Marcheurs des Bois

Marcheurs Des Bois was the second part of an international exchange between artists from Boreal in Quebec, Canada and from ointment artists collective in Pembrokeshire, Wales.






A long bad dream goes grey and feathery I wake sit up and see thick snow falling outside. I come back when I am hungry, hands, arm and feet hurt as I walk. I begin to realise my limitations. The steaming river frosting the alders. The evidence of mammals criss-crossing the snow. Clear skies of stars. A cradling new moon, an egg moon, a full moon. My first walk in a snowy forest since I was a child. Sunrise seen through frozen eye-lashes. Ice. Ravens. Woodpeckers. Deer. A wolf.Catch a sparkling fragment of air, early morning air full of woodpecker and tiny spangles. 22° halo, with rainbow circumzenithal arc, and later a lower arc. I kneel under a birch tree and mark the shadows cast by twigs by pressing a plant stalk longwise into the snow. I kneel and watch the earth move. I kneel and am surrounded by a rainbow shattered into minute fragments, as the sun pours onto the snow. Walking, resting or sleeping in the snow. In the evening sewing tiny gloves and deformed hands, wax dipped. Very hard work, takes so much time with my hands they way they are.




main, gant, rose/llaw, mennyg, rhosyn

small gloves with additions from walks: deer hair, lichen, bark...
small hands each not perfect (felt dipped in beeswax)
rosebuds previously sew to my fingers in water:ice felt tubs
displayed outside under the bushes where the rosebuds had been buried for most of the two weeks - except when squirrels dug them up.

walking to sleep: to find my cradle.
each day I went out and found somewhere to sleep. I made a book with water colours and text. an extract of text:
Sous un pin, je dors. Dans la neige profunde sous les branches, je me recroquexille dans la neige profonde. Je suis reposée sous l’épaisse neige qui tombe. Je me couche sous le bleu, dans lair immobile. Je somnole. Je danse. Je retiens mon chagrin. Je suis coucée le regard tourné vers les grands arbres et la neige qui tombe. Je chante.
I see a wolf loup blaidd. I see three grouse. A raven grand corbeau gigfran follows me; flies low over me as I curl into deep snow by cedar trees. I do not sleep sa i’n cysgu, but am rested under thick falling snow.
Dw i’n crwydro’r byd yn chwilio am nghrud.



unfinished entry

Marcheurs des Bois website

reconcile I & II

@ ointment I, Parc Y Pratt Farm, Sir Benfro, Cymru/Wales
performance & installation


reconcile /,ri:k¥n,sail/ v.tr 1 Make friendly again after estrangement. 2 (usu. in refl. or passive; foll. by to) make acquiescent or contentedly submissive to (something disagreeable or unwelcome) (was reconciled to failure). 3 settle (a quarrel etc.). 4 a harmonize; make compatible. b show the the compatibility of by argument or in practice (cannot reconcile your views with the facts) reconcilement the bringing to agreement things at variance





Reconcile I
Installation and performance in a grain store at Parc y Pratt. The inspiration came from finding the ground of the space covered with owl pellets: a barn owl was residing in the loft of the next space. I brought together the place and the story of Blodeuwedd from the Mabinogion (ancient Welsh legends). The story of a woman created from flowers as reward for a man, who is later punished by being banished into the night as an owl. I feel she needs to be flowers and owls. I used movement and the action of sewing owl feathers and flowers onto a hanging of black silk gauze.
The installation could only be viewed in three specific ways: through the feeder hole at the bottom, climbing the vertical ladder to the top or by looking at the mirror that over hung the space.
Reconcile II
In the barn next door I sat on a stool and sewed rosebuds and owl feathers onto my fingers. There was no barrier between the audience and me in this case.


additional text here

"And the room was full of petals from skylight and rafters, and all about them a fragrance, and petals, flowers falling, broom, meadowsweet, falling, flowers of the oak."

ointment website: events