(Salt Tower pictures by Kim Ayres)

It had been an unusual evening. Standing in front of his cottage, he had looked overhead to a full moon caught up with the clouds and the great upheavals of a night sky. Looking on he saw a bright, pale blue star appear and fall through a tear in the cumulus, fading to impossibility before dropping through a line of trees and into the horizon. It was a breath of momentary serenity, like a vast calligraphy, the artful sweep of a brush dipped in blue fire. There was a sense of captivation, of being entranced, washed with certainty of feeling the earth turn.

(Drawing by Alex Rigg)

The Briny

Salted down my meat keeps
caught in suspension,
preservation of decimation,
the tidal waves of weeping.

Dance like crystals crusted
on the lips of every pool;
the ocean’s mouth is dry
so lick its lips and taste it.

The sea is such salinity,
sagacious solutions drip
from your maritime eyes
and thoughts, a distillation,
rain wet kisses on your head.

Salt cannot be made.
Water cannot be made.

I dissolve in your certainties
and deliquesce in your arms.

The Project

‘My process as an artist is wholistic. I have two degrees in Fine Art, worked as an archaeological illustrator on Orkney in the 80’s, blacksmith and dry-stane dyker in the 90’s, have built numerous timber-framed buildings, design and make costume, write poetry, devise choreography, make illustrations, collaborate with musicians and performers. Beginning a new piece of live work can happen from a number of different directions. In the case of the Sailmaker project this began with writing a short story, or at least the beginning of a short story. For the story the beginning began from two places at once. The first being my own involvement in a timber building project with Peacock Salt in Ayr to help create the only salt graduation tower in commercial operation. This enterprise began in 2018 with a team of woodworkers from Galloway. We completed the first tower by 2019 and Blackthorn Salt has been in production now for seven years, making around fourteen tons of table salt each year.

So salt has been on my mind. Salt and the whole process and history of salt. It has been essential for people surviving in more Northern climates and continues to be vital for our survival. You could argue that we came from the ocean and as such we are still part of it. Our skin protects its salt-water interior from drying out, making life on land possible.

In parallel to that I was asked to make a large sculptural tower for the Wintertide Festival in Hartlepool 2023. The sculpture was a response to a temporary lighthouse that was on the Headlands there in the early part of the twentieth century. The tower that I made carried four big sails with images relating to the history of the town. Specifically herring as a fish vital for the past economy of the town; a hart as a symbol of the rural history of the town; a hoax mermaid that appears in the town museum and was part of P T Barnum’s circus of freaks in the nineteenth century; and finally a monkey. The monkey is a curious story from the Napoleonic era. The East coast of England was on high alert in anticipation of a invasion by the French fleet. During a storm in the early part of that century a French chasse-marée, a kind of floating fishmonger, did appear off the coast and became wrecked with the loss of all crew save one. The local salvage teams found a very small person who couldn’t understand English (Napoleon was known to be short in stature). So they interrogated him and then hung him. This story is as much in the realms of myth as it is legend. So sails have also been on my mind and in fact I went on to make a second set of sails for the tower to be shown at Galoshans Festival in Greenock in 2024.

(Photograph by Brian Hartley; Dancers Camille Marmié, Jen Farmer, Suzi Cunningham & Rose McCormack)

I’d like to point out here that all of these projects are collaborations with other artists and craftspeople. When I say ‘I’, that generally involves a good deal of input from other people. So thank you all of you!

The evolution of these elements into a story fell into place while I was modelling a series of life-drawing sessions for Topaz Pauls in Edinburgh…….. it is amazing how much creative space standing still can generate in your mind. The process of storytelling was then augmented with rehearsal and choreographic devising with the Oceanallover team, including writing new music and making costume. We have showed this work as an on-going creative process across 2025, 2026 and beyond. We still have more to find and more to give.

If you would like to read the whole story then I serialised it across several posts on my Sub-Stack pages and you can find them by following the link here:

In case you haven’t already listened to the studio recording of our 2025 performances that is available on Bandcamp by following this link here:

The narrated story on the recordings was abridged for our performances at Knockengorroch Festival, Irvine Maritime Museum and Kelburn Garden Party. This book contains the full version. I will also be making a limited edition of hand-bound books with Gillian Stewart of Juju Books in Glasgow. We collaborated on a book last year as part of my ‘Scales of the World’ project. There are still a couple of copies of that book left; if you would like one then send me a note to sporopollen@gmail.com’

The Sailmaker’s Palm as part of Nithraid Festival in Dumfries. Photograph by Trinity Coombs;

performers Nick Jenkins, Jane Simpson, Denise Zygadlo, Joey Sanderson, Richie Merchant, Ollie Rigg, Fionnuala Dorrity, Rose McCormack, Jen Farmer, Aaron Jeffrey, Suzi Cunningham, Dylan Read, Camille Marmié

Design and costumes by Alex Rigg

Additional sewing by Ruth Alexander

Crew - Jo Hodges, Fiona Stephen and the Nithraid team.

~~~~~~~~~~~