The Stars, At our Feet (v) Photograph

I have been writer in residence at Plas Tan y Bwlch for the past two years and to celebrate the Snowdonia National Park being designated the world's tenth International Dark Sky Reserve in 2015, I was searching for a suitably poetic link between the sky and the land. Whilst I was delving into the extensive archives of the house, I came across a box of uncatalogued bits and pieces. There were assorted old photographs, newspaper cuttings, garden planting plans, hunting itineraries, along with old sales slips and receipts from the Oakley Quarries at Cwmorthin. On the back of one sales slip, dated 1889, was an anonymous poem and a tiny sketch. It was a naïve, yet hugely evocative, poem about miners spending their shift underground during a terrible storm that threatened to flood the shafts. When they safely return to the surface, they find the storm has blown over to reveal the clear star-strewn night. Bent and bowed from their toil as they trudge back to their barracks, they see their heavy work boots splash through the puddles, the ripples mixing the reflections of the stars with their own. When photographing these slate paths, I noticed iron and mineral stains in the huge slabs that would have been mined and split by such quarriers. These ‘rust stains’ reminded me of deep space nebulae, and the tiny chips and scratches left by hob nail boots provided the starscapes. I had found my poetic link… Photographs from ‘The Stars, At Our Feet’ sequence have been exhibited in the Stable Block Gallery at Plas Tan y Bwlch, 2016-2017, and as part of the solo exhibition, ‘DYS PH ASI A’, at Canolfan Maenofferen Gallery in Blaenau Ffestiniog, 2017-2018.

Photography:photograph on Paper

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:24 W x 18 H x 0.1 D in

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