Created By Stuart Russell B.E.M
www . arts in fife . blogspot . co . uk www . facebook . com / Arts In Fife
ARTS IN FIFE is a free publication created by Stuart Russell B.E.M, to promote all arts within Fife, Scotland. The magazine showcases a range of local talent and constructs a dialogue between artists, voluntary organizations and the general public. This magazine displays art awareness and shows the important role art plays in bringing together communities. The magazine celebrates dance, drama, literature, media, music, visual arts, crafts and applied arts. It also promotes and supports local voluntary art groups, events and galleries. To submit work for the next issue please contact us via our website at: www.artsinfife.blogspot.co.uk
STUART RUSSELL B.E.M is the former Arts Ambassador of Fife, representing Voluntary Arts Scotland. He has won awards for his voluntary work, contributing to volunteering in Scotland since the age of 16. He is a successful artist and poet in his own right and works hard to support the arts locally, with aims to make it more inclusive.
www.stuartrussellartwork.co.uk
Contact us to advertise any creative events happening in Fife.
Fall for the Arts www.facebook.com/FallForTheArtsFife Fall for the Arts is an annual visual arts weekend held in September at the Buckhaven Beehive. Visitors are able to view the work of Central Fife based artists and talk to them about their work, as well as visit several artists in their own studios.
O2 THINK BIG… Are you 13-25? Need money, support or training to help improve your community? We help young people launch ideas and programmes that benefit the places where they live. You provide the big idea; we provide £300 and the support to make it happen!
ARTS IN FIFE… was supported by O2 and is itself a Think Big project. You can support Arts In Fife by visiting the O2 Think Big website and sharing the project through social media. You can also support the projects creator and leader Stuart Russell by visiting his personal website: www.stuartrussellartwork.co.uk
For more information on O2 Think Big and to support Arts In Fife, visit the website: www.o2thinkbig.co.uk
Fall for the Arts are looking for artists in the Central Fife area, who are keen to exhibit their work along with other creative people at their venue in the Buckhaven Beehive. Please visit their Facebook page to find out more. They are looking for supporters and artists to contribute some of their time towards making this event happen every year!
Artists and makers looking to participate in the project or open their studio should email: centralfifevisualarts@virginmedia.com
The Buckhaven Beehive By Blair Denwette MBE Since taking on the re-branding and re-development of "Free Gardeners Hall" in Buckhaven, to create the Beehive Arts and Culture Centre, volunteers who currently make up the Project Team, have successfully engaged with a considerable number of individuals and groups to host and promote a wide range of arts and cultural activities recognising and developing the existing talents, that have in many instances lain dormant in the heart of our communities.
Photography By Blue White www.spanglefish.com/photographybyblue Blue loves to work with babies and families, creating beautiful memories through her photography. In her spare time she enjoys looking at scenery and is inspired by Fife.
Utilising funding obtained through Creative Scotland; the Beehive team has been successful in reaching out into the community to give opportunities, enabling individuals to express themselves through a variety of media. From a project using stencils and spray chalk, creating a history trail in Letham Glen, working with Fife's young carers to producing a beautiful mosaic, to providing specialist tuition in the techniques of painting using acrylics. The Beehive, with support from a vast number of organisations, local and nationally, are helping to raise the positive profile of Levenmouth as a Centre of Creative Excellence and Vibrancy in Fife. Building on the huge successes of the past year, volunteers are currently working towards presenting an annual event, "Fall for the Arts". It hopes to be an exhibition of artwork that is in the community, for the community and by the community. This exhibition will run over the weekend of the 6th-8th September and will bring together Artists and their work from all across Fife. The exhibition hopes to display the all too often unseen and unheard creative voices, lying dormant in the heart of our communities. The event will start on the 6th September and run for the weekend with a preview celebration on Friday evening for Artists and their invited guests. Visitors to the exhibition over the weekend will have the opportunity to view the art on display, take part in taster workshops and also talk with the artists exhibiting. The Beehive hopes to recognise peoples worth in terms of who they are, as opposed to, in what they do in economic terms. We hope that through creativity we can work with people towards their own empowerment. We can help and inspire others to create a fairer and equal society. Henry David Thoreau expressed beautifully, his views on art and its relationship with the world‌"The world is but a canvas to our imagination".
