At Freswick Castle on the northeast coast of Scotland, past meets present, land meets water, and the sound of the wind meets the sound of the waves.
When Seattle Pacific University Professor of Art Roger Feldman was commissioned to design and build an art installation on the castle grounds, he wanted his piece to bring all of those things together. The spiral shape of “Ekko” creates a quiet, protected space for people to sit and listen to the wind and waves outside.
The piece also echoes spiral designs carved in stone by Neolithic people and Celtic Christians of the region. “Celtic Christianity associates the spiral with the inward journey and the outward journey,”
He crafted “Ekko” over summers 2011 and 2012, using stones hewn by the 12th-century Vikings who built the original castle, and fitting the stones together with mortar “like a giant jigsaw puzzle.” The name “Ekko” is “echo” in Norwegian, the Vikings' language.
“The materials are telling the story,” Feldman says. “The integrity of what the Vikings built has crumbled. I'm reconstituting what they did into a new form.”
Now complete, “Ekko” is designed to stand for hundreds of years. What will future visitors think?
“I would hope that people would discover it on their own and be curious, and, without being told what to do, would actually walk around it,” Feldman says.