Art Angel

Cat among by Elaine Newton

Fly — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 14:44:15 +0000

A cute kitten pounces
With fresh-born animality
Claws slashing
At the scattering
White doves

An actor practises
Shakespearean lines
Like a dark heart beating
Set the cat among the doves

Cook is coming with
Her rolling pin
She’ll catch as many
As she can

Anne Hathaway’s cottage
Is immaculately preserved
They always have
Pigeon pie on Tuesdays

Each and every cobblestone
Stinks of genius
I lean against the wall,
Giddy

Rip my feathers out
Put me in a pie
Write me into a sonnet
Then I will drink your posset,
Willingly

The Wheel of Time by Heather Ellison

Fly — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 14:43:44 +0000

This is the wheel of time. The story of the world: the song of mankind. The melody and harshness of mother earth. Rain falls to relieve the heavens. Sun shines to relieve the ravages of winter. Autumn slips by into winter. All life knows it’s own season, whether sowing, planting or harvesting. Youth; learning and developing. Adulthood; fertility and trial, learning and understanding. Old age; understanding and knowing, wisdom and knowledge. Birth to death; the unending, relentless path. Minutes, hours, days, weeks, years, decades, centuries and millennia. This is the wheel of time. The story of the world.

BC/AD Lighthouse tribes from the Round the End period in history by Dougald Mennie

Fly — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 14:42:58 +0000

You get miniature lighthouses on Orkney and Shetland and there has always been some form of lighthouse around our coast. Some people built fires to lure ships onto the rocks, pretending to be lighthouses. That’s how they got all their goodies and booty. There is an Irish lighthouse system, British, a bit of French and then Iceland. Lighthouses are a tribe unto themselves; the people who build them and the lighthouse keepers who work in them. They have their own religion, The Church of the Sea. The lighthouse keepers are the Apostles of the Sea. Their church is affiliated to all churches – Catholic, Protestant, Muslim – the world over. The coastguards too are associated with this church, they being the Police of the Sea. I put myself in lighthouses, lighthouse history: Inventing new ways of building lighthouses off the coast. And sometimes as a lighthouse keeper, preventing ships running aground on the rocks. You could say I am very interested in lighthouses and lightships. Lightships are taking over from lighthouses; most of the readings on the Shipping Broadcast are to do with lightships. There’s a lighthouse on Fair Isle, now mostly a big nature reserve. I buy brochures from Fair Isle, from the RSPB to do with all the birds there. There used to be an old lighthouse at Tayport, the Pile lighthouse I think. And the Abertay lightship near Anstruther, it was black and blue. You could say I’m interest in everything, say fishing – I invented fishing. I was the Australian who invented fishing. I put myself in his place, fishing in places like the Med. and the South China Sea. And you get fishing fleets that are spies; the Soviets especially were up to that. Although they’re not the Soviet Union anymore, the Russians still spy. There was an incident recently with a Russian plane crossing into Japanese airspace.

Lighthouses

Iceland

North Pole

Churches

Guilty of Innocence by Alison Montague

Fly — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 14:41:26 +0000

A small child and his mother walk the dry, dusty and desolate road. They are thirsty and hungry; they are African, troubled, poor and destitute. They have no fresh water, in fact the only way they can quench their thirst is to drink from a filthy well which will kill them anyway. What do they do?

They exist but do not live. They are ‘dying alive’. This is the daily trek for these people. They know that they will die prematurely but survival is still their prime goal; they know instinctively they won’t keep living if they do not try. Their cry is largely ignored and it seems there is no mercy. Help often doesn’t get through. Just what can we do? These poor and starving human beings are looked upon as burdens to their leaders in poor countries all over the world. It seems a case of the innocent are guilty, guilty for being materialistically poor.

The hierarchy of these countries has too much while the masses are starving. The poor, once more, are guilty of innocence.

New Year by Rhona Hoggan

Fly — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 14:39:45 +0000

A new year
A new you
Your trousers tight,
Too much blood in
Your alcohol stream
Smoked more than a kipper?
You need
OTT resolutions

To never eat chocolate again
To go to the gym three times daily
To go teetotal for life
To go cold turkey
Give up the booze, fags, chocolate
Cream cakes, spending
Life

This is the usual situation
On a hung-over, bloated
New Year’s day
You’re bursting out of your jeans
An’ your shirt’s gaping
Revealing a beer belly the size of Scotland
(OK, j’éxagčre)

A new year, a new you
Looking beyond your belly

Seafone

Fly — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 14:34:42 +0000

Three years worth of sounds from the Western Isles – gales, big skies, stormy seas, animals, people working together. And gales and peat and rain and boats and sea…

Artwork by Rosie Summerton.

