Veronica Calarco : Choosing words … treading softly

a walk along the river … the wind blowing coldly … the water streaming past …
 brown, slate, cold, edged by grey stones, pushing leaves to the top

the wind pushes coldly against my legs, through the fabric

fingers cold, Paul a blue shape ahead

the wind blowing strongly, noisily, the sky as grey as slate, the trees bare

yn ddigon … mae hi’n rhy oer

The second retreat started at midday with a walk down to the river. This session was led by writing facilitator and Poetry Therapy Practitioner, Jill Teague, who led us through a guided process called “Alert Aloneness”. This walking, reflecting and writing in nature provided an opportunity to deepen our connection with the land and allowed us to open up to our inner landscape, to create a flow of ideas and to be a source of inspiration for our creative processes. Once at the river, Jill had us write our experience of standing by the river, capturing our fleeting thoughts. Over the weekend Jill repeated this experience during the walks or would gather us into the attic studio before a working session to explore words. It was thought-provoking selecting or being given a word with the discussion sessions afterwards being very insightful, providing with an opportunity to see how each artist viewed the land differently.

For this retreat I gathered a group of printmakers together: Linda Davies, Paul Croft and Alison Craig. Two days before the retreat, Abby Poulson, who attended the first retreat arrived to start as an intern, to spend the next six months working on this project and the reopening of Maelor. Because we were all printmakers (except for Abby, Jill and Mary) we decided to print. Prior to the retreats, I had acquired a litho press that I had just finished reconditioning, so we decided to use lithography as our print medium. Paul and I work in lithography, and Alison and Linda had done workshops, and, and of course, Abby had done none, so there was an element of teaching the technique involved in creating the work. The first print off the press was a quick sketch on a stone by Alison Craig. The moment, for me, was exciting, as now I knew the press worked. The evening talks were also done in the print room.

Every morning, we explored the local landscape through walking. Jill would stop us in an area and give us random words. These words provided us with an opportunity to explore, to relate to the land in a different way…

other … brajareck … dieithryn

water

water’s edge

flowing fast

slatety cold

highways of destructions

disjuncture

Y Wal: across the river, a wall. Human interaction. An attempt to contain the river. A tree, forcing it way through the stone fence, the river flowing strongly to the ocean. The noise, as the river rushes along the fence, over the rocks, turning, shaping, ignoring the human interaction in the land.