Another year, another year wiser? Sixty turns around the sun doesn't feel like very many but they add up none the less. I came to update my website to discover I never got round to pressing publish on last years offering. A shocking lack of attention to detail, senility or attention deficit (see last years post....)
In the meantime I have hugely enjoyed being the Artist in Residence for The Far Orchard project at The Barn Multi Arts Centre in Banchory. The lovely project has its own website (luckily its not up to me to update that!) but I will save the monthly newsletters I write as Pdf's as soon as I have them. This long term, artist led project grew out of the pandemic in 2022 and was established by Jo Hedges and Robbie Coleman who had an idea to plant a dispersed orchard of 120 gifted apple trees, to connect living systems, food and community. In the second year, the Caitlin Dick continued the work around pollinators and the networks they provide. I took over in May 2024, around the same time as I took up a seat on the Barn Board. It was a hectic few months of lots of reading and strategizing. One of our weaknesses as an organisation was that we had somehow lost our connection to our community through a series of unfortunate events! As far as the Far Orchard went, as a host myself, I felt like I didn't know any of the other hosts and a way to address that would be to build a visual community in the same format as A Portrait of our Time and A Portrait of the River Dee, and so A Portrait of the Far Orchard was born. So far Ive made 30 photographic portraits and they will be on exhibition from the 4th - 28th June 2025 at The Barn. They will be part of an installation using a recycled hand built apple tree at the centre and making connections through storytelling, fables and fokelore. You can look up the project website using the link below. (If it works - if not just google The Far Orchard, Banchory). If you have an existing apple tree you can also join that to the project data base.
Just for fun I also have a little side hustle oil painting project inspired by the relationship between horses and their people. You know when sometimes you look at an image and just feel 'sent' by it? Well, those are the images I have chosen to represent, in a series of 8"x8" loosely painted by quite detailed at the same time. In a small but satisfying upcycling twist they are all painted on the back of amazon envelopes! Images to follow.
In the meantime I have hugely enjoyed being the Artist in Residence for The Far Orchard project at The Barn Multi Arts Centre in Banchory. The lovely project has its own website (luckily its not up to me to update that!) but I will save the monthly newsletters I write as Pdf's as soon as I have them. This long term, artist led project grew out of the pandemic in 2022 and was established by Jo Hedges and Robbie Coleman who had an idea to plant a dispersed orchard of 120 gifted apple trees, to connect living systems, food and community. In the second year, the Caitlin Dick continued the work around pollinators and the networks they provide. I took over in May 2024, around the same time as I took up a seat on the Barn Board. It was a hectic few months of lots of reading and strategizing. One of our weaknesses as an organisation was that we had somehow lost our connection to our community through a series of unfortunate events! As far as the Far Orchard went, as a host myself, I felt like I didn't know any of the other hosts and a way to address that would be to build a visual community in the same format as A Portrait of our Time and A Portrait of the River Dee, and so A Portrait of the Far Orchard was born. So far Ive made 30 photographic portraits and they will be on exhibition from the 4th - 28th June 2025 at The Barn. They will be part of an installation using a recycled hand built apple tree at the centre and making connections through storytelling, fables and fokelore. You can look up the project website using the link below. (If it works - if not just google The Far Orchard, Banchory). If you have an existing apple tree you can also join that to the project data base.
Just for fun I also have a little side hustle oil painting project inspired by the relationship between horses and their people. You know when sometimes you look at an image and just feel 'sent' by it? Well, those are the images I have chosen to represent, in a series of 8"x8" loosely painted by quite detailed at the same time. In a small but satisfying upcycling twist they are all painted on the back of amazon envelopes! Images to follow.
https://thefarorchard.co.uk/artist-2024-25/
Spring 2024
If I had a £ for every time someone told me how busy I am - I might not have to work so hard! I'm all for stopping the glorification of 'busy', everyone is busy. In an effort to be less so, I took drastic action for approximately one year. This was less of a choice and more of a necessity due to family reasons that have more or less thankfully resolved themselves. One of our sons had a very difficult breakdown, he is slowly getting better, it impacted us all, but mainly for me I was around home a lot more. I was not idle, just unable to do as much as usual, but I still made lots of photographic images. The upshot of this was an almost whole family self diagnosis (as it takes two years to formalise) of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, so it turns out 'busy' is just another word for it!
