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Borderlands II – Journeys to the Ice Age

Borderlands II was a two day conference, including an amazing peat coring at Kirkconnel Flow, organised by Stove member and environmental artist Kate Foster, with delegates arriving from Northumbria and Cumbria, The Borders and D&G, as well as further afield.

The peat coring, led by Dr Lauren Parry, was a time travelling experience back to the Ice Age through the samples of peat and eventually down to boulder clay, six meters down in the depths of the bog.

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The second day was spent in the Stove, including exhibition and talks given by a range of speakers including story teller Malcolm Green, Dave Pritchard on wetlands, and Nadiah Rosli’s focus on Peatlands of South East Asia.

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Image: The corer used for the Peat Coring workshop, accompanied by artwork by Kate Foster
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Blueberry Soup’s Red Cards

As part of our ongoing Reel to Real cinema series, on Thursday 21st of April, we hosted a screening of Blueberry Soup, a documentary exploring the constitutional change in Iceland following the 2008 financial crisis, and the re-invention of democracy through the rewriting of the nations constitution.

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Following the film screening, there was a Q&A with the films director, Eileen Jerrett via Skype live from Seattle.

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The red cards had become popular during recent protests in Iceland following the Panama Papers release, and caused Eileen to begin her #messagestoIceland, sending supportive messages to those still pushing for constitutional change in the country.

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Reel to Real is our regular cinema series of issue based and topic films, followed by open discussions, workshops and food share events encouraging our audiences to engage more indepth with some of the themes and topics discussed in the films screened.

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Changing the World with Hand and Brush

Today our new friend and sign painting ninja Ciaran Glöbel led a group of Stove members in an inspirational workshop on the art of hand painted lettering.

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An example of Ciaran’s work – you can see more at his website 
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Ciaran talks alphabets

There is a resurgence of interest in the traditional art of sign painting – this is partly because the sameness and ubiquity of computer generated plastic signage is wearing thin and partly because street artists (graffiti etc) are rediscovering the old arts of hand painted signage as a language for their work. Ciaran Glöbel is good example of this – he is a street artist who for the last two years has been making a living as a sign painter.

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Letters by Elli, Ciaran + Jo, Katie, Lyndsay
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Single stroke brush lettering practice

The day was rounded off with a public screening of ‘Sign Painters’ a movie which is a moving call to arms for artists to take to the streets and bring back the quality and originality of bespoke designed and hand made signage and street art.

‘I think every human being has the ability to alter their own environment with their bare hands.’ ……absolutely goddamn right!

Just imagine how different Dumfries High Street could look if all the independent traders had hand painted signage by local artists? #MakingDumfries

Thanks to Katie for organising everything and Ciaran for being so generous with his knowledge and having great banter

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