As a visual arts facilitator, my work often involves collaborating with communities and organisations to explore and respond to local heritage creatively. This commission provided a unique opportunity for me to focus on my personal practice, taking inspiration from objects that reflect my interest in women’s social history and domestic experience.
The domestic utensils within Storiel’s museum offer a glimpse into the lives of local women from the past. Now detached from the environment in which they functioned, these objects spark curiosity about the lives of their owners. I am drawn to the strong forms and worn surfaces of these items, which, while solid and resilient, also symbolise care and nurture.
The ‘gradell’ or ‘maen’ (griddle/ bakestone) served as a symbolic starting point; its bare surface acts as a blank canvas, inviting us to add our own layers of meaning.
I wanted to reimagine further seemingly humble domestic utensils as new artefacts, using materials, processes, and visual references that would connect them to a localised sense of time and place, and through this, to the women who used them.
To create the decorative surfaces, scraps of recycled packaging were dyed, embossed and assembled together using techniques that reflect care and nurture during times of hardship.
The bowls of the spoons feature imprints from graffiti carved into slate on the bridge at Afon Ogwen, used by workers heading to and from the Penrhyn quarries.
Recurring shapes, patterns, and motifs from local craft traditions, as seen within textile and slate work on display in Storiel, are also incorporated. Colours are primarily drawn from the local environment, particularly the quarrying and farming landscapes.
The final outcomes exist as pieced together explorations of local lived experience.
