The Bowlers

Blackness Public Art Programme. Info from artist: “I made this proposal for a mosaic mural after consulting with the Bowls Club committee, and playing bowls with them. What came out of these meetings was the importance of the psychological side of the game. My idea was to make an abstraction which described the game of bowls as an extension of mind and body - an expression of the innate feel or touch required in bowling. The artwork consisted of two shots played, as it were from opposite ends of the rink. Mosaic bowls form the fulcrums for the shots - the moment around which the bowler extends their mind towards the jack. On one side of the fulcrum the body of a bowler is suggested, still dynamically connected to the earth in colour and form, and as they project their thoughts, through the bowl, feeling for the jack, that movement of mind is suggested in a long tenuous rainbow of coloured mosaic. The size of the artwork was about 30M x 3M. It consisted of 18mm marine plywood sections with 25mm square coloured glass tesserae applied (many thousands). The glasswork sparkled in the morning sunshine.” The glass mosaic pieces were later removed and the surface painted.