A project is born

“Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”

Mary Oliver

After decades of trying Mairi’s way, I’m following spirit now. A divine daisy chain has been carrying me along since I finished my painting class with the question:

“Could I make paint out of seaweed?”

Short answer yes. I used to dye wool with natural materials and it turns out the pigment process is very similar, and…I even had everything I needed. The hubble bubble began, from beetroot to sugar kelp the experiments commenced.

Next came botanical ink making and then a local group called Seaweed Gardens. This group of scientists and artists are all interested in seaweed. I learned from one of the scientists that different pigments need different extraction processes. Who knew!  Hence why you can now find red seaweed in jars in my fridge, oh yea.

More following daisies came through a local textile artist, Deborah Gray. Firstly a course on setting up a dye garden and then how to make Lake Pigments, exactly the process I had been teaching myself.

I know this is spirit in action, making my way easy.

More miracles have ensued. I’ll spare you the list but suffice to say its all been a big yes. Yes Mairi, keep going, you are on the right path now.

I got a little carried away making botanical inks, even making lovely wee notebooks with ink infused paper. There is something very pleasing about natural colours. The fact they fade over time, well, that raises the questions of impermanence.

Why do we even need art that lasts?

How many paintings languish in attics and basements, and then what? A funeral pyre of old canvases when we die?  Could I do art that is not made to last? What about natural handmade oil paints? Oooo, maybe I could make my own paper too.

No bother says Spirit.

A course appeared in Oban, with a poster that mention paper made from seaweed. I did at this point think, “this is too good to be true.” It’s not though, is it? It’s how spirit supports us.

Now what I’m about to say may seem like a sidetrack but it’s not. Another pet topic of mine, the fish farm business in Scotland, raised its ugly head at a very local level. The loch I live on is called Loch Creran. It has SAC (Special Area of Conservation) status and is also a MPA (Marine Protected Area). There are various incredible and rare features below the surface, out of sight and way too often out of mind.

It came to light that one of the businesses around the loch, a huge hatchery owned by Scottish Sea Farms had discharged medicines into the loch at rates way above the levels of their licence. After contacting the local paper I ended up on the front page!

A plan was being hatched in the ether and into it I fell.

I’d volunteered to co-represent The Friends of Loch Creran on a new committee called the Loch Creran Pressures and Activities Management Group. Nature Scot convened the group to:

…act as a forum to discuss and understand the available evidence related to environmental and ecological data and pressures that may affect the protected features of the Loch Creran Special Area of Conservation (SAC) and Nature Conservation Marine Protected Area (NC MPA), most notably serpulid reefs.

This clinched it for me. This loch is special, it’s supposed to be being protected and I’m not at all sure that it is.

And so a project was born.

Ten years ago I walked the shores of Loch Creran and again in 2020 I started but was stopped by Covid. Every year I have wondered if I should walk again.

Now I am.

Over the course of the next year I am going to walk the shoreline of Loch Creran documenting as I go. Doing one walk a month this will also involve natural pigments and inks as well as impermanent art, the stuff that does no harm. Art and activism meet in action, everything I’m interested in and care about rolled up into one year long project.

Walking Loch Creran is born again.

“When we move out on faith into the act of creation, the universe is able to advance.”

Julia Cameron