LEAP YEAR in ABERYSTWYTH

A FEW DAYS LATE on ‘Welsh time’ enter the year of the RAT, Feb. 9th



Feb. 9th Aberystwyth breaks out the lanterns and dragon and lion dancers for Chinese New Years! In an odd quirk Chinese New Year was celebrated all over town in style, whilst St. David’s day (the patron saint of Wales on March 1st) was demurrly denoted primarily by wearing daffodils and unobtrusively eating leeks.

For Chinese New Years I donned traditional Welsh garb and paraded with the Welsh dance Group. Cruelly an enthusiastic Samba band was tight behind us… I so wanted to samba, but the Welsh costume just wouldn’t let me.. not to mention I couldn’t really raise my arms with the wool shawl tied on!


------------------------------------



ANTI V-DAY DINNER Feb. 13th



I hosted an Anti V Day dinner murder mystery evening at the Orangery Wed. Feb.13th. The theme:It's V Day so Someone Must Die!There were 6 acting parts to choose from:

Parson Snows -The Village Rector was played by Kendall

Claire Voyant -The resident mystic, was embodied by Ruth

Frau Pumpernickel -the German cook was animated by Gretchen

Slaughter -the Gamekeeper was type cast as Steve

Major Windbag -Lord Shippe's shooting partner was interpreted by myself (because the point of dressing up is to look sexy!)

Lady Shippe -the flamboyant mistress of the Shippe Mansion household was a sensation caused by Aoife

Shawn came to hang out, watch the show and rest from her hectic social calendar


It was a fun…. Different kind of night! A bit of distraction from the regular hallmark celebration of V day for sure!



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Feb. 19-20th TRIP TO CORRIS AND MACHYLLNETH



I hopped on a train and went to Mac to meet Eireen, a lovely kindred spirit who hails from Greece. We went for coffee, and –oh bliss –to a three story fabric shop! I didn’t allow myself to buy anything as I need a plan before purchasing anything…. Oh, the wool remnants were
tempting though. Maybe a little quilt… hmmmm…. I do love textiles.

Eireen’s living a few hours away from Aber in an old slate-quarry town nestled in the Welsh hills. The smell of cow was in the air, along with echoing moos across the valley that almost drowned out the cars in the distance. Corris felt like stepping back in time and experiencing an authentic Wales –walking around the mostly unlit town my almost-full moon light at night and standing on the old stone bridge with the river gurgling by, and the hills in the distance whitened with frost was a treat.

Eireen and I went on a long rambling walk that went on for hours as she showed me all the magical places she has found in the area –long old paths through coniferous trees, old slate walls that supported nothing but pine-needles, old slate fences looking like dragon’s teeth, the house of the old eccentric (now deceased) who had filled his yard with follies that made me envious. Part of me longs to be one of those eccentrics that turns their yard into a playground of whimsy, leaving an irrational legacy of personal indulgence and bizarrities…

We hiked further up into the hills to the old quarry site itself, and the waterfall, where the old eccentric artist who had taken up stone carving, had carved and placed some carvings of hands onto old, large slate pieces at the base of the waterfall. Enchanting.

It felt as though we had discovered that grotto for the first time in centuries, so isolated and golden and perfect was the afternoon… and so free for a bit of larking about, to embellish and contrast the observations of all the weighty beauties and dark history which lay thickly strewn, and abandoned, across the rocky Welsh landscape.


The best picture of Corris exists only in the memory of the moonlight on the owl's back as it flew from the dark old oak tree... it was a lovely visit, I feel privileged to have been invited and treated to Eireen’s hospitality, to be able to sit on a couch under a real Welsh wool blanket at to feel ‘at home’ in a real home…. As a student I hadn’t realized how much I miss things like comfortable furniture, stereos, well-appointed kitchens, wood stoves…

(No longer a coal virgin) I had the novel experience of bringing in coal from the coal bin… and seeing the soot of coal and smell coal and wood smoke mixed in the night airs, and looking at the stone homes, the top-floor frequently being more a half story than a full story, up in the eaves. I felt too tall for Corris, and wonderfully foreign… I felt as though I was walking around in a Susan Cooper novel… something dark, ancient and magical around every corner, if only I could walk quickly enough.


----------------------------------------------------------


TRIP TO CAERNARFON Feb. 29th-March 1st


I'm off to Caernarfon (the place with three different spellings that NO ONE pronounces in the same fashion, so I alternate between pronunciations -but get corrected EVERY time!) but c'est la vie, I'm going to see a BIG castle and three of my diminutive artworks in a gallery group exhibition....back sometime on Saturday :)http://www.castlewales.com/caernarf.html

Caernarfon Castle
http://www.castlewales.com/cae...
Caernarfon is located at the southern end of the Menai Strait between north Wales and Anglesey, 8 miles south west of Bangor. During Edward I's invasions of Wales, this was strategically an excellent place...


The Oriel Dafydd Hardy Gallery Graduate Show 08 March 1-28 in Caernarfon is all about unexpected relationships. Sixteen artists graduating this year form the University of Aberystwyth School of Art (SOA) Fine Art and Art History BA and MA programs are part of a curated group exhibition displaying a range of contemporary artworks. Realistic, subtly mesmerizing oil on copper paintings of spoons, accompany hand-made books, landscape paintings, etchings, a conceptual cake performance piece, video installations, large-format photography and contemporary embroidered textiles inspired by traditional Welsh men’s 18th and 19th C. workman’s smock-frocks.

