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Due to there being around 10 'versions' of Welsh I've had to be selective on what translations I find to be applicable to my project, going off the general consensus and my own knowledge to a point. I'm the most well versed in 'Standard Welsh' as it is the version spoken in the area I grew up in. Just a note in case something might not make sense! (Translation sites are quite bad for Welsh as the way we tend to form sentences can confuse the system!)

Mari Lwyd - The Grey/ White Mare, sometimes referred to as Mary's Mare (in the context of Christianity) - A folklore symbol in the South of Wales.

Nghaerfilli - Caerphilly, the town I grew up in, the South of Wales - close to Cardiff, home to Caerphilly Castle.

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Going into this project I felt that I just wanted to understand more of my culture, coming from the south of Wales a lot of our history has been lost or entwined with England’s, or inaccessible due to my inability to speak Welsh very fluently. I am coming into this project as a disconnected Welsh person, who has experienced discrimination based off of my origin, as well as someone who grew up queer in a semi-accepting town at the heart of Wales.

I grew up in Nghaerfilli town, known for having the second largest castle in Britain(1), a cultural hotspot with the legend of the Green Lady(2), with links to St Cenydd mine that was shut down during the Thatcher area – leaving much of Caerphilly deprived, being the 3rd most deprived area in Wales(3).

In school I showed very little interest in Welsh lessons, but I was engaged with cultural events such as the Eisteddfodd – admittedly this was due moreso to my passion for art and music, but it allowed me some gateway into Welsh culture that I was not exposed to in my English-speaking school. In 2013 I placed in a number of events at the Urdd (children’s Eisteddfodd, broadcast on the Welsh channel S4C(4), so I was invited to the event, this was significant to me in the context of this project as it displayed to me clearly how much disconnect I had with my own country, as they applauded me for even showing interest, being one of the first and only students to enter from an English speaking background – this was said once in English and once in Welsh. This experience stayed with me, as I was introduced to the concept of ‘not being welsh enough’, something that has, and will continue to, follow me throughout my life, and began to notice that there was a disconnect between people within Wales depending on which region they were from.

Since leaving Wales for university, I began to feel much more in touch with my country, and interested with its history and practices I was missing – especially since having seen the Mari Lwyd the Christmas before I left. This is when I learnt the term ‘Hiraeth’ – meaning the longing for one’s country, in context with Wales, which I think embodies my current sentiment.

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These notes cover the entirety of the books, documentaries, exhibitions and web-pages visited not selected pages. All sources found here are put under the header 'Notes and Research' in the bibliography section.

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Notes from a brief interview with artist Ben Edge and his exhibition at the Victor Wynd Museum on the 4th of October.

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Sheep designs; sketches after visiting home

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Sheep designs; sketches after visiting home

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I sent out a survey to people aged between 16 - 92 who are: Welsh living in Wales

Welsh living somewhere else

English/ other living in Wales

The aim of this was to research more about welsh identity currently and compare it to my own stance, my research and my narrative just to see if it was representative - which, as you can hopefully see I feel as though my project was. This part of my research was so crucial in understanding how my work is going to connect to my target audience, as well as giving some indication to the response of those who might end up interacting with it. With accessibility being such a central tenant to my work; I found this aspect to be particularly important.

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For the interim show, I used a zine I had made over the Christmas holidays based on the development happening in the landscape behind my house in Wales.

While visiting I was told that by the next time I visited it would be likely that a lot of the fields and surrounding forest areas this has been in development for years would be levelled to make way for new housing. I have lived in this area in Wales for 15 years, and spent most of my childhood there, so I felt a great deal of attachment to that area and have a great deal of emotion with it going. It is also worth noting that there have been rumours associated with the forest of witchcraft and other folk-like beings, so I felt it appropriate to cover.

Over the holidays I would frequently take my dog for walks up and around the mountain and forest, so one day I went up and made a really loose sketch of some of the places we visited and with the theme of ‘What If?’, I began to write little notes about what I imagined the route of demolition would be. This ended up informing my narrative for this piece.