As ever my Instagram remains a sketchbook tool, my memory and massively useful for reference. Folk often kindly tell me they enjoy it, and so it goes on. Here are some of the images from 2024.....
As ever my Instagram remains a sketchbook tool, my memory and massively useful for reference. Folk often kindly tell me they enjoy it, and so it goes on. Here are some of the images from 2024.....
Spring 2023 |
I must update my website........ said everyone I know who has a website!
Since I use my Instagram as a sketchbook and an aide memoir of things that go on in our busy, busy lives, it seems a nudge from this platform to renew my subscription or have the content deleted for ever - is what it takes to have me focus some love here for now. |
Spring 2022
Whilst we can appreciate that the pandemic of 2020 was a globally devastating event - it proved to me that we can change our behaviour if we want to. I spent lockdown gathering myself in isolation from the trials of motherhood and too many projects that had resulted from my inability to say no! I did not resent the time it gave me to recalibrate and prioritise and if I'm honest - find my desk surface that lay somewhere under a hoard of unfinished business.
I did galvanise myself sufficiantly to help the community with a Need a Neighbour campaign allowing more isolated and lonely people to find help quickly with the delivery of prescriptions, shopping and dog walking, and we also set up a fantastic team of "scrub-hubbers" - local ladies who sewed hundreds of masks, scrub bags and sets of scrubs - (many made from the children's duvet sets which made their way into the childrens ward at ARI.) Once funding was secured to buy material, the pattern templates were cut out of plywood to allow for repeated cutting in multiple sizes, kits were made up with cut fabric, elastic, binding and vylene, dispatched to the Scubb-hubbers who sewed them into scrubbs. We provided sets to the Outer Hebrides, Oxford's John Radcliffe, three local care homes, a couple of bespoke sets and enough to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary to warrant our own laundry stamp!
They were strange times indeed, but on the plus side the weather was amazing, and nature thrived in the peace and quiet, the garden blossomed and a bloody sparrowhawk killed 14 of my doves.
Other artists came up with two amazing lock down projects, for the first completed three portraits for the NHS Portraits for Heroes campaign, which was an excellent idea that really took a grip of the art community along with the Artist support Pledge - where you sold original paintings for no more than £200, and if you sold 10 pieces - you pledged to buy back from another artist.
Amongst all the quiet, work went on around the Estate and whilst swiping in a firebreak my husband encountered a Capercaillie - the largest bird of the grouse family and rarer than a Golden Eagle. We have been monitoring these magnificent creatures with camera traps during the Lek for the last 18 years - only very rarely catching sight of them in real life. However this year was to prove that very occasionally a Caper will turn rogue and there was nothing shy or retiring about him! He would simply hear us coming weekly to change the batteries on the camera traps and fly in towards us making his presence well and truly felt - the result was some amazing photographs - which I couldnt share at the time for fear of him becoming a spectacle.
On the subject of birds, but of the slightly smaller variety - my garden was alive with them which inspired me to start drawing some close observational studies again, and the subject of a new series of limited edition prints. Then just I started to think I was ready for a new challenge a job came along that was truly inspiring and such a tonic. I was lucky enough to be invited to provide the images for the Atlantic Salmon Trust Missing Salmon project social media campaign. Poor me. I got to strike 2 counts off my bucket list, visiting Harris in the Outer Hebrides and the Standing Stones of Calanais, had three 2 Golden Eagle days, numerous close encounters with red deer and started filming underwater. It was the greatest pleasure and a real high point to look back on travelling around Scotland to such out of the way and beautiful places - with the added bonus of quiet roads!
I did galvanise myself sufficiantly to help the community with a Need a Neighbour campaign allowing more isolated and lonely people to find help quickly with the delivery of prescriptions, shopping and dog walking, and we also set up a fantastic team of "scrub-hubbers" - local ladies who sewed hundreds of masks, scrub bags and sets of scrubs - (many made from the children's duvet sets which made their way into the childrens ward at ARI.) Once funding was secured to buy material, the pattern templates were cut out of plywood to allow for repeated cutting in multiple sizes, kits were made up with cut fabric, elastic, binding and vylene, dispatched to the Scubb-hubbers who sewed them into scrubbs. We provided sets to the Outer Hebrides, Oxford's John Radcliffe, three local care homes, a couple of bespoke sets and enough to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary to warrant our own laundry stamp!
