Words and Bronze

I had a rather lovely morning today at a meeting of the writing group to which I belong, The Crichton Writers. Much of the meeting was taken up with discussion of an exhibition the group will be putting on at the Wigtown Literary Festival in September. The exhibition is titled "Words and Bronze. A Celebration of Elizabeth Waugh at 80." I have blogged about this before, when I was adventuring in the land of Haiku: those posts, which have a lot of images of Elizabeth's work, are here, http://titusthedog.blogspot.com/2009/06/neato-project.html
and here, http://titusthedog.blogspot.com/2009/06/neato-project-2.html

A lot of the written work will be "exhibited" - for instance, the selected haikus have now been engraved onto glass roundels which will hang at the windows. These were ready for inspection today and looked great!

Things are still at the creating stage, but there will be a poem on an easel, one on rolled parchment, one as a poster incorporating images and I'm having what I've produced thus far signwritten onto a wooden plaque in gold lettering, as Penpont has "the only signwriter that still works with a brush between Glasgow and Carlisle, Newton Stewart and Lockerbie" (as the signwriter himself, the lovely Graham, tells me). The idea that really excited me was having a poem transferred onto ribbon which you then pulled out from a pot with a hole in the top and read as it unwound. If someone doesn't use that I'm going to nick it!

A short film has already been made which marries visual images of Elizabeth's work, and workplace, to a soundscape of poetry. This will be playing on loop.

Whoa! ...... sounds dangerously like an installation to me.

There will also be a one-off reading by The Crichton Writers of works created for the event.

During the discussions we also got onto the look of the whole thing, and I of course volunteered my services, fancying myself as a bit of an auteur in the flower-arranging department. We also discussed ancillary "dressing", and someone offered a fox's skull and then someone else volunteered a rather substantial animal skull collection. Which is kind of unusual stuff to have hanging around, but so useful. For this kind of thing.

And you know what was good about the meeting? That already you could tell the whole idea has a "feel" about it, so that you just know, whatever the final form, it's going to work.

I'll leave you with another of Elizabeth Waugh's wonderful bronzes, Swimming Otters.