Stories, paper, stone…

PETER URPETH gives an update on Stornoway’s Sail Loft Project

The walls have been stripped. What wasn’t saved is now lost. The wallpapers are soaking in a bath in Moira Macaulay’s studio in Grimshader.

Pirate turns surgeon as slowly their grimy layers separate – seven narcissistic layers – faint florals, pompous, manly wood-effects, exotic Chinoisary – the artist peels them apart with a fish slice and drapes the sodden specimens to dry on last week’s Gazette.

The bath water looks toxic, paste and nicotine setting like aspic. As they soak so their future is debated – how can they be preserved and shown? A firm in England specialises in certain treatments. Better do it locally, get the knowledge yourself.

Meanwhile, stories are being told. The poet, Ian Stephen, tours with a microphone gathering oral histories of the building and its people, finds one who was born in the place, bathed as a child in a tin bath by its fire, remembers the family sharing few rooms, mum and dad sleeping in the kitchen.

A war time map spread on a kitchen table, a diet of salt and bad things on which everyone thrived. Raw materials indeed – stories, paper, stone, and as the materials are gathered so the piece will be built, a little at a time. Two boats to be renovated, sail past the opening of the exhibition, pipers playing on board.

Old sail cloth to send to Finland, it’s all taking shape.

© Peter Urpeth, 2005