I am really excited to have been offered a place on the Muir is Tir Artist Residency with Sail Britain and An Lanntair to the Shiant Isles, from the 28th June to 4th July.
At the Scottish Mountaineering Press’ Creatives Live & Mèinn event in February 2024 for the Fort William Mountain Festival, I listened to Màiri NicGillìosa talk about her artistic practice and connection to her home, the Isle of Lewis. She also mentioned “etieag”, the Gaelic word for a ‘quartz pebble’.
I wonder about quartz on Lewis, so precious it has a name. Where can you find it? Huge boulders clustered along the high tide lines, frozen veins of white lightning in the rock, smooth pebbles gently placed on the sunken eyelids of the dead, or as polished gems decorating the thick hair of the Na Fir Ghorma?
Quartz is a common mineral, but its fiery birth is so different to the lush peatland and cool waters of the lochs and seaways of Lewis and the Shiant Isles. My PhD is in geological interpretation, I’m interested in how people personally understand and connect with the geology around them. To wonder how the world around us formed, to question our place in time, is to be human.
The Shiant Isles are mostly formed of thick, horizontal igneous intrusions called sills which were forced between layers in fossiliferous Jurassic sediments. The boundaries in between show a gap in time and are called unconformities. John MacCulloch was the first recorded geologist to visit the Shiants in 1819 and clearly describes the different rock types in ‘A Description of the Western Islands’. Conventional sciences consider unconformities as first recognised at Siccar Point in 1788 by the Scottish geologist James Hutton. However, I believe these structures to be clear and visible features in the landscape, important changes in rock type that were already recognised by local people.
I’m going to use my time on the Muir is Tir residency to explore the geology and landscape through my creative practice and discussions with others. I like to paint quickly and freely with watercolours, to write and to take photos and video recordings as I work. I want use this to better understand the role of geology for the people of Lewis and how this has been translated into place names, folklore and tradition. I am especially interested in finding geological features like quartz and unconformities and considering how people in the past interpreted them.
I had an amazing time on the “Land and Sea” residency to Skye and around the Small Isles with Sail Britain last year. Travelling by sailing ship, living simply, eating together, talking about life and place and feelings and colour. I am really excited to experience this again in a completely different way through the Muir is Tir residency.