Download audio files…

Sand Martins

Fly — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 14:31:56 +0000

This booklet is about sand martins, but also much more. It has been written in response to the considerable interest from local people in these little birds who fly thousands of miles to breed in Scotland each year. It highlights that even though we have created a safe breeding space for them on the sand dunes close to the Esplanade in Broughty Ferry, Dundee, this provides only a small part of what is necessary for them to survive each year.

Blind Sight

Fly — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:59:54 +0000

Luna member, artist and musician Rosie Summerton was approached to contribute to an exhibition of visual art and sound, to combine the two for a collaborative project between artists in Scotland and Finland. This is the catalogue of that show including reproductions of art work and sounds spread over 3 cds.

Download audio sample…

One Day (Luna 17)

Fly — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:57:14 +0000

For five years the Luna performance troupe had played venues from Dundee to the Western Isles and much in between. This was a rare opportunity to get them into the studio, to record something truly unique and save it for years to come. Not surprisingly there was more than enough material to fill two cds.

Art work by Rosie Summerton.

Download audio files…

Sleeping Stones (Luna 18)

Fly — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:55:46 +0000

Art work by Rosie Summerton.

Download audio files…

Gerils and 23:23 Live (Luna 26)

Fly — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:54:32 +0000

One winter’s night last century, before the View had even been dreamed of two of Dundee’s finest bands played a gig in early Dog House days. All who were there remember…

Download audio files…

Boo Hoo

Fly — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 20:16:33 +0000

Contains strong language
One head – several voices

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rhona

Fly — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 20:15:46 +0000

Early days in the life of a small boy called Autumn

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rosie

Fly — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 20:14:53 +0000

Re-curring dream, re-curring nightmare

Click here to view the embedded video.

Star People

Fly — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 19:50:17 +0000

Poems and stories by people who lived in Royal Dundee Liff Hospital, a Victorian asylum near Dundee opened in 1884, closed in the new millennium.

Sample Text

The Purple Cuffs

I looked at the canvas, everything was black,
The walls, the windows,
The carpets, the sky,
The grass beyond the plain.
The golden sunset turned to black.

She put on the purple cuffs,
Finally my colour returned
But it did take some time.

Paul Martin

Valtos Dreaming

Fly — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 19:48:52 +0000

Valtos is the place inside you, the warm, pink centre where you feel safe. There turquoise and green waves sometimes caress, sometimes pound a moon-white shore; where a carpet of shell sand flowers in reds, pinks, blues and gold; where skies are seemingly endless, sometimes raging in storm, sometimes delicate with the lace of cirrus cloud on high; where sea eagles soar and cry above you; where you have friends and their understanding and their love…..Valtos is the place where we dream…

Valtos Dreaming is an anthology of poetry, illustration and photography, collected throughout two long summers in the Western Isles.

Cover art by Rosie Summerton

Sample Text

Feather

I am the curve
of the wind against nothing.
Hold me,
and you will never fall again.

John Glenday

Howl by Cathy MacLeod

Fly — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 19:47:35 +0000

A collection of work by one of Scotland’s newest poets. Quite simply Cathy writes what she sees, a style that she has made all her own in coming to terms with modern life in the ageing land of her native Western Isles.

Sample Text

The Silence

The sun is out today
Lucy and I are in
Cat sits by the window –
He has been really sun worshipping
Dog outside in her little garden
Silent
Silence is Sunday here for us
T.V. is real noise –
Turning it down I hear late birds chirping
Dinner is cooking
Pie fills the kitchen with dinner’s smells
Outside, outside properly, the burn runs
As always
I hear it in my mind,
It is too far away to hear audibly here
I know seagulls, ravens and swifts fly overhead most of the times
Dog barks
Lucy is going to sit in the sun
The Sunday sun
It is quiet
Lucy is going to listen to her radio outside
Inside I sit and write this
Remembering playing on the moor as a child
Learning to fish there as an adult
The cooker clicks
The sun streams through the kitchen window.
Gloriously and silently
The door shuts
The sun is out today.

Luna Trip to the Western Isles 2002 by Karen Adam

Fly — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 19:45:47 +0000

This, Karen Adam’s first collection, details the journey from her north east Fife home, across country to Ullapool sailing over to Stornoway and down through the Isles from Lewis to Barra returning home through Skye. The pages rejoice in friends old and new, sights seen and unseen.

