I like puzzles

I like rhymes

I see patterns
rich with signs

Patriot Box   This box is a kind of kitsch portable museum of Scottishness. It has its own miniature stone of destiny in a clear case, topped with a saltire made from a fragment of Hunting Robertson kilt tartan. There is a copy of the Arbroath Declaration, a miniature atlas of Scotland and two bottles – one containing Scottish soil and the other containing Scottish rain water. There is also a small dark mirror into which Scots can peer to see what the future might hold for their country.

System under direction of key units    on the simplest level, this is colour sudoku. It arose from my interest in system based process and colour relationships.

I was intetrested in finding a a semi-mechanical or systematic way of organising colour and because I am interested in puzzles, I was curious about what might result from applying puzzle rules to colour combinations.

I substituted the nine digits commonly used in sudoku, with colour values: 3 primary, 3 secondary, 3 neutral and allowed the nine colours to self arrange using the same mathematical constraints as the puzzle.

The installation was exhibited at the Society of Scottish Artists annual exhibition in March 2013. The piece is interactive and during the course of the exhibition, the colour puzzle was reset daily.

Visitors to the exhibition were invited to solve the puzzle, either alone or in syndicates.

Emigrant   This book contains faded and distressed images of family members who emigrated from Scotland over the past 140 years to Australia and America by the traditional means of making the journey – the ocean liner. The pages are linked by a chain of stitched kisses and the first page contains a lock of hair stitched into a heart.

Burns compendium   This piece is one of six, presented in a box. It was made specifically for the Big Burns Vending Machine project as part of the Burns festival of 2013. The “contents” of each bottle are unique – each one a different song or verse by Burns from his time in Dumfries -the air that he breathed into poetry. Hommage a Duchamp’s L’air de Paris.