Braenaru exhibition : National Trust, Dinefwr

 

Mae casgliad o bymtheg o fy lluniau blodau gwyllt yn cael eu harddangos yn Nhy Newton, Dinefwr. Mae’r arddangosfa yn dathlu’r pethau bychain gallwn wneud i hybu bioamrywiaeth ac yn annog pawb i gymryd sylw o’r byd naturiol o’u gwmpas. Ac wrth gwrs, mae dysgu’r enwau Cymraeg wrth galon y brosiect yma. Ar agor o Mis Mai -Awst, 2023. I’ so excited to have installed 15 of my wildflower flower drawings at Newton House Dinefwr. The exhibition celebrates little actions that we can take to promote biodiversity and the power of learning the plant names in Welsh to nurture a better connection with nature and place. Open May- Aug 2023. Thankyou to all the lovely National Trust team for all their support.

Prosiect Map Degwn Talyllychau Tithe map project 2023

 

It was an exciting opportunity to be invited to help young learners from Ysgol Talyllychau to respond creatively to the Tayllychau tithe map recently deposited at Carmarthenshire Archives. I wanted the project to consider aspects of sustainability, to explore mapping and reflect the children’s own experiences of Tallyllychau now as well as connecting them to their local history.

We began at the school with a getting to know you drawing day. We made phsycho-geographical maps of our individual journeys to the school, labelling them with personal landmarks, and made studies of the landscape from the school grounds and details from the natural word on the school site. We also made some sustainable artists tools from native and locally available materials and made paintings inspired by our observational drawings.

 

Our visit to the archive was a revelation of the vast collections of historical documents, stored with such care. We enjoyed the special experience of going behind the scenes and seeing the map in real life. Back at school they learnt how to turn elements of their drawings form the first week into motifs that could be made into print blocks. Then they learnt to print them on the printing press to make a series of postcards or snapshots of Talley, referencing the map symbols we’d studied the week before.

  It was really special to be able invite an artist to collaborate with on this. I wanted to work with Hedi Plant who is a painter and mural artists, as she has a very vibrant and fun style which I thought would be perfect for our contemporary map of Tallyllychau. She took them through a colour mixing workshop and they prepared a selection of colourful papers, painting their bespoke colours onto old OS maps donated by the archives. We then cut these up into shapes to make a collage of Talyllychau based on their preparatory drawings from week one. They naturally began to share their memories of different places, the lakes, the abbey and their local stomping grounds as they cut and stuck to create their collective piece.

They were really proud of their work, and its really important that the work was framed and unveiled. The celebration day was a very special moment for the young artists who were very proud of their work and able to remember and proudly tell others which part was theirs and what it meant to them. I feel they’ve made a meaningful discovery of and connection to the archive collection and the search rooms by being involved in a long project ( 5 sessions) which enabled us to explore the tithe map in various creative ways. I am very grateful to have been involved in this lovely project and to see the map restored and treasured too.

 

Ysgol Llanon Lead Creative School project 2022

 

As creative practitioner for lead creative schools  Ysgol Llanon with the foundation phase I enjoyed collaborating with the young learners to explore the school's woodland space and the beach in walking distance of the school. It was part of a process of re-connecting with the local area, outdoor spaces and local community after the isolation of the lockdown period. We explored what bugs and beasties were living in the woodland under logs, foraged for art materials and made our own stone paints, charcoal and ink from what we could find, working outdoors as much as possible.  With a very special guest visit from Small World theatre we learnt about sea plastics from their street theatre character Zak the sea turtle and it was very inspiring to collaborate with the artist Heidi Plant to create a giant outdoor mural informed by all of the visual research we had gathered in our outdoor explorations. Of course the whole event finished with a school-wide celebration with foraged food and drinks, stone painting together and sharing some of the games and exercises we'd enjoyed during the project. It was such a delight to be part of this project and we packed a lot into those 6 days!

