One of the images emailed to me during from installation. It was very curious watching this from a distance and I regretted not being present at the final stage. The technicians however, as usual, did a great job!
Yesterday Aberdeenshire Council Museums services installed the archaeological display in Meldrum Library. Evelyn Munro went over to the library and sent me some images... it appears that the 12 neolithic stone balls have been arranged appropriately like a clock...particularly poignant today as I wait to hear how the installation of the larger versions goes .. kicking off at 9am this morning. While I regret I am not present - and feel a little anxious- for a number of reasons not least the uncertainty of the installation date - it was too complicated to arrange, and I do have complete confidence in the folk who are installing the work- Fyfe Glenrock technicians supported by Aberdeen Council engineers.
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. 
No its not me again.. despite the spherical nature of the stone block. During the NEOS ( North East Open Studios) week, which will also see artwork exhibited in Oldmeldrum Town Hall, the Scottish Sculpture Workshop (SSW)in Lumsden, is presenting The Lost Hand : which may be very worth going along to. I am minded of conversations with the masons at FGR which expressed concern for the lack of young blood coming through, and the prospective loss of a whole skills base in the area. While driving to and fro Oldmeldrum from Aberdeen, I heard on the radio that the govt are proposing to insist that any company contracted by the govt to carry out work, have a minimum number of apprenticeship opportunities. This, to me, seems like a good plan, providing it's implemented thoughtfully.
One of the few folk I invited to the yard before leaving; Evelyn Munro tries out the artwork out for size. The spheres are not only meant to delight the eye, but also the sense of touch and thinking of "Bruce's seat" the smaller two can be used as stools or resting points. Evelyn is the first person to sit upon the spheres apart from myself, and rightly so, as she has been a great support to me and font of local knowledge throughout this project.
I just received an email with a beautiful drawing of the exact location for the three petrospheres. The day before I left John Bruce an Aberdeenshire Council engineer and I went to the site in Oldmeldrum town centre, (where there is quite a bit of building work going on as you can see above), with distinctly low fi templates of the 3 spheres, and following a good deal of consideration, humming and hawing...mostly from me, decided upon this exact layout which will instruct the building contractors exactly where to place the underground steel supports for the artwork.
Today the hard graft has been consigned to history as I have completed the work on the three stones- or at least as much as I feel I can do. This is a day or two earlier than I could have hoped for, and I am feeling like celebrating...and by co-incidence the occasion was marked by a visit from a few members of Oldmeldrum Heritage Society( actually I was not quite finished when they arrived at 11am).
A photo of me at work looking very glamorous with all the required and desired safety equipment on. This snapshot was taken by Andre Klaase, who works in the yard and seems to look after most of the machinery .. but I could be mistaken...
I am up early with the gulls in town. I leave town pretty early and yesterday was gifted with views of a stunning mother of pearl north sea shimmering in the early morning light. I wanted to take a photo, maybe to post here, but the traffic coming into town even at 6.45am was so intense that I couldn't get across the lane to park. Driving along in my gas guzzling hunk of metal I was listening to reports of the oil leak 113miles east of Aberdeen.. pretty close....pretty awful...
Yesterday I worked more on the CP sphere- see above code found on the chart pinned to the wall, where CP is just beside CO- Cornish - which made me smile at the end of a long day.. things were not going quite to plan with the CP stone and I am a little anxious..need to improvise again..
Some parents like to know the sex of the baby before its born, but I never wanted to know for sure incase I started to get too attached to ( even more!) ideas about of the baby/child/person to be. I am wondering if showing every stage of the production process may spoil some of the magic for the audience - the public- who will see the work in Oldmeldrum town square.
Another day of rain ..however it certainly keeps any rioters off the streets.. though actually I am not aware of any major troubles in Scottish cities...it seems police officers from Grampian are being shipped down to the Midlands to fill in for the ones from there sent to swell the numbers in London.
Top chocolate box photo taken this morning 6.45am enroute to Oldmeldrum. Lots of fields looking almost ready for harvest and I am wondering how the farmers are feeling about the relentless rain. I caught the double rainbow just as it was beginning to fade. For a while I could see both end of the main rainbow and it reminded me of the profile on the cutting saw monitor ( see yesterdays entry). 
