November 2006 Feature: Peedie Gallery

LUCKYMINNEY is mentioned in ‘A-P A Book of Old Fair Isle Words’ as one of the Guidfick (fairies who were capable of doing harm when angered.)

She wriggled into my psyche last September – I was half-drowned in a rainstorm at Fethaland, in the far north of (mainland) Shetland. It was dusk, but I badly wanted to get to the fishing station and back.

Jen Hadfield.

I took the road through the croft at Isbister, and a mile or so over the hill. By the time I got to the fishing station, I was completely sodden. I met Luckyminney in her blue anorak. She asked me how my walk was going, bowled the last lamb into the back of the truck. Her tail-lights blazed off up the track.

I made Luckyminney in January from the end of a washed-up broom handle in Hamnavoe. I was staying in the Booth (a living space and studio) in Scalloway and spend some hours whittling out her head and profile.

I had found a yellow rubber glove too, and that looked like it would make some Elf and Shoemaker sized wellies.

It was wonderful to hear about The Peedie Gallery some months later... by then I had tried and failed to make a washing line to hang the ‘Our Lady of Isbister’ poem on (problems with the set of my cement)...

Here was a readymade stage that was exactly Luckyminney's size. And it has been a privilege to work with Rik Hammond and Clare Gee, whose sensitive and creative curatorship has made this exhibition for me.

Our Lady of Isbister is showing at the Peedie Gallery until Friday 15th December. The gallery is located on the outsize bookshelf in the Stromness Library, Orkney. (Library opening times: Monday to Thursday 2-7pm, Friday 2-5pm and Saturday 10am-5pm)

Jen Hadfield was born in 1978 in Cheshire and is half-Canadian. She lives in Shetland, where she is working on her second poetry collection, Nigh-No-Place. Her first collection, Almanacs, won an Eric Gregory Award in 2003. She has just won the Mclennan Award for poetry with her poem Towhee. Jen works as a poet, photographer, artist, tutor, and has sold everything from cod to Cashel Blue. She also makes artist books from time to time. Her latest project, The Printer's Devil & The Little Bear, was in collaboration with fine printer Ursula Freeman at the Redlake Press.

© Jen Hadfield/Peedie Gallery, 2006

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A Peedie Piece for a Peedie Gallery

JEN HADFIELD found the Peedie Gallery the perfect home for her Lady of Isbister

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