A few weeks ago I returned to the Balfour Hospital to record some video for Orkney’s virtual Doors Open Day. The finished video was launched for the DOD weekend of Sept 26/27 and it’s still available on my Vimeo. In it, I explain a bit about this project and how it came about. It was nice to go back and spend some time with this piece of work that completely took over my life for a period of several months while I was completing the drawings.
As it turned out, I had no sooner sent the completed drawing files off to be printed than I tripped over in my garden and broke my ankle, so I had an enforced period of rest after all the hard work. When the printers came to install it I was still on crutches, and hobbled around thankful it wasn’t me up the ladders.
I always knew this project was close to home, in a building that is used my the whole community of Orkney. As it happens, I was actually one of the very first patients through the doors of the new hospital the morning it opened to the public, to have my plaster cast removed!.
The video was made by NHS Orkney and Orkney Islands Council to publicise the artwork in the hospital and my thanks to them for their support both in commissioning this major artwork and also for the making of this video documenting it so beautifully.
Thanks to Martin Laird for camerawork, editing, and for painstakingly subtitling my ramblings!