dappled, by Thomas A Clark

The video of Thomas A Clark’s concrete poem dappled, realised as a wall painting by Laurie Clark, has been commissioned as part of Scottish Book Trust’s Book Week Scotland 2021.

The film shows Laurie Clark painting dappled on a wall in Cairn Gallery, in Pittenweem, Fife. By running the repeated word “dapple” together in a line, the poem also yields the words “dappled” and “apple” in its flickering or dappling effect. With a shift from green to red in the letter “a”, the apples ripen as the painting is completed.

dappled forms the first part of a two-part sharing at Fruitmarket of the Clarks’ work, programmed in dialogue with the installation Pardes by Jyll Bradley. The second part of the sharing will happen in Fruitmarket during December 2021. Details to follow.

Thomas A Clark and Laurie Clark are a poet and artist based in Pittenweem, where they run Cairn Gallery, and their small press, Moschatel Press. They showed work at Fruitmarket in our group exhibitions Poesis (1992) and Flower Show (1999) and regularly present Moschatel Press at our annual Artists’ BookMarket events. This commission was co-produced with Alice Tarbuck, a recipient of the 2021 Emerging Programmers Award from Scottish Book Trust. The video was filmed by Chris Scott and edited by Robbie McLean.