They were strange times indeed, but on the plus side the weather was amazing, and nature thrived in the peace and quiet, the garden blossomed and a bloody sparrowhawk killed 14 of my doves.
Other artists came up with two amazing lock down projects, for the first completed three portraits for the NHS Portraits for Heroes campaign, which was an excellent idea that really took a grip of the art community along with the Artist support Pledge - where you sold original paintings for no more than £200, and if you sold 10 pieces - you pledged to buy back from another artist.
Amongst all the quiet, work went on around the Estate and whilst swiping in a firebreak my husband encountered a Capercaillie - the largest bird of the grouse family and rarer than a Golden Eagle. We have been monitoring these magnificent creatures with camera traps during the Lek for the last 18 years - only very rarely catching sight of them in real life. However this year was to prove that very occasionally a Caper will turn rogue and there was nothing shy or retiring about him! He would simply hear us coming weekly to change the batteries on the camera traps and fly in towards us making his presence well and truly felt - the result was some amazing photographs - which I couldnt share at the time for fear of him becoming a spectacle.
On the subject of birds, but of the slightly smaller variety - my garden was alive with them which inspired me to start drawing some close observational studies again, and the subject of a new series of limited edition prints. Then just I started to think I was ready for a new challenge a job came along that was truly inspiring and such a tonic. I was lucky enough to be invited to provide the images for the Atlantic Salmon Trust Missing Salmon project social media campaign. Poor me. I got to strike 2 counts off my bucket list, visiting Harris in the Outer Hebrides and the Standing Stones of Calanais, had three 2 Golden Eagle days, numerous close encounters with red deer and started filming underwater. It was the greatest pleasure and a real high point to look back on travelling around Scotland to such out of the way and beautiful places - with the added bonus of quiet roads!
RIVER DEE TRUST
In 2019, I completed a number of photographic commissions for the River Dee Trust in order to help build up their library of images. As the staff are the ones with their boots on the ground I also delivered some training to help with composition and story telling. It really helps to have a clear idea of the story you want to tell before you capture the images, and to think in advance how they might be used. I was also delighted to deliver the annual report, once again in a more user friendly magazine square format.
2018 - a round up!
At the opening of the River Dee fishing season 1st Feb 2017
Mel Shand Artist - Event Organiser at "Fashion's a Keeper" with Country Ways and on behalf of the River Dee Trust 21st October 2016
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Very excited to be heading off to the GWCT Scone Game Fair on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of July 2016. This year I am sharing a stand with the incredibly talented Liz Phillips who makes the most amazing feather creations! - Come and see us in Stag row - stand 13. I have produced a whole lot of brand new work at a slightly smaller scale than last year's 5ft stags!
Now HERE's an IDEA....you can BID for this picture
This is the drawing commissioned by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust for the 2015 Game Fair programme at Scone, Perth. It has been used on the programme which means that everyone who buys one will have a little image of their own! The ORIGINAL measures 31" x 27.5" in its frame and is a chalk pastel and pencil drawing. Although the displaying season is mostly over - cock pheasants can still be seen in the fields squaring up to each other - hence the title "Boys will be Boys". I have decided to approach the sale of this original a little unconventionally. It is available by online AUCTION from now until Sunday 5th July 2015 at 9pm. The winner must be able to arrange collection from me in Aberdeenshire as due to the glass it cannot be posted.
There is a limited edition of 150 A3 signed prints at £100 each + £10 p&p and I also have unlimited A4 signed prints at ££15 + £5 p&p. Bids can made online only by going to Mel Shand Artist facebook page. Make a bid on the relevant post. While you are there - make sure and "like" my page. The auction ENDs at 9pm Sunday 5th July. IF the picture makes its reserve I will make a further donation to the GCWT. Simple enough I hope! And of course if you are at the Game Fair come along and see me in the Artists in Action tent! http://www.scottishfair.com/
My wonderful framer Rogie Riddell has finished these off a treat and now they look fit to hang on the wall!
