Artcyclescotland

LPG santa tank in a field by the road and the smell of cherry blossom / ankle’s feeling much better / fastest commute to work for a while.

Tendonitus still with a grip on my ankle which is why there has been no recent MTB posts; there’s been no riding / update to the MTB Guiding page: places on the ‘From Landscape And Deer/Bankfoot’ loop during May and June are FREE.

I was forced into taking a different route on my commute to work this morning because of the ice on the backroads—I followed instead the path that runs by the side of the carriageway and was surprised that instead of choking on the usual smell of petrol and diesel—as I climbed the shallow hill on the outskirts of Inchture where the path is nearest the road—I was instead choking on the smell of aftershave: I imagined that all the passing cars had reversed their air conditioning systems and were instead “expelling” the fumes of branded male toiletry into the atmosphere.

Owl-snow, the like of which is haunted by a plain-withering echo of hunger, then necessity—Soutar’s silent garment of wayward flurry: two feet of “freshies,” the sky blue, and not a breath of wind … We get as far as Glenmore. The gates are closed, and closed for the day we are told. We later discover it’s because “… too much snow”  had fallen. Lindsay Carruthers (BaseCamp MTB, Wolftrax), John Mason (Full On Adventure) and I agreed that there was nothing else for it but to hike up.

(We passed the staff driving in the opposite direction, near Loch Morlich, around 08.30 a.m. No attempt was made to try and open the centre that day: The road up to the car park had been ploughed and was clear. The two walkers out on the hill overnight were found early-doors. “… the train was snowed in:” we didn’t see anyone trying to clear it. “… two bashers were broken:” a basher had been up The Gun-Barrel and Traverse (which made our hike considerably easier) while The White Lady remained unpisted but not much more of the mountain was open the following day when we returned, this time clutching full-area! lift passes: more snow, a wind-chill of minus twenty eight, flat light and near zero-visibility ensured that most of the resort remained understandably closed. But on a day when conditions were as near perfect as you are ever likely to get in Scotland—and in spite of the widely reported difficulties that the Scottish ski centres have been faced with over the last decade, not least a woeful lack of snow—someone made the decision that no attempt would be made to try and get the centre open and run even limited access.)

Four hours later we were at the blue lid of the sky, off to the right at the top of The White Lady … I made a final adjustment to my bindings … The sun was shining now and the white and green highlands closed around us for miles and miles into the distance … John, on ski’s, had long since gone … I attended to the low-grade anxiety that comes to me at such moments, that comes with wanting the “effort” and  “goodness” of the day thus far to flow naturally into what would be about a two minute descent—getting the focus where it needed to be …
L. dropped in first … I followed a short time later, relaxed …

This is a beautiful installation of small sculpture by Fisher: adequate (in the deep and profound sense of the word) to Sleeper—a unique exhibition room in the premises of Reiach & Hall Architects in Edinburgh. For all their evident materiality, these new works by Fisher are closest to “vanishings’” of sorts and while not being, but objects are reassuringly “fixed” to floor and wall, it’s as if each carefully rendered form were suspended in some other atmosphere, somehow just millimetres from its parent surface—in Sleepers’ angular winter light. These are the sort of sculptural visitations from the minds delivery room that one might encounter in sleep if one dreamt of sculpture like a distant call; like the ghost of a never-before-held visual truth: form, and the perfect winter day, held in place by time, by scissor-paper-rock, by the architecture of inside and out; by the imaginary and the ordinary—in much the same way that the “ping” of a lead-crystal glass will present itself … arc … and … … now … leave-take the room; gifting the chamfered voice of its jewel-like utterance to one corner.

Crystallites is at Sleeper, Reiach & Hall Architects
6 Darnaway Street, Edinburgh / EH3 6BG
Monday – Friday, 2-5pm
10 November – 17 December

for more information on the artist go to: http://www.garethf.com