Living Willow Season Draws to a Close

Last day of March and it is snowing in Scotland, in fact it has been snowing here all day. Still getting requests for living willow work but I always stop on the 31st of March. I know some people push into April but I tend to be cautious, particularly on other people's projects.

It has been a good season, starting in November/December 2009 with the arches at Carmunnock. This was set up through Glasgow Greenspace and was carried out in partnership with Scottish Power (owned by a Spanish company). We had the office staff coppicing willow, digging holes and even got a few interested in making Christmas wreaths. In fact one woman disappeared into the coppice to emerge later with a whole stack of wreaths. Who says traditional crafts aren't exciting?

After a slow start in January due to snow and what seemed like permafrost I finally got started on the school projects. There were more nurseries than primaries this year and with an emphasis on tunnels. I revisited St Ninians which was one of the highlight projects of last year. Some of the Mums set loose on a 'twigwam' and did a wonderful job with a colourful random weave. Onthank was a favourite, nice design in a compact space, and the final project at Merrylee gave me a chance to create three spaces on a specially constructed hill in the school grounds. It helps to have a landscape architect as one of the parents, it had been destined to be a square section of tarmac.

The only disappointment was the golden eagle at Castlemilk High, designed by the pupils with willow they harvested themselves, it was going to be an exciting one. However the school is a PPP, (public, private, partnership) and the owners Amey Construction had not given permission. They are still thinking about it. Hopefully I can go back at the start of next season and with the help of the pupils make sure the eagle is landed.

The Swans Are Up

After two hectic days swinging about on scaffolding the swans are finally back on the Clyde.

Sleepless nights of how to support them on the cradles were added to by the belief I only had one day to put them up. It was only half way through Thursday that I found out there was a second day of scaffold hire if I needed it. That relief turned to rushed panic when the scaffolders announced they packed up early on a Friday.

So what was the panic about? Well basically each swan was made in four parts in the workshop, two wings, head, and tail, it was only when they were hoisted up to the cradles did they come together as a whole bird. There was still a lot of weaving to do once they were in place and not a lot of time to correct anything I was not happy with.

What was really nice was the reaction of the people who use the Saltings, dog walkers, pensioners, joggers, twitchers, they all said how glad they were to see the swans back up and how they had missed them. So there you go for public art, people like it, own it, it has meaning to their lives and when it has gone they miss it.