Artwork By John Gifford www.johngifford.co.uk
Textiles By Fife’s Knitted Nature www.facebook.com/FifesKnittedNature To mark the Year of Natural Scotland, we would like to celebrate this rich diversity of life on our doorstep through an ambitious knitting project. And we’re inviting knitters across Fife to take part! First, we plan to recreate our special local wildlife with knitting needles. Choose from a list of animals, plants, birds, fungi and invertebrates that are iconic, threatened or play an important role in our ecosystem. Once completed, our creations will travel around Fife as art and learning installations. They will turn up in all sorts of public spaces and will drop by schools. Some will get the chance to visit their natural habitats. Local enthusiasts, wildlife experts, artists and writers will escort them, plus we hope to capture the experiences in a short film.
Interview: Artist, Gillian Adair www.gillianadair.co.uk What inspires you? People’s creative approaches to living, whether they are aware of it or not. Your techniques are very individual, what is it about these techniques that interests you? I am interested in the wear and tear of living and the effects of repetitive behaviours. The puncturing of the paper is a response to not knowing what to do with a perfect unblemished surface and a general sense of imagery fatigue. I love the effect of pencil punctures on paper they feel Braille-like which reminds me of my mother as she was blind. I was drawn to wearing out and mark making from a very early age, there was a resonance with an experience of discovery in the unseen stained line that traced the length of the walls of my parent’s empty house. This marking only became visible to us when all the furniture and clutter of a lived life had been removed. It had been my mother’s daily touch as she guided herself around what was essentially her world. Is there a period, place or person that influences you? I have a huge love for Fife and Uist landscapes (places of my childhood) I love the wet of the coastline and can be very nostalgic. However I am most influenced by where I stand now and all the experiences life continues to give. Have you always been creative, how long have you pursued art? I always wanted to be an artist. Mt grandmother was an illustrator and I was also very inspired by my school art teacher Mrs Leishman who called us all “people” and gave us a place in the adult world. What do you hope people take away from your work? Reflective thoughts?
Artwork By Gillian Adair www.gillianadair.co.uk
The Season www.facebook.com/TheSeason The Season is a feature length documentary directed by Alex Harron & produced by Andrew Glen, which follows the Dundee Hurricanes, an amateur American Football team throughout the 2014 season. Andrew Glen & Alex Harron have made several documentaries on various subjects, which have been shown internationally. Illustration By Mairi Claire Hubbard www.emseeitch.com
Radio West Fife is one of Scotland’s oldest hospital radio stations and broadcasts to the Queen Margaret Hospital in Dunfermline, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year as well as online through the internet and mobile through the Tune In app for your smartphone. From its humble beginnings, back in September 1953, when broadcasting was from a shed in the grounds of the West Fife Hospital, the station has grown Artwork By Lynsey Ewan www.lynseyewan.co.uk
considerably. This has been due to the tremendous amount of support we have received from our local community. Following a spell of broadcasting from a caravan at Milesmark Hospital, the station moved to Lynebank Hospital in 1993. In 2009 the station moved into Queen Margaret Hospital, and a new purposed-built computerised facility with state-of-the-art digital
equipment
equal
to
many
professional
broadcasters. With a full and varied schedule of programmes Radio West Fife continues to provide a valuable service to the patients of Queen Margaret Hospital and our online listeners.
www.radiowestfife.org.uk
Bermuda Lover By Ross Sorley The house stood more still than ever, creating an uneasy tension between us both as I approached. The only sound being of my bike chain clattering violently as it bounced along the rocky path beneath my feet. Heavy hearted, clenching against my breath, I peered upwards at the towering walls of what seemed a derelict shrine of a once loved home. Running fingers through my long mahogany falls of youth, anxiety pressing against my temples, I perched my bicycle against the unwelcoming dusted brickwork. I heard my mothers words float faintly around the busyness inside my head. ‘You never know Lydia…Jonah might have returned’. Artwork By Caroline McGonigal www.naturesowncinema.co.uk
Making slow pressed footsteps towards the large and white peeling front door, only to be greeted by a broken letterbox and a tarnished number twenty-four, I let myself in closing the safety of the outside world behind me. I was the presence the house had lost. The sounds of old foretold conversations whispered at me as the draught of wind let itself in through the cracks and crannies of the front door. I remember this always being a problem ever since the day we moved in, making the house colder than it should have been. I had always ordered Jonah to stick some old tea towel in the open holes where previous locks and fittings, no longer in use, had been, to keep the coldness of winter’s solitude out. He never did get round to fixing the doors imperfections properly. I stood empty in the tiny vestibule that held an ocean of unread mail, scattered across the mosaic of red and black tiles whilst the scent of neglected plants pierced at my nostrils. In a tired effort I picked up the chaos of letters, holding them close to my chest and made my way into the light subdued hallway. Most of the letters were addressed to Jonah, as I flicked through them frantically as if looking for an answer to an unsolved riddle. He always got more mail than me. I laid the pile of letters neatly on top of the antique sideboard; I dared not open any, at least not yet, not until I felt ready. My eyes wandered along to the flashing of the answer phone where thirty-six new messages waited for me eagerly. I had only been
