...

Happy New Year                                                                   If I had thought staying in Ullapool over the festive season would be quiet I couldn't have been more wrong.  Scots do Hogmanay which means  last day of the year and is at least a two day celebration.  Jean Urquhart who started the Ceilidh Place with her husband, actor Robert Urquhart, in the 1970's came to stay for me for a few days over the holidays as the hotel had sold her room! The village was teeming with visitors. Every bed had a body in it.  It was Jean who had instigated the wonderful Not-Christmas feast years ago and was until recently, a Scottish MP. Scotland not only has proportional representation, but MP's do not have to be affiliated to a political party although Jean was elected to the Scottish National...

An Alternative Christmas  The Ceilidh Place is a hotel, a coffee shop, a great independent bookshop, a restaurant and venue for the arts in the centre of Ullapool. It's been owned and run by  my landlord's family since 1970. It  grew out of Broomview Cottage and was started by the late well known actor Robert Urquhart, who was born there in 1921.  He started with a small café in the boat shed with the idea  that it would become a place for eating, meeting, talking and singing. A place to be. A place where not only postcards but life histories would be written.  A sign outside invited musicians to sing or play for their supper. If they were good, their supper could take some time. Few were served quickly! There were arguments with planners, builders and bank managers as the café expanded. Local staff were assisted by others from across the globe who miraculously found their way to Ullapool.  There were customers who became staff and staff wh...