When I returned home I made a more refined version with blue pencil – I often sketch in this colour before inking and then … forgot about it. I ended up using this for my interim show entry as I think it is representative of my project, but also a path I didn’t choose to take, and still feels really personal to me and my practice.

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note: all the dates are between the 21st and 22nd one the document - this was actually conducted a lot earlier on in the project but I had conducted it on another platform which I was unable to save so I had to manually input everything into google forms :')

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Papermaking - While thinking of exploring more traditional mediums at the start of the project, I decided to make paper out of scraps I was able to find from my last project. My intentions with this were to use the paper to make some kind of flip-book to practice a traditional form of animation. However, the paper was very dense (I did not add enough water and used paper that I think was too thick or had some sort of glaze), and the weather did not really allow me to make more. I think it was a nice experiment but did not really play into my project. I would like to think of an alternate unit 9 where I was able to make an entire animation only using earthly materials I would have been able to gather from the forest by my house in Wales.

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Lino printing on the paper I made

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I wanted to expand the type of animation I was exploring just to see what avenues I had available to me. I decided to do this through a short animation using my Mari Lwyd work; the process for this as a experiment for my final outcome so I know what elements to focus on/ what I may want to try and avoid.

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The next few images show the process I went through making my armature - I didn't do a lot of character designs for this as I am unfamiliar with clay and wanted to let it inform my outcome rather than me struggle to make something accurate to something I've made in a medium I'm more well versed in. I like to think that the process of building up the clay it was almost like sketching.

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initial armature with human proportions

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Making my armature with supports for the horse skull structure.

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I built up the parts of the skeleton where I was planning to add clay with newspaper and then tinfoil to reduce the amount of clay going onto the figure. I knew that by the nature of the Mari Lwyd it would be difficult to keep up by itself, so I wanted to have the least amount of clay possible to keep it ready to be poised.

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I attached my figure to a wine bottle (one somehow not opened) for support - its not very common to be able to see the feet of the Mari Lwyd anyway so I didn't think it would disrupt the outcome too much.

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Finished base clay model

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Added texture and colour using watercolour, I later sealed this with eyeshadow and setting spray.

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I sewed together some fabric patches I had to form the cloak in spirit of the tradition of decorating the ML in local culture - cutting some holes for the arms. Using ribbon and thread to form the decorations - traditional materials also.

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My initial designs were really flat, I was thinking about the image a lot not really considering the context and the main focus being the animation - also not considering my time frame too much.

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So I developed it to incorporate elements I liked, but reduced the amount of illustration needed to focus on more of the 3D elements.

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I used cardboard to make the base of the set; I needed it to be small because I had a very small area to work with (didn't think I could bring all of these materials into uni). I also wanted to make this a relatively quick experiment as I was already not keen on using this method for my work.

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Base of background

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Using fake grass

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Creating the rock

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I used mod roc to cover the newspaper to create the form of the mountain - I wanted to really engage with the 3D elements of this experiment to fully gauge what it would take to animate fully in this way. - looking back on this process, the 3D set elements were definitely the parts I was the most engaged with.

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Experimenting with lighting - thinking about mood, atmosphere and story.

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Experimenting with lighting - thinking about mood, atmosphere and story.

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Including the (VERY FRUSTRATINGLY BROKEN) arm to hold my camera for shots.

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Using StopMotion for iPhone I was able to put together this animation as I made it (before editing all the shots together on Premier). I found it to be really difficult to achieve the look I wanted - I think a lot of this was due to inexperience with animating in this way. A big problem I had was with the armature itself; it wasn't very posable due to the weight of the clay and I think it needed more supports (wire) to make it posable. I also used a non-drying clay (I thought that it would allow me to keep my figure moveable) but in the end it made it hard to keep my figure consistent. I have in the past visited animation studios who work in this way, they tend to have multiple parts for every movement so the figure isn't actually moved by hand but it wasn't possible for this experiment.

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(with 2D animated text)

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Before it washed out (needed longer to develop)

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Before it washed out (needed longer to develop)

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Wind blew my stencil - really like the effect.

