One door closes and another opens for Dunnet artist Joanne Kaar
A CAITHNESS artist’s work is coming to the end of a tour of the Highlands and Islands – but that ending heralds another beginning after she secured more projects thanks to the publicity.
Dunnet-based fibre artist Joanne B. Kaar explained that her Westland exhibition, inspired by the sea chest at Mary’s Ann’s Cottage, is to finish its two-year tour of Scotland at Ullapool’s visual arts centre.
Visitors to the exhibition, which runs from July 9 to July 21, will be able to see the centrepiece of the installation, the Westland log book, which was created by Kaar after she carried out research into Mary-Ann’s father, William Young, who worked on the maiden voyage of the Westland from Glasgow to New Zealand in 1879.
Kaar said: "Although that exhibition is coming to an end, it doesn’t feel like an end because so much work has come out of it.
"When I was in the Western Isles back in May I was working with a theatre company from Lancashire [the Horse and Bamboo Theatre] who found my blog on the internet and my research on string.
"I met with the company, who work with theatre puppets, for whole week working on a play about Angus McPhee, a weaver of grass from the Western Isles."
Kaar made all the woven grass parts for the production with the end result that the theatre company filmed five minutes of the show which is to be screened online between 6am and 7am on June 22 as part of the National Theatre of Scotland’s celebrations.
This is just one of the new projects the artist is involved with.
For more information on Kaar’s other future projects, see Friday’s edition of the
John O’Groat Journal.