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Celebrating Rhiwlas

Creating with textures and slips

Hen Ysgol Neuadd Bentref Llanddona

Ysgol Tir Morfa This was a lovely project with some wonderful children. We looked at our fingerprints in clay and thought about how unique and amazing we all are. To show how important each one of us is we thought of a jigsaw puzzle. Every piece is needed to complete the picture. The children then made self portraits from clay and we put them into the puzzle. They glazed their figures before the final kiln firing and then mosaic was hung between the classrooms. As part of this project the children also completed a Discover Arts Award. They recorded their artistic journey in their portfolios and looked at different kinds of art and artists. Fantastic! Ysgol Tir Morfa is a warm and friendly School and it was a joy to work with them. Thank you to STAND NW not only for funding this project, but Yvonne and Sarah came to give out the children’s Arts Award certificates too. Ysgol Tir Morfa https://ysgoltirmorfa.co.uk STAND NW CIC https://www.standnw.org

Anglesey has 12 protected grass verges. A strange thing to protect you might think but actually these are the only remaining scraps of ancient meadows. Although they are only a humble verge they support amazing and sometimes rare plants from the past. Take a walk along an Anglesey lane in spring or summer you will see the rambling and diverse mix of colours and species as well as the hum of insects. These wonderful patches of the past need specialist conservation work which unfortunately is not funded. However you can help! I am creating a range of 'Verges' ceramics to help raise funds for the conservation work needed. All profits from these pieces go to The Wildlife Trust who carry out this work. The Verges Ceramics can be found on the store page of this site or in Echo Beach Gallery & Shop in Beaumaris. New designs coming for 2021...watch this space echobeachbeaumaris https://www.northwaleswildlifetrust.org.uk

Perky Penmon Puffins Just off Penmon Point we have Puffin Island. This stunning bird sanctuary boasted 50,000 perky puffins in the early 1800’s. The Island is more suited to seabirds than people. However it has been home to religious hermits in the past who earned money by pickling puffins in barrels and sending them to London for posh folk! Disaster struck when a ship went down off the point and the brown rats on board swam to the Island shore. The puffin population declined rapidly as the rats feasted on puffin eggs and took over. The rats ruled for nearly 200 years until a two year project to give the island back to the seabirds ended in 2000 and the perky puffins are slowly starting to return. They are quirky little birds with small wings that flap at 400 beats per minute in the sky and propel them down to 200 feet in the sea. Puffins are romantic and mate for life but believe in giving each other space in a relationship. They meet every year at the same place to build a nest and mate, but for 8 months of the year they live apart far away from land in colonies on the high seas. Their spectacular beaks change colour too, whilst they are apart the colour fades to grey, but when it is time to meet up the brilliant reds and oranges appear. Our puffins are on display and for sale in The Echo Beach Gallery in Beaumaris as well as on this site.

The Cwlwm Seiriol Project will be facilitating the first Aberlleiniog Arts Festival which was due to take place in the Nature Reserve around Castell Aberlleiniog. It has had to be postponed because of the pandemic from Easter 2020 to Spring 2021. The festival will celebrate the woodland, wildlife and history of the site in a sculpture trail through the Reserve. I have been working with the children from Ysgol Gynradd Llangoed to create sculptures of the minibeasts in the woodland. We are going to create a creepy crawlies mini sculpture trail around the grounds of the Village Hall where there will be music, performance art and workshops.

This is a Community Project with Llanfairfechan Town Council and funded by Gwanwyn. We will be asking local residents to record their fascinating family histories and buildings on clay tiles. These tiles will then form a large mosaic which will build onto the previous project which hangs in the Llanfairfechan Community Hall Foyer. The previous project only scratched the surface of this town's past, there is so much more to discover and share. This should have happened in May 2020 but due to the pandemic we are hoping to begin in the spring of 2021.