Railway project silvering

The railway public art project is being installed! see the project's own blog for a full pictorial archive.

Silvering the glass strips that are to be inserted between etched paving slabs proved a little tricky. In the end, it was the rather low temperature of my studio (10 degrees C) that was the problem. A cosy 21 degrees was needed to make the chemical reactions work. A god excuse to whack up the heating! Angel Gilding supplied the silvering kit - it came all the way from the USA!

I could seriously get into this silvering idea. Attempting to silver very thin strips with not much in the way of time or materials to spare was rather stressful but it worked out ok. Square foot coverage of several thin strips is not the same as if they were all one sheet though, so I got through a lot of chemicals! It was fun though, and now they're being cemented in place as I type. The long thin strips are silvered on 2 sides then embedded in the ground with only 1 clear edge visible. The intention is that the light enters and bounces around giving little strips of luminosity and depth in amongst recycled glass paving etched with signage text and a poem.

Old Railway Line public art project

So - what am I up to? You can see some past projects on my website, so I'll document what I'm working on now.

A public art project on the Scarborough - Whitby Old Railway Line is my most recent project. Commissioned by Scarborough Borough Council and the Friends of the Old Railway Line this is a joint project with Adrian Riley of Electric Angel Design. The finished artwork will be ground based and will act as both signage and waymarker. Visually the artwork is inpsired by period railway typography with giant lettering and subtle glass inserts within paving made from recycled glass. Poetry by John Wedgewood Clarke is being etched into the surface. We went to the site with John and talked to users of the track in order to generate words and phrases that formed the raw material from which John has written the poem. Progress can be seen on the projects own blog http://www.railwayart.com/ This images shows the scale mock-up in progress.

The project has been a complicated one particularly regarding costings and sourcing materials and services and has taken many hours of sorting! It's been a steep learning curve but fun nevertheless. It's also been great working with Electric Angel. It has made me realise I much prefer working with other people. Partnership working here I come!