Well there is indeed turmoil everywhere ; endless rain and flooding in the NE of Scotland (more rainfall in a day than on a Mumbai monsoon according to Radio Scotland, so its true), the Footsie tumbles and London streets are broiling with looters and rioters to mentions a few of the headlines... but I am happy because selfishly all three stones are steadily morphing... and I also today discovered the joys of the pneumatic chisel.. we won't discuss 'white finger' at the moment...
A lot of progress this week- amazingly the Craiglash blockstone has also had two faces cut, and the good news is that it looks fairly sound inside. Once the wet stone emerges from the saw shed and is opened, the surface is dried with an air pressure gun. Any deep cracks will be revealed as they retain moisture. So far there are no really threatening lines showing up, which is quite amazing as Craiglash quarry is not known for 'clean' stone. I think everyone is feeling a bit more optimistic now. I will feel even better once I find out how close the figures are to the estimates.
As I only really have this month to offer to the project( which has stretched almost a year longer than anticipated), and have other commitments at the end of the month, I was pretty concerned that only one block had been cut when I arrived. Fyfe Glenrock have understandably had to prioritise larger contracts which often have penalty clauses attached if the deadlines are not met. To add to the pressure one of the two main cutting saws has broken down and a part needs to be sent from Italy which I am informed 'has gone on holiday for a month', so the capacity to cut blockstone has been halved.
Before settling on the final design for the Pitcaple stone I hoped to see the Bourtie petrosphere again, which I saw for the first time in Inverurie Museum, to breath in a little of its magic. As sadly this local museum was closed within the last months, it transpires the Bourtie example is now at Aberdeenshire Council Museum Headquarters in Mintlaw, and I just don't feel I have time to drive up there to see it. So I called the Aberdeen University Marischal Museum, which has been closed for a considerable time due to building refurbishment ( Fyfe Glenrock supplying the dressed stone for the renovation), and heard of the new Kings Museum on the High Street in Old Aberdeen which the curatorial assistant Soraya Kasim told me has a several petrospheres on display, and by co-incidence, a box of 12 sourced for a couple of visiting researchers.
I arrived in the NE last Friday evening after a 12.5 hr drive from Cornwall ( I need my vehicle here) ready to start work on the Monday morning. The yard manager at Fyfe Glenrock kindly sorted me out a workbay, which I may have to vacate when some of the masons return from holiday, and installed the Pitcaple sphere which was the only one ready for me to work on. As I had hoped to work on the other two balls first as they have a simpler geometry to their surface design, I was unfortunately not totally prepared to begin this stone, and I had quite a struggle to resolve the maths, calling on several people for advise and suggestions, before settling on a design which is inspired , but not identical to the original Bourtie stone.
On returning home I fired up the computer on Sunday evening (having for once left the laptop at home for a few days - it was tough...) to find a email from Allan Bruce at Fyfe Glenrock, with several images of the work completed so far on the grey Pitcaple stone. From what I can see it looks very promising, and although I am feeling pretty delighted, I will feel even happier when its confirmed (hopefully) that we are within budget. 
At the end of last week I had to go to 'Up Country' from Cornwall and by chance passed by Stonehenge - somewhere I had never previously visited. However as it was also my birthday I felt it was appropriate to visit this timepiece which was definately even older than me. Its a curious experience to be funnelled around the fenced off monument, clutching the audio guide handset, while dodging busloads of schoolchildren ferried in from the far corners of Europe and beyond. 
Today I went to the Fyfe Glenrock yard to see how things were going. Although they had hoped to have finished roughing out the Pitcaple stone, a difficult week meant that they were a little behind, but it was still great to see that work was actually beginning. Over the past days or so one of the most skilled masons in the yard has been taking the angled edges off the cube shape and using a chipboard template as a guide pulling out a sphere from the rock. Even with the aid of diamond blades, compressors and dust extractors this is demanding work, both mentally and physically. There is a possibility that this stone, the smallest of the three at 600mm, could possibly when a little more reduced, be offered to the turning lathe, which could save time and I guess release the mason for other pressing tasks.