Sample Text

Huishinish Beach – with Andy

Shell sand
Rampant violet
Lilac and pastel rocket’s heady fragrance
Stones and boulders in toning pink and mauve

Scrabbling over huge rocks
Patterned in pink, like handwriting
Rock pools with crimson anemones, tiny fish,
Teaming sea lice like bacteria under a microscope

Up above two eagles
Spread sweeping towards the mist
As it hugs the hillsides
A tiny bone –
Perhaps a bird’s
Perfect pink-striped peach finger nail shell,
Granite stonelets
Spending time, making time
Time for fun like a bairn

Footprints back to the car

Art Angel Writers Collection

Fly — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 19:34:14 +0000

The first publication of new work produced by the writing group facilitated by renowned Scots poet Harvey Holton as part of Dundee’s Art Angel project. On this showing a number of significant new voices are about to be heard.

Sample Text

Maggie Wall

Maggie wiz a fine sowl
Kennin in the wies o mendin
Camomile fur calm
Nettles fur iron
At a haurd birth sha
Wiz ayebiz at haund
Fowk kent her weel
Liked her cat
Let her get oan wie it
Until the Witchfinders cam

Harvey Holton

Light In The Dark

Fly — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 19:31:38 +0000

The second collection of work to come from the Friday afternoon writing workshop facilitated by renowned Scots poet Harvey Holton for the Art Angel project in Dundee. It contains new voices, voices thankfully heard once again and just as importantly, voices in transition, undergoing change. A sense of the old and the new sit comfortably side by side. This anthology is designed to give an impression of thoughts and feelings over a twenty four hour period –
Dusk
Darkness/Night
Dawn
Daylight

All profits to be donated to SANE- line.

Sample Text

Light

Cold, frosty day
Ice blue sky above.
Soft Light.

Soft light.
Pastel bright.
Chalky sun.

Chalky sun
Low lying.
Hovers on rooftops.

Hovers on rooftops.
Light and shade.
Daytime.

Rhona Hoggan

Twenty Three In A Bed

Fly — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 19:27:02 +0000

Take twenty three artists, a pregnant cat, the Westside of the Isle of Lewis and a disused school overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, mix around in a thirteen day arts residential, singing, dancing (this is true), cooking for an army of starving painters, photographers and writers on a two-ringed cooker.…now lie back and read, take time, the sound of the crashing waves on white sands, your feet caressed by the starry machair, the turquoise blue luring you under..

Twenty Three in a Bed is an anthology of poetry, short story and illustration created at the first Art Angel/Luna/W.I.A.M.H. arts residency on the Western Isles in 2004.

Sample Text

*Rosie, Aaron, me*

We danced
We played
We ran
On Hebridean sand
A fairy tale king
An Elvin queen
An elder from another land

We built castles
Splashed in turquoise sea
The old
And the young
As one
Right until the sinking of the sun

And as we headed homeward
A happy, adventurous band
We left behind us
Three angels made of sand
And each
Imprinted softly
And waiting by the sea

An angel for Rosie
An angel for Aaron
And an angel for me

Lesley McLuckie

Sometimes by Cathy MacLeod

Fly — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 19:21:04 +0000

Cathy Macleod was born in Singapore and brought up in the Hebrides for the most part. Having lived in various parts of Scotland she has settled in her partially ancestral home of Lewis. Her poems deal with joy, terror, hope, survival against incomprehensible odds, a random selection of therapeutic and recreational drugs, difficult lovers and loveable children.

Sample Text

Coffee Break

I’m pickin’ up the coffee.
Pickin up the cup.
Thinkin’
I could walk the dog
I could scrub the carpet
Puttin’ down the cup of coffee.
I could wash the dishes
I could write that masterpiece
I could
I could sort out the spare room
I could put the dirty clothes and bedding in the washing machine
I could walk the dog
I could revise my studies
I’m pickin’ up the coffee.
Pickin’ up the cup.
I could train that dog, slowly and surely.
I could write to my mum
Exfoliate my bum
Tidy the garden
Wash down the kitchen units
File my filing cabinet
Shave my armpits I could tune into the telly
I could change the radio channel but…
I’m putting down the coffee and I need another one.

Peruvian Earthworms (An Illustrated Guide) by Rhona Hoggan

Fly — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 19:17:39 +0000

Rhona Hoggan has been writing since childhood but only now have we been given the chance to realise and wonder at the sheer power of her voice, its variety; her determination to confront all aspects of life with fairness and curiosity, to experience joy in the smallest of pleasures, to rage against the greatest of injustices. Though her name be new, her writing will endure.

Sample Text

Comfort you

Come on Rhona!
I know when you’re low
No matter how much you try to hide it.
Come on, cuddle up
Let me help you,
However I can.
Just give me that chance.

I know too,
When you’re giving up
When you’re close to how I felt.
Come on, cosy in
Let me help you
Let me dry your eyes.
Just give me that chance.

For I’ve been there too, kid
I understand in a way
Many can’t or won’t
Let me help you
Because I know
Just give me that chance.