The work of Eloiza Mills, Hazel Money, Tracy Smith, Hester Berry, Zoe Dunn, Bryony Purvis, Michael Nobbs, Jonathon Gupta, Sian Kingscott Smith, Sarah HAxby, Elizabeth Ragg, Dawn Olive, Rupert Lawler, Amy Jane Blackhall, Ruth Hogg and Freeda Lohr is on display thanks to a partnership between Glynnis ----, the gallery coordinator, the support of the Oriel Dafydd Hardy real-estate business (which is also the entrance to the gallery,) and SOA instructor Miranda Whall. Any emerging/young artist in Wales may apply for an exhibiton at this gallery, and artists are not charged a commission allowing for the presentation of work at a very reasonable price in a professional exhibition space open to the public.


The unexpected combination of media, arts and business partnerships make the Graduate show an inspiring and insightful presentation of sixteen emerging artists to watch for in the future!

On the Leap Year day I didn’t do what 700,000 other women did (propose to a man) instead I ended up on the exciting journey of travelling up North to Caernarfon and spending an enjoyable day (after painting plinths and helping with the last minute details of setting up the exhibit) I went for a long walk up the hills and around the ancient walled town.

We stayed in the nicest hostel I’ve ever been in –Totters hostel- it was clean, welcoming, filled with nice things, and right beside the wall and a romantic archway which led to the promenade –so of course I had to walk the whole promenade and imagine what it would have been like in the late 1200s when it was built. The large castle was fantastic! I really appreciated the tenacious ferns and bonsai’d buddleia and other clinging plants that manage to find a root-hold in the ancient stone walls. Much of Caernarfon has a romantically abandoned feel to it, as though the tide of the place is caught in the past because the people who live there now are not of sufficient number or conviction to modernize the place. Apart from the general commercial homogeneity of the shops –the individual characteristics of the place shone out here and there, even if under a layer of historic smudgery. I treated myself to Thai food and was delighted that the food was authentic… equally amazing was that everyone in the restaurant was speaking in slightly heavier northern accented Welsh, except the owners of the restaurant who were speaking Chinese. I really felt as though I was in a different country –it was just a bit difficult to tell which one.

Drinking is a pretty big social problem in the UK –and people were in town on the eve of St. David’s day to drink. A couple of young men were walking towards me, past me, decided to kick and swear at the construction fence near them –and to throw their pint glass my way –the glass hit the paving stones and a few chunks sprayed up my back! It was only 5pm on a greyish unassuming afternoon… I had just reached the door of the gallery… the door was locked… I looked back to see the most inhuman look in a person’s eyes than I’ve seen in a long time. The drunkard began to lurch towards me, but the lady in the gallery got the door unlocked faster and so I nipped inside and locked the door behind me!

The show opening was a success, and a great opportunity to get to know some of my fellow students a bit better. It’s hard to believe that in just less than three months the BA students will all be going home!

I spent the morning of St. David’s (March 1st) day running around in spooky dark castle hallways, holding onto ropes to get up into old towers, daringly taking a good digital camera with me... accidentally erasing all my pictures just minutes before I had to leave... so I could take one more photo -of a stuffed goat. It was the ROYAL goat –a tradition established by Queen Victoria (presumably because a sheep is unable to be royally solemn enough?!)

OOPS! I had to laugh, because otherwise I would have cried... thankfully my crumby old digital camera still had the mediocre shots left from the day before.... adventures are often in the unexpected things we would have wished to avoid, but will never forget!!!

And, on the bright side of things, I did get a picture of an old goat!

-----------------------------------------------------------------



SMELLS OF THE MONTH



The night before last one of my flatmates decided to cook eels for the first time –in the microwave –which unfortunately for me, is located opposite from my bedroom door in the half kitchen….in the main kitchen she was cooking eggs in a pan filled with a quarter inch of olive oil which was burning –as it was on the highest heat- (I’ve had the talk with her about oils and heat too many times to recount) –suffice it to say that the small kitchen smelled like nuked eel, the main kitchen like burnt olive oil, and when she was finished cooking she went directly to her bedroom -safely a floor and a half below!

Microwaved eel is not an odour I would choose to experience ever again…

However, on the odiferously positive side: I smell like a burnt marshmallows tonight, and saltspray from the rapidly incoming tide blown in by storm winds the art school students were valiantly ignoring in order to celebrate Angharad’s birthday on the beach. They had an excellent set up of chairs, stuffed sheep, and a bonfire, a BBQ with burgers, prawns and marshmallows to roast! I was going for a sunset walk, but stopped to join them for a time.

February has been a month filled with adventure, and much soul-searching after hitting a bit of an artistic impasse/mortal blow to my muse of painting that I shan’t subject you to, nor myself for much longer hopefully, as I have a trip to Budapest March 9-16th with the School of Art to distract myself with.

Budapest, am I really going? …. Eeek, in a plane? Time to start packing and flapping… off on another adventure…


Besides, this is enough for now…. Amusingly each month I think ‘well I won’t have much to say this month!!’ and then I have to edit and select what to highlight of my ONGOING ADVENTURES IN WALES… until next month!


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------