Helfa drysor/ searching for treasure
We ran away to the seaside; it’s my most favourite place. My little bird adores caravan life and I adore the lack of WIFI and simple days that slip through our fingers in a blur of sandy toes and treasure hunting. It’s where we all unravel a bit, worrying less about what we are wearing and thinking so much more about what beach snacks to pack and where the tide sits.
It’s where I really truly stop and breathe deep, sitting still and watching the world go by. A rare and beautiful thing that we should all likely make so much more time for. Navel gazing, reading books and realising all of the wonder beneath our feet. And there it was. In plain sight.
We were on the beach, pottering, splashing and planning an epic village of sandy homes with shell satellite dishes and communal seaweed gardens. Seeking, scavenging and looking for unsung treasures with which to create our imagined space. I am a keen believer in making our own fun and looking for things with fresh eyes often - daily practices that I had been ignoring in the swirl of Arts Council supported learning, thinking, trying and testing. With such freedom, great responsibility seems to sit heavy.
Somewhere in the quiet joy of helfa drysor, little bird found herself a lump of clay that became the perfect drawing material for a private rock gallery. A temporal space of joyful drawings literally drawn from the land it inhabited, loved and laboured only to be washed away as though it had never been. Besides it sat the traces of others, gauged into the rocks that were quietly proud of the sea and large enough to remain present.
Present. Somewhere in that quiet realisation, the playful simplicity of looking at the world through my child’s eyes, the pennies started dropping and lots of soft threads of thinking came quietly into focus. What if the land we inhabit, the places we gravitate towards, the small moments and markers we seek could be made of place?
Pochoir and gwyllt (wild) ink.
Thinking through materials, materials that are made of place.
Memory and meaning. Cof (memory). Atgof (a recollection). Er cof am (in memory of)?
How we leave traces/ olrhain in each other and how these (ephemeral/ Byrhoedlog) moments might grow in our communities forever?
Wild colour made from inperceptable details, gathered with my hands and my heart, connecting my words and botanical paper studies even closer to home. The quiet, could-be-unstable material that might carry the DNA of encounter, an encounter that I might only know… like a secret? Or possibly the opposite and a beautiful colorphon of its completely fugitive provenance?
And just like that, the adventure rolls on. Another rabbit hole has appeared full of earthly finds and nature tables and coordinates and words of meaning. But with a childlike curiosity and permission to play outside/ chwarae allan, with sandy toes/ Bysedd traed, seeking treasure/ ceisio trysor.