The Mystery Studies of Dougald Mennie

Fly — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 19:13:57 +0000

Dougald Mennie is a writer of unsurpassed restraint, deeply interested in the world around him. I was impressed by how finely researched and carefully crafted his writing is. Mennie is a master of minutiae and detail – he describes the world from a viewpoint so completely individual that it cannot help but enrich our own. His writing is imaginative and darkly optimistic; sometimes sad, often humorous, but always moving. Now read on…

Introduction: John Glenday – February 2008
Cover art by Rosie Summerton.

Sample Text

Land of Ice

I invented the Post Office and the telephones,
I put myself in the radio news
And also the newspapers;
Newspapers from all over the world,
I collect them; the Icelandic
Review is my favourite.

Inspired by Nature – The Eco Poets Collection

Fly — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 19:10:40 +0000

These poems are written by a group of people with a love of the outdoors who sought to express their feelings in poetry. They meet once a month in various natural places around Broughty Ferry near Dundee, preferably in the open, but with handy bolt-holes if the weather is unkind. With an ever increasing advance of the concrete jungle they wish to raise concern about this and give a voice to local people ignored by those with power, money but little sense of beauty.

Inside Oot by Kevin McCabe

Fly — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 19:07:27 +0000

Kevin McCabe lives in Dundee where he writes and performs poetry, makes films, teaches and occasionally dances; he no longer plays football. Says he – Ev dun menay hingz n meh life, sum rite, sum rang but thi best hing eh evir did wiz gitin ti ken me.

Sample Text

Twenty First

Martin clark fae thi cutty sark leedz thi atakfae thi side o thi park
N hiz nivir lakt spirit n it dizni metir iv its hail ir sna martin supported thi cutty fae ee wiz sma wachin shoutin on eez teem thi cutty misheen n eh meen eez seen meny gloray nites wi loadz o
Trofayz too n noo em hinkin martin it wiz ah doon ti yoo a man whaz
Ayewiz gled ti see yi wi n iver prezint smile n iv thi cutty needid a goal
Eed wak a hundred mile

Love Never Dies

Fly — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 18:54:16 +0000

An exploration of Dundee’s place in the modern world.

Words: Kevin McCab
Images: Stephen Johnstone
Music: Vince Piggot

Click here to view the embedded video.

Five Gifts

Fly — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 18:53:11 +0000

Luna offers the world five presents from five new film makers

Click here to view the embedded video.

Winter Sun

Fly — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 18:24:34 +0000

Art as Recovery, of regaining life.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A Glimpse of Heaven

Fly — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 18:22:20 +0000

The third and final part of Luna’s asylum trilogy. One mans destiny unfolds

Click here to view the embedded video.

Art Angles by Jim Strachan

Fly — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 15:17:48 +0000

Jim Strachan was born in Dundee quite some time ago though the last twenty years or so have been spent in the artistic boiler house that is Forfar. He sings, paints, acts on stage and drives a car. He knows all there is to know about gas. He can take twelve steps in any direction and give an informed opinion of each new land; its subtleties; the very chemistry of the place. His sixty nine years on this earth have not been wasted.

Sample text

Another Missaster

Another day another dollar! As he struggled from his sleep he felt it was a “Good morning God,” not a “Good God it’s morning,” kind of a day. Shufflingly scratching his way through to the living room, he leaned precariously over the back of the armchair and pressed the boost tit on the central heating control, wandered over to the couch after turning on BBC 1 and rolled a fag. The fumbling rollie-up and the steady drone news item acted as a buffer to any shock of early brain usage. The first draw set off a slight hacking but not enough phlegm to spit up…A nice normal start to the day.

Calm by Matthew Gray

Fly — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 13:06:38 +0000

Matthew Gray’s writing is as fresh as the summer rain that drifts down from the skies over his native Dundee. He sees things in the only way he can – that of his own, Matthew Gray. His prose poems long to be heard, to be shared in comfort and warmth; kept safe beneath a Christmas tree these last forty or so years. Yet always tread warily; expect the shocks and you might find them.

Sample

It came from outer space, from Mars, and landed on earth. It can move as fast as light, its eyes glow in the dark and it is red and green all over. It can’t stand light, it can change form and speak in all different languages and even change colour. The alien has told us that time does not exist where he comes from and there is no tomorrow. The earth is now ruled by these aliens and men and women are locked up in cages and whipped when they are bad. When there is no work for them to do they are locked up all of the time. The alien eats snacks and rats for tea. And they drink lots of water.

Artwork

Fly — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:57:40 +0000

Welcome to the Art Angel artist showcase. You can see big versions of the images by clicking on the thumbnails below. To read more about our art groups click here.

Photography

Fly — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:53:50 +0000

Welcome to the Art Angel photogrpahy showcase. You can see big versions of the images by clicking on the thmbnails below. To read more about our photography groups click here.