We were always looking for opportunities for our students to make and exhibit work outside the school and in 1989 a notice came across my desk about an international exhibition entitled ‘Creacite’ to be held in Tours, France in October 1990. The title itself, literally ‘creativity in the city’, was enough to make me very interested. The theme was ‘Water and Europe’ ( ‘Quand les arts se jettent a l’eau’ ) organised by the Association for the Promotion of the Arts and the Environment in France and curated by its president, Regine Charvet-Pello. Glasgow had been invited, by virtue of being the European City of Culture in 1990, along with other major European cities to select artists, architects and designers to make work for ‘Creacite’. Architects as distinguished as Jean Nouvel and Jorn Utzon were showing work along with other well-known artists and designers. It looked like there was a possibility that student work could be selected. I took it up and ran with it.
The whole project turned out to be one of the most successful and rewarding with which the department was involved. I managed to raise funding from the school and from Glasgow City Council while the organisation in Tours covered shipping, setting up and insurance costs. Each of us would have to pay for our own food for the duration of the trip. I decided that the fourteen fourth year students should take up the challenge. It would be a good starting point for their final year. There were two strands to our contribution. Each student would make a work for an exhibition and also to prepare a work to be installed on the banks of the River Loire near the city centre. It was a massive undertaking and involved all of us working throughout the summer vacation to meet the September deadline for the crating and shipping out of all the works and materials.
Months before, I went to Tours on a research visit and photographed numerous potential sites for the public art works as well as locations for the exhibition. The former was certainly helpful in discussions with my students when I got back, while the latter was a waste of time as we ended up in a space that I hadn’t seen. However, I had very useful meetings with the director and her staff.
We used the school mini-bus with a roof rack that ran the length of the vehicle. Stan Bonnar and I would share the driving. Originally, I had planned an overnight in London but we needed to save time and announced that we would miss out London and go straight for the overnight ferry. This was greeted with some disappointment. I responded by saying that in place of London I would give them ‘dawn in Chartres Cathedral.’ I seem to recall that this offer in no way seemed a suitable bargain. After four wretched hours on the ferry, stretched out on the floor trying to grab a little sleep, we disembarked at 2-00 a.m., meandered through Dieppe and out into the flat, dark, mist-covered plain of Normandy. We had already been travelling for 15 hours but it is amazing how the adrenalin kicks in, so I was feeling wide awake as I drove along the country roads in the dark while everyone else dosed off. The first glimmer of light began to appear and in the far distance were the spires of Chartres. Fortune was with us when we parked outside the railway station. Across the street a bakery café was just opening. It was 6-00am. I announced, ‘Fresh coffee and croissants on the budget!’ There are many sweet moments in life but I must say that that café offered one of the sweetest. Refreshed, we drove up the hill to the cathedral. The doors were closed and though the overcast sky made for very little light, I settled for an instructive tour around the exterior pointing out significant features when one of the students opened a small side door. We went in. The place was empty and lit only by single candles around the walls. As we wandered around in the gloom, walking the famous maze and taking in the wonders of the place the sun broke through the windows and the great, medieval stained glass of Chartres bathed us in a colourful dapple of light. What can one say about a moment like that? I am susceptible to epiphanous, spiritual experiences and so for me it was one of the very special moments of my life.
In order to make the trip financially possible I had arranged with a friend, Herve Bechy, to stay in some farm buildings he owned on the edge of Tours. Herve was a leading authority on public art and had founded and was editor of the magazine, ‘Les Dossiers de l’Art Publique’. It was rough living – a concrete floor of a store room for the males and an attic room for the females. Cooking had to be done on a two-ring calor gas stove and all washing at an outside standpipe. I didn’t sleep too well so most mornings I got up early, put a pan of water on the stove and then drove to the village for fresh baguettes and a good supply of butter. Herve’s ‘camp fire’, encircled by log benches, meant that most evening meals were barbecues; stories were told and songs were sung.
We had been assigned a large exhibition space in an unfinished, new school building. Though not ideal (south – facing windows lined one wall) it offered sufficient opportunity for the works to be well-displayed. We all worked very hard over long days. The exhibition had to be set up as quickly as possible so that we could use the rest of the time to work on the site-specific works by the river. It was all a hassle with little of the promised assistance from the organisers compounded by language problems and not knowing the best places to get things. But as is usual in these kinds of situations it all seems to work out in the end. The exhibition looked good. Then it was off to install the works on the Loire. The Director of the local Ecole de Beaux Arts provided a workshop base. Even now I am astonished at what the students achieved on such a tight schedule. The works, in terms of scale, breadth and visual impact, stood up well to the grandeur of the river. I still use images of several of them in my lectures when I’m describing the Environmental Art course.