gone about three weeks but this clarified the fact I didn’t want to face, Jonah had not been home. I hung my overcoat and thick woollen scarf over the clutter of clothing that engulfed the banister beneath. Slowly taking off my damp-soled shoes, I could feel the grains of the battered floorboards on the bottom of my feet. I began walking away from the echoing answer phone messages, which turned into a distant haze as I entered the drawing room that had been sprinkled with a layer of dust since my last visit. I glanced at myself in the mirror opposite, hung above the large charcoal fireplace, the face of a stranger staring back. The reading chair that sat by the large glass paned windows still clutched on to the outline of Jonah’s body. He had always spent long Sunday afternoons lounging there, reading the classics of the greats and furiously writing down his own untold stories whilst sipping on black coffee that had turned stone cold by the time it reached his darkened lips. I’d bring him lunch when I was on a break from painting, he would always look up, distanced by his own creativity, yet glare at me lovingly as he accepted my gift. I had always loved how the bay window captured his beauty, even on a rainy day. The light caressing his dark brunette head of hair that flicked and flopped lightly over his rectangular glasses which shielded his delicate hazel eyes. Before I left to leave him in his otherworldly realm of thoughts, I would lean down and kiss his unshaven face, feeling the bristle of his writer’s stubble. An artist and a writer, a more than suited couple it would seem. ‘How’s your painting going?’ he would ask. ‘Oh you know…dire’ He always looked back at me eyebrows raised a little as if not in full belief of my answer. ‘And your novel?’ I’d bounce back. A shortened pause always followed, until he chuckled a little. ‘Dire’ he replied with a hidden smile. I often wondered if his obscure drowning within his own creativity would be his downfall someday. I guess he could have said the same about me. The memories I was reliving seemed to evaporate around me as I heard the wailing of cats to the rear of the house. Numbly, I made my way through to the kitchen. Again the unfriendly emptiness suffocated me with open arms. I wanted to decline. The vibrations and white noise of the refrigerator behind me made me feel at ease as the continuing silence of the house prickled at my neck. I looked towards the top of the tall kitchen window that I had forgot to close, allowing a crippled branch of ivy to invade. I searched through the larder only to find past sell by date groceries and rotting fruits before realising I wasn’t hungry. I climbed up the mountain of stairs, which creaked with every step; passing a collage of framed nostalgic photographs of us both, until I
reached our bedroom. Before turning the crystal doorknob I felt the last glimmer of hope rush through my veins. Jonah would be waiting for me, clean and wet bodied, rummaging through our unorganized chaos of a wardrobe for his favourite oversized jumper and skinny jeans. I pried open the door with great force, only to find a deserted room, just as I had left it. Scanning the room I appreciated its sentimentalism. Jonah’s bedside was piled high with half read books and bursting journals, mine overflowing with various artistic materials spilling on to the hard wood floor. I looked over to the window where the tall yet limp dragon tree plant that we had been given as a housewarming present, stood bending in a surreal sadness as the autumn evening sun’s rays kissed it goodnight. I endured its melancholy as I sat rigid on the bed. The terraced houses adjacent stared in, pitying my loneliness. I reminisced the nights Jonah and I had spent together in this room, sharing views of each other’s creative worlds, the odd relaxing spliff and the magical nights of passionate yet vigorous sex. I lay back in the grasp and the coolness of the duvet, the smell of fabric softener stinging at my eyes. I imagined Jonah next to me, holding me close in his warmth, his breath and eyelashes kissing me whilst the light descended on the room as I drifted into a sea of unconsciousness. I met Jonah about three months later outside our local café. Separated by scratched and water beaten glass, I gave him a half smile. He stared back, wide eyed and hollow. His lips projecting a smile showered in falseness. I felt his beauty was lost and overshadowed by the crowd of people around him. I wanted answers but was barricaded from him. He was now a victim not the man I had fell in love with. I turned, teary eyed, my back now facing him as I began to walk away from the displayed artistic photomontage of the disappeared and the missing. Later that same day I rode my bicycle passed our house, stopping for a moment to capture its unique allure. The front door had been painted a shade of light pastel pink and the letterbox had been replaced. Children’s laughter could be heard ringing from the inside of the house devoid from the world that had existed there once before.