Botany and baking in the frame at Caithness Horizons

AN exhibition by local artist Joanne B. Kaar will give a new perspective to the work and life of the renowned Thurso botanist and baker Robert Dick.

Kaar has been working with the curator of Caithness Horizons over the last few years to help document, photograph and digitise the botanical specimens and paper wrappers contained within the Robert Dick Herbarium.

Together they selected 60 of the herbarium specimens, which Kaar has printed onto her own handmade papers. All 60 are on display at Caithness Horizons.

In the new exhibition at the centre, entitled Paper Wrappers & Herbarium Sheets, which runs until December 11, Kaar has created work to interpret the story of ?Dick’s life from an artist’s perspective.

She has designed a series of adverts that relate to three important events in his life that involve flour.

Dick read widely, attended local lectures and had an interest in phrenology.

He was well known locally for his biscuits and parliament cakes or “parlies”. Kaar has updated his image and also spent time in the shop of Reids of Caithness drawing their cakes and incorporating some of their large empty brown paper flour sacks, which she stitched closed with the bakers’ twine.

Since graduating with an MA (Textiles Department) from Manchester Metropolitan University in 1992, Kaar has continued to experiment with fibre arts, particularly paper-making by hand.

Most of her papers are rag based – Sheila Roderick, from the Scalpay Weaving Shed in the Western Isles, sends Kaar all of her waste linen fibre to make into paper.

Kaar has completed many residencies including at the Chaoyang University and the Su-Ho Paper Museum in Taiwan.

Last year her work was accepted for exhibitions in Korea, Tasmania, Germany, the United States of America and the United Kingdom and earlier this year 20 paper-makers from around the world spent a week at her studio in Dunnet.

Caithness Horizons is home to the Robert Dick Herbarium. In 2011 the centre secured grant aid from the Association of Independent Museums (AIM) and Museums Galleries Scotland to start a project to improve the condition of the specimens in the herbarium through remedial conservation treatment.

This project will place over several phases. Phase one started in June and the 60 most important specimens have been taken to the Scottish Conservation Studio for conservation treatment by paper and photograph conservator Helen Creasy.