AN EDINBURGH artist has immortalised the giant yellow towers that have loomed over Leith, Edinburgh for months now with a tattoo on her arm.
Daisy Mason, 27, became “obsessed” with the hulking yellow structures earlier this year while watching the Port of Leith during runs around Newhaven.
The Leith native would watch components for the Inch Cape wind farm file into the port and eventually made it a daily ritual to catch sight of the “Eiffel Towers” and post pictures on social media.
In a bid to preserve the memory of the towers – which will begin to depart over the next few months – she had one of the “big yellow things” inked on her upper left arm at a studio in Glasgow.
Leith’s giant yellow jackets first began to arrive from fabrication yards in China in early March this year.
The jackets – thought to be some of the largest ever constructed – will eventually depart Leith and anchor huge wind turbines in the under-construction Inch Cape wind farm off the Angus coast.
While they serve a very real function in Scotland’s renewable energy transition, they have acquired a near-mystical status among the city’s artists and dreamers.
Depending on whom you ask, the towers are either a potent reminder of Leith as an industrial hub, a symbol of renewable change, gentle giants, or a massed armada preparing to descend on the city.
For Daisy, they serve as a warning against gentrification: “I grew up in Leith and when I was born, it was an industrial port.
“The gentrification of Leith is overwhelming at the moment, and I think for me, and for a lot of people I’ve spoken to, it’s a reminder almost of what Leith used to be and what it could be again.
“Having that like permanent reminder on the skyline of there’s still industry here is really nice to see because it’s not been seen here for a really long time.”
She added: “You see in Brown’s of Leith, this posh wine bar opening up in an industrial yard, and it can feel like Leith is losing the identity that made it the interesting place to live.”
A family connection has also added to the interest for Daisy, and she would text her uncle – who used to work on offshore wind farms – asking for explanations on the function of different components.
She also hopes that the towers can serve as a “hopeful reminder” of Scotland’s potential to become a renewable energy leader.
She cautioned, however, that the fact the parts were manufactured overseas limited the economic and industrial benefits for Scotland from such projects.
“When I put the pictures up on Instagram it sparked a lot of conversations about the fact they weren’t built here,” she explained.
“When I went to visit them, they did tell me there’s actually very little work that they’re doing here, it’s mainly just a stop-off point.”
In September, Daisy was invited on a site visit to the Port of Leith, where she got to see the famous yellow towers up close.
“Genuinely best day of my life,” she raved, “I thought it would be a situation where someone would show me around and think ‘who the f**k is this girl?’ and I’d leave after 10 minutes.
“But Davie, who showed me around, was so knowledgeable and friendly, and I was there for around an hour and a half.
“It was windy so it was a non-work day and it was a Friday, so everyone was just buzzing for the weekend.”
After a tour of the site, Daisy was geared up and hoisted up to the top of the towers along with a group of visitors and got to enjoy views of Edinburgh from the unrivalled vantage point.
She added that the site workers were all aware of the tattoo before she arrived.
“They all just thought I was mental, and they were surprised at the size of it and the fact I committed to such a big tattoo,” she said.
“But they all loved it, and they were really quite happy to hear that I was from the area, and my interest wasn’t surface-level aesthetics and I wasn’t just there for a photo op.
“It is a genuine interest and passion of mine – the industry of Leith and finding out about what’s going on in Leith and the world of the port and everything.
“It was really nice to meet the people that work there and hear about their lives and what they do there and what goes on behind the scenes.”
After graduating from art school in Glasgow, Daisy got settled back home in Edinburgh working for an art gallery, but her specialty is performance art.
“The way I use art in a sense is like performance or like putting myself into situations,” Daisy explained.
“At art school, I would do little side quests and talk to people about it, and that was the way I expressed myself, so I suppose the tattoo and all these photos I take is a continuation of that.”
Daisy is also set to participate in a community art exhibition which will celebrate the towers in February – when they will have mostly departed.
The “Yellow Towers” exhibition aims to showcase the variety of responses – from photography and painting to sculpture and tattoos – to the towers from Leithers and artists.
Daisy concluded by saying she is not worried about regretting the tattoo – designed by Glasgow tattooist Homer Loves Marge – at any point down the line:
“I have so many ridiculous tattoos: I have one of a CCTV camera from when I was really interested in that, and I have a number of really ridiculous tattoos from projects that I did or things that I was obsessed with for a while, and I don’t regret any of them because I think it’s really nice to have that on me.
“Even though my interest will eventually fade when these towers go and I don’t see them every day, I’ll have that reminder that I was passionate about it.”
