This week we had a visit from Kathryn Campbell, an artist based in Carmarthenshire who trained as a calligrapher. We have been searching for a calligrapher who can work with us to incorporate the beautiful couplets written by Damian Walford Davies in the windows. Kathryn is an artist I have known about for a while but had no idea she was a talented calligrapher, and, what’s more she is excited about our work and able to fit in to our tight deadline! Incorporating the poems in the windows needs careful thought and we have gone through a number of options and approaches, finally we decided we need to commission a calligrapher in order to do the work, and the poems, justice.

The painting is coming along well, we need to get all the glass painted and delivered to Swansea in a fortnight’s time for leading in order to comply with our installation date of March 8th.

I took a day in the week to work with Sarah Harman on our Rosebush Quarry project “Canu’r Oer Wynt”. This is a project I began in the autumn supported by a research and development grant from Arts Council Wales. I have been researching in archives, interviewing local people and experimenting with some glass ideas in my kiln, but since November the project has taken a back seat because of the Conwy commission. Sarah is a singer/songwriter and talented choir leader who is planning to write a suit of songs based on the history of the quarry, together we interviewed local people who remember the railway in Rosebush when it was operational, Peter Claughton, an industrial archaeologist and Geraint Harries, a friend and local man who works for The Pembrokeshire National Park Authority. We recorded the interviews to form the basis of our research for our project and discussed our ideas and plans. It was good to get back into this project.

Recording an interview with Peter Claughton in Rosebush Quarry.

Painting is progressing well on the windows. We are working flat-out to meet our deadline for installation on March 8th. I am really enjoying experimenting with etching and sandblasting as well as painting pieces, the fragmentary nature of the piece gives lots of scope to be spontaneous within a structure.

All these pieces will be cut up and included as fragments. Meanwhile, the painting is fabulous to do, so different to my usual approach to using colour, thinking all the time about the light! I am learning a lot about traditional techniques from Rachel. Hardly any time to blog!!

The gallery has been converted back into a stained glass workshop and the wonderful Carwyn has constructed fantastic easel light boxes to enable us to work on all three panels together. We have been ailing with seasonal bugs but have been enjoying painting up some glass and preparing pieces for sand blasting. It is great to have the templates and cut lines up in the studio and to actually begin to assess light and colour.

I went to a fantastic gig at Cuffern Manor this week, Julie Murphy and Ceri Owen Jones performed new pieces from their upcoming album, ably supported by Fiddlebox. Julie’s songs are tender and poignant and their collaboration embodies the best of traditional and contemporary work, poetry and music, and, amazingly, Ceri played a piece from the medieval ap Huw manuscript – one of the manuscript sources I have been consulting for my windows project…synchronicity at its best!…dreaming of a harp in the chapel..!

I am enjoying a Christmas break – making Lego “collage” with my nephew on Christmas day, then today, inspired by a gift of some beautiful handspun wool from Shetland (thank you, Julia), I picked up the Shetland knitting pattern which I had abandoned months ago. It is a traditional Shetland cockleshell pattern and is fairly complicated to do – I have no idea how on earth women used to knit like this while hauling fish (rather than waiting for gallery visitors) – maybe that’s the benchmark of a true crafts person! It is lovely to get back to knitting, quite a contrast to glass – something I have in mind to explore more fully some day…

Setting out some glass on the cartoons we can get an idea of the size of the work and the scale we need to work to. We want the windows to have an instant impact but also to reward concentrated looking. It is great to have it all mapped out and to have some defined boundaries to work within.

Rachel went up to Conwy last weekend with the valiant Carwyn, her husband and a carpenter, and Alun Adams from The Architectural Glass Company in Swansea. They made wooden templates that fit exactly into the 13th century glazing groove so that we can make our panels to fit exactly into the eroded stone openings.
 Now I have to leave all this and clear out our studio to hang my New Yearpainting show ready to open on 27th December.

Today I began making some glass for the Conwy windows, preparing some flash glass (clear glass that is coated on one side with a thin layer of coloured glass) for sandblasting. I have also been researching medieval polyphony and music that would have been played in the castle at the time of Edward 1st. I have got totally absorbed with studying medieval manuscripts, and learning all I can about the scribes, instruments and music of the time (check out the work of Bragod if you are interested in hearing some Welsh medieval crwth music). Sadly I don’t have time to go into it in the depth it deserves, but I am intending to use some music manuscripts as fragments in the windows. I love the research aspect of this project almost as much as I love the making, but it was a relief today to begin cutting and working the glass and thinking in a hands-on way about the material in the stories we are telling here.

Things are going well with our Conwy Castle commission. Rachel and I are busy finalising the cartoons before we can begin cutting the glass for our windows. This involves drawing up more details and deciding on final positions. It is great to be collaborating with another artist, I am sure that the work will be all the richer for it. We have taken over my gallery as our studio and will be installing light boxes as soon as my New Year Exhibition is over.

We are incorporating details from medieval sources, such as the horse above from stained glass from Llangwstenin Church in Gwynedd, and the portrait of Edward 1st from stained glass in York Minster. Meanwhile its going back to basics, doing painstaking colour and firing tests on my new enamels – I can’t wait to get started with the painting!

Our designs for the windows for Conwy Castle have been approved so we can start painting the glass this week! This is very exciting, now we can get down to some painting and working with the glass – can’t wait!

After 2 months solid work on the Conwy windows, the designs are submitted and awaiting approval. My students all left extremely happy after their weekend intensive painting course, and I am taking a few days off to take stock and recharge my batteries. We had a wonderful walk at West Williamston Nature Reserve yesterday on the Cleddau estuary. It is a wonderful time of year, the bare trees and jewel-like berries and a fine crop of field blewitts which Den is making into soup as I write.

I couldn’t resist a little dalliance with the past by visiting Carew Castle and looking at the amazing 11th Century celtic cross nearby.

We rounded off the day with a delicious lunch at Caffe Vista in Tenby, where we managed to bag the table with the best views in Pembrokeshire looking across North Beach. This was followed by tea and cake with our good friend, Anne – perfect!

Newgale was wonderfully atmospheric this morning. My students spread out across the beach reminded me of Antony Gormley’s “Another Place” sculptures at Crosby Sands!

The textures of the rocks looked amazing in the low winter morning sun, and inspired some of the later experimentation with plaster that took place in the studio.

It was all credit to my students that they engaged fully with the idea of absorbing the feeling of the landscape, the experience of the sound and sensation of the place, and working from that feeling rather than taking a more formal structured approach. These are a just a few of the paintings they produced over the weekend: