Thursday 15 September 2011

A much closer look



We are now considering what text should accompany the art work and also the possibility of producing a small (very!) publication to accompany the launch to offer a bit of background to the artwork, for the curious.
Feeling I need some expert advice, not least to make sure I am getting the facts right, I contacted Peter Craig, the geologist from Tarland who came to Oldmeldrum a few moons ago, took us on a walk and gave a great talk on the geology of the area for the project, and tried to help us get our heads around the immense time frames we are dealing with when we are thinking about stone....Peter came back to me last night with some information about the approximate ages of the stone of the artwork , and it seems they might average at around 450 millions years old. He also pointed me to the website for the Dep of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford where you can see close up images of stone taken by microscope. The three above are Gabbro, Gneiss and Granite .... the types I have selected for the petrospheres.
With support from Aberdeenshire Council, I am hoping that, concurrent to the installation we might be able to set up a small exhibition of original ancient stone balls drawing from the Aberdeenshire Council and University collections. I hope that this might be set up in the public library at Oldmeldrum Academy, where the school might have the opportunity to weave the project into their programme, and the whole community can breath in a little of the magic of these mysterious objects.

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