Sandwiched between my efforts to progress the OMart pieces, I have been working on a couple of projects which have culminated in exhibitions at the Woodend Barn Arts Centre over in Banchory, on Deeside. The first is 'Calendar Variations' which runs until April 27th, and the second is 'The Redsuit Project Who's Who', which is open from 1st - 26th May. Please visit www.woodendbarn.co.uk for information and opening times etc.
Today I stumbled upon a leaflet promoting this latest (not rock!) festival. So it would seem that Omart has its fingers on the pulse - perhaps I will contact the festival curator and alert her to the efforts we are making to respect and celebrate aspects of the local stone working traditions.
Here is some text from the brochure.
'Aberdeen has a unique cityscape created over 200 years of using granite for building, sculpture and monuments. Aberdonians sculpted the city itself out of the local stone and wherever we’re from we know our home as the Granite City.
This May, we invite you to join us in celebrating everything granite – from its ancient geological origins and the industries which thrived on it, to the superb architecture we see every day. We want to give Aberdonians old and new a chance to talk about granite and hope to make the festival a regular event.
We have a full programme of talks, walks and events which offers something for everyone. We look forward to seeing you soon!'
Information about the programme of events can be found at the Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museum Website, www.aagm.co.uk
I am also struck that the image chosen to grace the front of the brochure is remarkably similar to a documentation shot from former Turner Prize winning artist Simon Starling's show at Tate St Ives, Cornwall. I didn't have time to catch this show before travelling north, even though I had a preview ticket, but was very interested to hear that Starling was continuing to explore the 'excavation and transformation of the material world', exemplified in the work
"The Long Ton", 2009, described as sculpture featuring two rough-cut white lumps of marble suspended in space. The larger of the two stones, an import from China weighing one ton, is counterbalanced by approximately 250 kg of Italian marble thanks to a 4:1 ratio pulley system that allows the two stones to sit in perfect equilibrium. On closer inspection it is clear that the two stones have exactly the same form, the Italian stone having been precision laser-cut to exactly the same, although reduced, specifications as the larger Chinese stone. Despite its long voyage to Europe, the Chinese marble has a similar market value to the European stone one-quarter its weight.
Simon Starling image from www.artcornwall.org
I would like to say thankyou to Aggregate Industries, who currently work Tillyfourrie Quarry, for the donation of the stone to the project and for their assisatnce in selecting and preparing the blocks for removal. The project budget is quite tight and this has helped considerably.
Here is some information about Aggregate Industries lifted from their website www.aggregate.com
Aggregate Industries quarries, manufactures and supplies a wide range of heavy building materials to theconstruction industry.Through continued innovation and investment we have been certified The Responsible SourceTM offering a diverse portfolio of sustainable solutions to complement our traditional product offering. Operating across the UK, Channel Islands and Northern Europe, we are a member of the Holcim Group.
The Responsible Source
As a supplier and manufacturer of concrete and aggregate products we have been working for more than a decade to create sustainable solutions for all our core markets.
We have been addressing issues such as health and safety, quality control, ethical trading, carbon and water management, biodiversity, and social responsibility so that we can offer our customers truly sustainable solutions.
This work has culminated in us becoming the first company in the world to be certified to BES 6001, framework for responsible sourcing of construction materials, by the Building Research Establishment (BRE).
Commitment to quality and environment
We strive to provide high quality service, best value and are committed to continuous improvement. We aim to further develop our responsiveness to your needs year on year and all of our wholly owned businesses are certified to the quality and environmental management standards BS EN ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 14001.
In the centre of the image above are the two blocks of Corrennie granite, awaiting collection with a HIAB truck, who I will try to arrange to go to the quarry in the next few days, before the machine operator goes on holiday. They will be delivered to Fyfe Glenrock yard, and will join the queue to get to the saws. It is now week three for me in Scotland and I am extremely mindful that time is slipping by.
On Friday I was given permission to enter Tillyfourrie quarry because a machine operator would be there for a few days, who could supervise my visit. As you can imagine there are enormous health and safety considerations.
Feeling determined not to give up on the Pitcaple stone here's an illustration of a possible placement for a 6oomm sphere, which would skim the major crack at the lower end of the block. This would involve two more saw cuts and, though I feel it looks promising there are no guarantees that the cuts would not reveal more issues.. . The main issue however is that the saws are fully booked...... I don't know how long the wait will be .....