Student Exhibition: Set in Stone

I was very pleased to be asked to work with VAO Connect to help a young student express her poetry in clay. Deeanna Foran has written hundreds of poems, from which we chose a dozen or so which we felt had the most potential for translation into this new medium. The project culminated in a sell-out exhibition, which was not just a success in these terms, but because Deeanna overcame her natural shyness to deal with talking to the public on a daily basis for the duration of the show, and had to deal with many practical matters that such a project entails.

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The quality of her work and the efforts she had made to overcome her autism was recognised by Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney, in a motion for the Scottish Parliament. I was immensely proud of her achievements, as were her parents, friends and VAO Connect worker, Kara Leslie, without whom the idea might never have been suggested.