Stan and I collaborated on a work high up on the huge, stone flood wall which protects the city from the river. (Note 1) Working outside in the public domain always has a special quality as it inevitably provokes interaction with passers-by. One such was a Breton bagpiper who, after discovering we were from Scotland, turned up on several days to accompany us on his pipes.
At both the formal ‘Creacite’ opening and our own opening, the works in the exhibition, and those by the Loire, were singled out for high praise. We were the only students showing in Tours and the only representatives from Scotland. Charvet Pello, announced that the Glasgow work was the most challenging of all the exhibitions; that the work asked questions. It did indeed. She took us out for a wonderful dinner. In fact, we had two other dinner invitations. A teacher at the Ecole de Beaux Arts entertained us as did another, unusual character. Allan Laws, a Scot and the local commercial representative for Scottish trade. Married to a French lady, Catherine, they lived in a very grand, early 19th century mansion outside of Tours. They were generous and delightful hosts. We discovered that we were both acquainted with the Dalrymple family of East Lothian. (Note 2) We only had one free day which we used to visit Chinon one of the great chateaux of the Loire. As part of Creacite some artists exhibited in several of the chateaux. Chinon hosted the French artist, Francois Morellet, where he had installed neon light works in the rooms. Quantities of the great red wine of the area were bought.
I decided that if we left early on the day of our return journey, with a midnight sailing from Dieppe, we could manage a few hours in Paris. This decision almost caused a disaster. I don’t know why but the male and female students went off to do/see different things in Paris and the latter were an hour late for our departure time to make it safely and in good time to catch the ferry. This meant driving in the dark at high speed through towns, through red lights and on unknown country roads. We boarded with minutes to spare. Most of us soon fell asleep and in no time we were driving off the ferry looking forward to making an early start on the long drive back to Glasgow. No Chance. The customs were waiting for us. Everything was emptied from the bus and the well secured roof rack. Every bag, case, box, tent opened. Everyone of us was searched. Dogs and detectors went over, inside and under the bus. One student had paint colour syringes which were deemed to be highly suspicious. I was ordered up to explain them. This was actually helpful as I had been given a locked leather briefcase by a woman from the Glasgow Development Agency who had attended the Tours events and had been very helpful to us. We had all been asked to come forward with our own personal belongings. I wondered how I was going to explain the locked briefcase as I had no idea what it contained and we had all declared that we were only carrying our own personal belongings. In making the customs officer seem so foolish as to find the paint syringes as suspicious I was cleared through and was not required to reveal the briefcase. Might it have been packed with drugs?
One abiding memory and, subsequently, a relic of the whole adventure was a song. A variety of cassette tapes were played throughout the journey. Though I had probably heard it before, one song took a hold of me and I repeatedly asked for it to be played. ‘Witicha Lineman’ by Glenn Campbell became the signature song of the journey. It seemed to suit my mood and it never failed to raise my spirits as I drove the bus. Later the students gave Stan and I presents as a ‘thank you’ for making the whole thing possible. I still have my vinyl LP, ‘Glen Campbell’s Greatest Hits’, signed on the back by all the students. The other day I came on a programme on Radio Scotland celebrating the song and Jimmy Webb who wrote the music and lyrics. Webb described how, driving on a long, flat, desert road in the US, he became fascinated by the lonely figure of a lineman high up on a power pylon. The rest, as they say, is history, and the song remains one of the most popular ever written. It certainly still has the power to move me and remind me of a very rewarding experience shared with a group of very good people – Jacqueline Byrne, Fiona Brown, Jacqueline Donachie, Malcolm Jamieson, Jonathan Monk, Michelle Reid, Rachel Mimiec, Stephen Russell, David Shrigley, Karen Vaughan, Martin Young.
Note 1
‘leroi’
When I went on my research visit to Tours I noticed that the floods that had inundated the city over hundreds of years had been marked along with their dates on the flood defence wall. The second highest flood had taken place in 1789, the year of the storming of the Bastille and the beginning of the French Revolution. On that very day, Louis 16th had written in his diary, ‘rien’. An anagram for the Loire is ‘leroi’. Using the thick, blue, nylon rope that is used to tie up ships, Sam and I decided to attach that anagram to the wall in huge letters. A long line from the flood mark runs straight into a cursive version of the text ‘leroi’.
Note 2
The late Jock Dalrymple was a priest in Edinburgh distinguished by his selfless work for the poor and the excluded, and as a brilliant speaker. His nephews Jock and William are parish priest and writer respectively and the former was a friend of the Laws family.