'Quarantzine' from Gaada
‘A Shetland Spinney’, March 2020, graphite pencil on natural tone paper , 29.7 x 42cm
Gaada, a visual arts workshop here in Shetland, has begun ‘Quarantzine’. This brilliant online open zine will share art made in self-isolation during the pandemic, and the first issue includes amazingly varied work from across the world.
I was very happy to be able to finish and submit a drawing I’d been working on for a long while but, for various reasons, could never quite complete.
As for everyone, the emergency and lockdown has suddenly disrupted projects and plans, casting almost everything in doubt. However, this has also given an unexpected chance to return to un-finished projects and long wish-lists. The current slower pace of day to day life allowed me to finally set my mind to this drawing. Below are a few words about this fascinating object from a different time.
‘A Shetland Spinney’
This traditional spinning wheel was owned by the grandmother of late local musician Alan Anderson. It’s a very interesting well-used object, and even has a piece of sealskin fashioned into a connector between the treadle and fly wheel. An important object in a traditional Shetland crofting household, many hours would’ve been spent at the wheel, the spinner’s foot counting the passing moments as the fibre moved through their hands like time.
In today’s fast world where almost everything is immediate, the lockdown feels like a very sudden stop. But in this time of unknown duration where we all have to slow down, it’s interesting to think about past ages when patterns of life were slower and possibly the fabric of time felt different.