Zen And The Art of The Bike Shed

We introduce Neil Huggan from Inverness, an arts blogger who will write for us on events and issues around the Highlands. Here he visits the new community arts venue in Merkinch, The Bike Shed.

January 28th 2010 – The Bike Shed, Merkinch, Inverness

I arrived early at The Bike Shed, an unprepossessing, functional-looking building nestled in Grant Street, downtown Merkinch.

The front door was already open, welcoming me in, the sound of softly plucked strings finding their way out and into the cold night air. Stepping quietly over the threshold, I spied Mairi playing her clarsach to my right, and from the other end of the freshly-painted white room, I was greeted by the ever-smiling Annie Marrs.

Annie, a Fine Arts graduate from Dundee University, is the Arts Development Worker for ‘Arts in Merkinch’, and firmly at the heart of the project that has brought The Bike Shed to us tonight.

The Bike Shed is a new Community Arts venue for Merkinch and South Kessock which in the past has housed an old motorcycle repair shop, and more recently had been used by the local MP33 youth group to repair bicycles, hence the apt choice of name.

With the support of the Merkinch Partnership in the form of Anne Sutherland, and Merkinch Enterprise’s Colin Downie, plus  lashings of good luck, hard work and some timely funding from the local Council Ward, The Bike Shed has been transformed into a fully formed (and watertight – there was a flood!) Community Arts resource.

Annie informed me over the general hubbub that The Bike Shed in one form or another has always been used for local festivals, but the venue will now be hosting a variety of regular arts-related workshops/classes, and unusually, can also be hired by artists as a temporary studio or as an exhibition space.  The fees are modest: at £20 a day for studio use, and a very attractive £50 a week for exhibitions.

Tonight’s opening ceremony was exceedingly well attended by any standards, featuring paintings by Bette McArdle and photographs by Paul Marrs, as well as offering the curious and the brave an opportunity to paint a ceramic tile with ceramicist Kira Brown.

I was at the head of the queue for the tile painting, but was soon joined in a growing bustle at the far end of The Bike Shed by a large number of would-be ceramicists.

The surprising news for us was that our finished and fired tiles will be used to decorate the The Bike Shed’s washroom, our small contribution to the fabric of this fantastic new resource.

Bette McArdle, an artist with (and I hope she won’t mind me saying) huge experience, displayed works in a number of different media, but the stand-outs for me were her studies of Les Oiseaux Street Musicians in oils, particularly the striking triptych.

A combination of relaxed strokes and some vibrant colour choices combined to produce an engaging collection of figurative street images which, whilst bright in hue, hint at a somewhat dark undercurrent.

On the opposite wall from Bette’s collected works were a selection of fascinating wildlife images by local photographer Paul Marrs, who managed to get up close and personal with everything from pollen-dusted bumblebees to lounging lizards, with portraits of hungry red squirrels en route.

After a generous time perusing the artworks on show, amply complemented by a whirlwind of snatched conversations with friends old and brand new, it was time for me to reluctantly take my leave. But I, like many of my fellow visitors tonight, will undoubtedly return to The Bike Shed.

The Bike Shed on The Web:

For more information on classes and to hire The Bike Shed: www.merkinch.info

You can also follow The Bike Shed over on Facebook

Read the original article: