Page 18 - Art First: Helen MacAlister: At the Foot o’ Yon Excellin’ Brae
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coherence of the mass of humanity, of countless individuals   beautiful of them, however, is Bàn: Dearg, in English, White:
            moving together as one. Here she extends that idea by   Red. It consists of two equal, contiguous sheets of glass.
            another translingual pun, from ‘mol’ the Gaelic noun for   One, to the left, with Bàn engraved in it, is a translucent,
            beach, or ‘shingle’, the stuff of which a beach, or at least   slightly wavy white. The other, to the right, engraved with
            this beach, is made, to ‘mol’, the Gaelic verb to praise, or   Dearg, is a rich, glowing red.  In Gaelic, these colour
            celebrate. But then the shingle moving with the tide is also   adjectives also name the sides of the plough’s furrow.
            like language itself, at once both solid and fluid, moving   As the ploughshare cuts through the fallow ground, the
            with the tide of history. It seems the tide of Gaelic is going   dearg, or red side, which is on the right with a right-handed
            out, however. The bald figures of the screenprint Monoglots   plough, is the dark, turned earth of the tilled, and potentially
            are the year, 1971, and 477, the number of monoglot   productive side. The bàn, or white side is the still untilled
            Gaelic speakers who then still lived in Scotland. The artist   and thus empty ground. In form, side by side, red and
            contemplates these figures with delicate irony in her   white, light and dark, the glass echoes this. Thus she turns
            note where she records that the blue background is also   the work into a metaphor for the whole business of making
            numbered. It is pantone 300, the precise blue of the Saltire   images.
            as approved by the Scottish Parliament.          Her approach to landscape is not so very
                    Several of her prints and glass pieces are as   different from such eloquent word pieces. She treats the
            terse as this one, but with them likewise, economy does not   landscapes she chooses with great formality, but she
            limit their meaning. Newly minted coins, for instance, is just   also finds a formality that is there in them as though in
            three words sandblasted onto pale green glass. The words   sympathy with the poetry they inspire. Ben Dorain, for
            are a quotation from John MacInnes on the poetry of Sorley   instance, represented in the work referred to above, is
            MacLean. Her point is Gaelic itself might be like the raised   itself a peculiarly formal mountain. Its profile is remarkably
            beach of Rum left high and dry, not by the tide but by sea   symmetrical and even in plan its ridges resemble a rather
            level change which is much more permanent, were it not   neat three pointed star. Glen Roy and Glen Urquhart are
            for the poets and especially Sorley MacLean. MacInnes   two works which continue this theme. For the artist, the
            describes how even against the decline of Gaelic, MacLean   parallel roads of Glen Roy, which is what the Ice Age layers
            added to the richness of the language with words that are   of the glen were once thought to be, and the field bank
            like ‘newly minted coins.’                that became an extended gallery for the Glen Urquhart
                    The transparent simplicity of these glass   Free Kirk, both also seem to echo the formal shape that
            pieces is wonderfully telling. Cold air in the nostrils is an   poetry needs. She does not stop there, however, but
            eloquent, poetic metaphor, indivisibly word and image.   links these things back to language by different routes. In
            The wavy surface of ice-blue glass embodies the words.   Glen Roy, “The work,’ she writes, ‘is metaphorically giving
            Sainte Chapelle is a homage to one of the greatest of all   location to ‘bilingualism’ framing the running of the Gaelic
            compositions of stained glass, but by reversing it, she   and the Scots line. A parallel implicit in the landscape.”
            suggests it is as though we were seeing it from the outside   The drawing Standard Habbie extends this notion of line
            and how little sense that would make. Perhaps the most   and form to the poetic tradition itself, its line of descent
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