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Wind blew my stencil - really like the effect.

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Print of a photograph of Caerphilly Castle I took.

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Exploring the figure of Mari Lwyd originally 

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Exploring the figure of Mari Lwyd originally 

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Photo from me in 2021

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Ellen Gallagher (Drexcyia)  Hauser & Wirth. Available at: https://www.hauserwirth.com/viewing-room/ellen-gallagher/ (Accessed Last: 04 February 2024). 

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One artist in particular, Ellen Gallagher was very influential in my research development as I am beginning to solidify a narrative for my outcome. One of her works in particular, The Myth of Drexciya re-imagines a folk tale coming from slavery – often enslaved pregnant women would be pushed off the boats of the incoming slave traders, where in this story the foetuses still developed and grew gills. This piece explores the ‘What if?’ element of folklore in a way I hadn’t yet considered, by recontextualising and reimagining the context behind the story, if the oppression was avoided or changed what could have been. Although this is a fantastical interpretation of that, it plays really well into my own study of folklore.

As I have developed my research I began to look more thoroughly into the more academic history of Wales, the widespread colonial input from England was much deeper than I had initially imagined. Although it feels very insensitive and wrong to directly compare the oppression faced by many people imported from Africa in the slave trade to Wales, and it is nowhere near the callousness and cruelty faced by many, the themes of oppression and methods are paralleled in Wales many years before England expanded its colonies, so there are places of appropriate comparison. One significant fact is that from 1247 Welsh people were considered second-class citizens in law as the Anglo’s took power, one documentary even claiming it to be a tester, some groundwork into what would eventually form Apartied.

I feel as though I can take the methodology from Gallagher’s work as inspiration for my own work, developing my own recontextualised versions of these folk stories. I was initially worried about the folk tales I was studying being potentially biased in some way, but after researching academic Welsh history pulled from both English and Welsh sources, I feel as the majority of these stories are quite level in their portrayal of events. I also think it is relevant to consider leaving these stories, even if biased, as my focus is on Welshness, the feelings and views of the Welsh people – not necessarily a historian’s interpretation of what is the ‘unbiased’ version of events. I believe that folklore provides a different account of these events, if I am able to put forward context – or a new context, I would be able to explore the ‘What If?’ element of Gallagher’s work that inspired me so much

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Storyboards from Wallace and Gromit; this gave me a foundation for the process needed for this project.

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This was a very useful workshop, allowed me to think different ways of telling a story, how the way we tell stories impacts the way an audience engaged with the information and their reaction to that. It was also very interesting to think of pace of reading through presentation and different methods of book making

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Here I was thinking about the pace of which information was revealed, whilst also considering this idea of a 'building' of information - you can actually see where you've come from to get to this point in the story.

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(I got the protagonist's name wrong here - it's supposed to be Pryderi and the claw - was in very deep reading the same stories over and over again and very tired...)

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Visit to The British Library & 50 Plaques and Places Exhibition in Notting Hill

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Visit to The British Library & 50 Plaques and Places Exhibition in Notting Hill

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The part of this workshop in The British Library got me to consider different ways of presenting stories - adapting them into different forms, how this impacts the story and how it changes who is going to interact with it. This particular project was my favourite - the wolves in the walls book being adapted into a VR game. The visual language of the book I think informed a lot of my future character designs - but I think the adaptation had the greatest impact in the structuring of my narrative. By changing this children's book into a game they were able to stretch out certain emotions portrayed in the story to a much more intense degree - thinking a lot about how I can harness format to enhance my story.

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A really impactful way of portraying history - with the end goal of putting these up in the places these stories represent. I did notice at this exhibition a few of the people I was with didn't engage with every plaque so not all the information was put through - but I think the visual of all of these on the wall was enough to convey the scale and severity.

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Drawing at the V&A workshop; looking for pieces that related to folklore.

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Drawing at the V&A workshop; looking for pieces that related to folklore.

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Using a Lightbox and beads, thinking of more abstract ways of animating.