My wonderful husband - with No Fuss at all (see what I did there?) collected them all for me today as they are too big for my car! - the packing has commenced - the house looks like a paper bomb has gone off and someones stirred it with a stick......slowly but surely everything will come together. 
ARTISTS IN ACTION
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A Portrait of the River Dee has arrived! |
Slainte Salar!
Meaning literally "Here's to your good health Salmon! -This signed, numbered and limited (to 200) edition print was inspired by the amazing return journey of the Atlantic salmon to its spawning grounds along the River Dee and is available directly from the site for £150 framed/£100 unframed plus p&p. |
In 2012 I was invited by the Dee District Salmon Fishery Board to find a way to help mark their 150th anniversary in 2013. I came up with the idea of capturing the people whose lives and work revolve around the river, and spent the next 18 months travelling the 88 mile length of the river from the west at the source at the Linn of Dee, to the harbour mouth in the east in Aberdeen. Along the way I met and photographed all 51 fishing ghillies employed on the river in 2013 and some of the other folks who live and work along the way. The resulting book called - A Portrait of the River Dee - has now been published and can be ordered by contacting me through this site (under the drop down menu above click on MORE and then CONTACT.
I'm also very proud that the Duke of Rothesay wrote the foreword and I'm grateful to everyone for their time and support in bringing the project to fruition. AND It's not just a book about fishing but also the lives and work of people who I admire and respect! A percentage of the proceeds from the sales will be donated to the River Dee Trust, the community charity that carries out research which informs the practical restoration projects to improve the river for future generations. It is a beautifully bound hard-backed book which was designed along the lines of a traditional game book but would sit comfortably in the fishing hut, shooting lodge or on the coffee table. At £25 plus £5 p&p it also makes a very nice present! But don't just take my word for it - scroll down and read what others had to say!
I'm also very proud that the Duke of Rothesay wrote the foreword and I'm grateful to everyone for their time and support in bringing the project to fruition. AND It's not just a book about fishing but also the lives and work of people who I admire and respect! A percentage of the proceeds from the sales will be donated to the River Dee Trust, the community charity that carries out research which informs the practical restoration projects to improve the river for future generations. It is a beautifully bound hard-backed book which was designed along the lines of a traditional game book but would sit comfortably in the fishing hut, shooting lodge or on the coffee table. At £25 plus £5 p&p it also makes a very nice present! But don't just take my word for it - scroll down and read what others had to say!
Yes, indeed, well worth it. Beautifully presented and a lovely gift for my husband! Congratulations on getting there in the end! Lois.
It is beautifully produced and the quick glimpses I have so far had are fascinating. It will be a lasting piece of local history - congratulations on putting it all together in such an attractive and interesting way.
What next? -Margaret
Hi Mel, book arrived safely nice presentation and great pictures. Well done.Ian
Have just received you excellent book. It really is terrific. Well done! Christopher
Apart from the main body of it all, very interesting to see the ghillies fly selection. Was always a Blue Charm man myself – but not on the Dee! Chris.
Got it yesterday. Thanks. Great book. I didn't realise there were so many ghillies! Andy
I have just been home for lunch and the books have been delivered…. They look great, I am looking forward to reading them Cheers, Jackie
It is beautifully produced and the quick glimpses I have so far had are fascinating. It will be a lasting piece of local history - congratulations on putting it all together in such an attractive and interesting way.
What next? -Margaret
Hi Mel, book arrived safely nice presentation and great pictures. Well done.Ian
Have just received you excellent book. It really is terrific. Well done! Christopher
Apart from the main body of it all, very interesting to see the ghillies fly selection. Was always a Blue Charm man myself – but not on the Dee! Chris.
Got it yesterday. Thanks. Great book. I didn't realise there were so many ghillies! Andy
I have just been home for lunch and the books have been delivered…. They look great, I am looking forward to reading them Cheers, Jackie
http://thebothyproject.blogspot.co.uk/
In February 2013 I was fortunate enough to win a short residency in a competition to promote art in and near the Cairngorm National Park in partnership with The Old Bridge Inn and The Bothy Project. The blog of this adventure can be read by clicking on the link above.
