Drawings by Mclaren

On 30th June I met up with Jane Cameron at Pathfoot on the Stirling university campus.

She is in charge of Art Works at the university, but I know that we have dance in common as her daughter, Emily is a dancer. It turns out that Jane's father was at school with Norman..she only discovered this recently when she found an old Stirling High school prize giving programme . Her dad won cricket prize and Norman the art prize! Jane and I chatted about a number of things....and I showed her the book of drawings of Norman's. Like many people she had never seen this and was entranced by the work.

I wanted to meet Jane to enlist her help in my response to the archive. She recently pulled together an official opening of the library which involved dancers and musicians from RSAMD and I felt she would understand what I was trying to achieve. We had a great discussion and when we were looking through the drawings I told her about Norman's roof garden and that I would like to try to do one sometime .....maybe for the centenary. She immediately suggested we plant a bosc pear...and the idea grew quite quickly in to a centenary garden!!!! There a lot of other ideas growing around this..some coming from the most surprising sources!! I will start sketching out ideas.....and discussing possibilities.....

This is one of the drawings...Stress 1971.. hanging in the Pathfoot building corridor...it is also included in the book I have....................................... In fact it is hanging at present in the Macrobert centre as part of the 40th birthday exhibition curated by Brian Hartley  ( update october 2011 )                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

The drawings which brought me to the garden idea  are a series on Pears.( see 'Les dessins de Norman McLaren' pp 144-149)  In particular the Bosc Pear. There is a paragraph also where he describes his obsession with the Bosc pear, at first with it's taste and then with it as an object.

I particularily like this, as this year I have begun, quite coincidentally, to look into heritage pears and how they came to Scotland via the monks who populated our local abbey in Lindores.( the Bosc comes from Belgium it seems)
Only two weeks ago we had a visit from a delegation from the Tiron district in France where the Tironesian monks began in 1114. The Bosc is included in a book recently sent from France and is a Beurre Bosc.This year I have also learned to graft fruit trees and find new ways to preserve the fruit I have growing in my own orchard. So to find that Norman was also interested in fruit set me looking at him in a different light. I have also unearthed letters where he describes his roof garden planted after he left Scotland, and discusses with his parents which flowers among his favourites have survived the roof garden!
I suspect he learned about gardens from his mother as most of the discussion is with her, and this has also led me to seek out the garden he grew up in. The garden is in Stirling, and was easy to find. It was a little more difficult persuading the occupants to let me wander and take photos at my leisure.

But here is the garden! There is a lawn and I have asked if I might come back to make a short film here.
The box hedge has been here since the McLaren family were here. I saw a photo (in the owners possession) of Norman and Guy in the garden with a much smaller box hedge!!

And in the far corner...an old apple tree!

I also read in one of Norman's letters about an apple tree that was in the garden so assume this is it. The apples are very small, and unusually there was still some blossom on it...very late!

So my trail of thought has led me to the idea of a garden to celebrate Norman.
Jane has even identified a possible site for this....so we went off to look at it.
Pathfoot sits up high on the campus with amazing views across to the Wallace monument and the Ochil Hills.
The building has a large amount of glass and corridors with glass windows link various parts of the whole.

There is a timeless feel to these corridors....a great place to film site specific dance..and maybe I will include this in my eventual contribution to the centenary ...a long way off!!
There is a short film test by McLaren called 'Corridor' which looks a bit like this one. He has experimented in this test to make a continuous corridor which the camera appears to move along. I will use this idea at some point in conjunction with dance.

So as you reach the windows you look out both ways onto courtyards

Some are beautifully landscaped but this one is looking rather forlorn....plenty room for development...I leave pathfoot to let the idea settle and for both Jane and myself to think.......