Lliwiau Aberteifi at Oriel Canfas Gallery, Cardigan, May 2021

 

Lliwiau Aberteifi is a collection of contemporary and heritage colours sourced from around Cardigan Town and the nearby village of Cilgerran, with titles inspired by local place names, historical references and native wildlife. LL&P Colour Card represents a winter of walks further up Afon Teifi in the Town of Llandysul and Pontyweli. These unique palettes capture a fleeting moment in time; the peeling surface of an old garage soon to be replaced, the gas bottle in the perfect mustard hue awaiting collection, or the whitewashed windows of a pending refurbishment. The pieces on show represent 9 years of work, walking, collecting, editing and naming to create colour maps of my patch. 

Exhibited upstairs at Canfas Gallery from 1st -22nd May 2021

 

fallow

In the great pause of spring 2020 the farmer's field behind my house was left fallow for the first time in a long while. After eight weeks without rain the parched, bare ground cracked, like mini tectonic plates. Slowly but surely, wild, unintended things began to grow. Sorrel, Plantain, Thistles, Lesser Rosebay Willow Herb and dandelions grew to nose-high. A the edges of the field, along the irigation ditches, the dispersed seeds of crop plants from years gone by sprouted up again- rye, corn, barley, wheat and oat. A shimmer of Goldfinches could often be seen fluttering between thistle heads and telegraph wires. We began taking walks in the field, exploring this newly re-wilded dessert. At night when I closed my eyes I could see grasses. The wild was imprinted. The ground was like a dessert with islands of radial grasses, or constellations of miniature gardens. We'd found a little bit of wild to be in.

I began to draw, print and photograph and collect grasses and my partner Jack began to write, in a backyard project we will call fallow. 

These 9 images form part of a 140 image colour chart collected in Cardigan and Cilgerran over a series of walks between 2015- 2020 and featured in my January 2020 residency on Instagram for @landartcollective

PLEIN AIR

A painterly tone inspired by  the Thomas Jones painting, wall in Naples, 1782

FIELDFARE  

White with umber undertones referencing the brown and white speckles of 

the migratory Fieldfare bird

HASTI HOLM  

The Norse name for the island at the mouth of the Teifi Estuary, thought to 

mean Isle of Horses and a safe haven

MUNICIPAL 

Inspired by municipal planting this is a loud red which makes it's presence felt

VERDISGREEN

This shade takes its name from the natural patina formed on copper, brass or bronze 

by atmospheric oxidisation

GLAW HALLT 

Welsh meaning Salt rain, references the briny Teifi estuary as described in the poem

 Y Cei by Ceri Wyn Jones

LLOCHES

This rich emerald green surface will provide shelter or shade. 

RESTORATION RED

 This warm historical tone pays homage to Cardigan's rich and fugitive architectural history

 In 2016 I made a little book to capture a snapshots of a cottage in Ceredigion which I came to know very well as it was in my partner's family and became our favourite place. Bought 50 years ago, it provided a home from home for three generations and many branches of the Thomas family, originally from Wales and who love Cardigan Bay. Its furnishings had barely changed since it was first taken over by the family, everything had its place and it had a very particular smell of coal and books and carpet and holidays. It remains nestled in a quiet unchanging valley but no longer belongs to the family. Before it was emptied I made a book with image and text capture snapshots of how it was. Some images and excerpts below.

How to describe the resonance of this place?

What is the sum of the things inside? Each person has their own capsule of experience here,

memories triggered by smells or sealed in ritual repetition.

The cottage is so much more than the things inside, but they're layered with sedimentary traces of all our times here.

they joy of life stripped to its simplest elements-

making warmth, preparing food. the comfort of cooking with the same old pans, awkwardly improvising with inadequate tools; grater, knives, chopping board.

Clammy condensation gathers on the kitchen and bathroom walls. these are rooms which have their own weather

We share the knowing of this place.

It resonates within us and between us,

We are connected by the people

who dreamed it, who built it, who bought it,

who put plates on the wall,

who left shells on the shelves and sand in the carpet,

and all the generations who've slept in that bed.