Welsh Spirits

Recently, I posted on this blog two sculptural marionette pieces that I started in Wales. Morfudd the Mermaid of Mwnt and Alaw the Naiad of Rhaeadr Peiran. Both of them belong to places that I felt connected to during my travels in Wales. Mwnt was a beach that was a short walk from where I was in Ferwig. While the Rhaeadr Peiran was a waterfall on the Hafod Estate, a place I visited on a private day tour of the Cambrian Mountains with Cambrian Safaris. They each have grasses or mosses or seed pods or stones that I gathered from their respective locations sewn into them. Even dipped in the water where they were gathered. That seems special for these water babies. To imbue them with a sense of that place. 

My first day in Ferwig, I went on a walk by the sea with the family that operates Createspace. It was not Mwnt, but a beach very close to it. The day before I had flown into Cardiff. A huge storm hit Wales and the rest of Britain just after I arrived. It flooded train tracks and fields and roads, and left many people without power. It was reported that it was the worst storm they had had in years. If I had left a day later to fly out, my flight probably would have been cancelled. I needed to be on that particular flight. It felt fated to arrive with the storm. Though the worst of it was over when I was picked up from Carmarthen to head to the residency the day after I arrived, it remained incredibly windy and rainy. When we went on our walk on the cliffs by the sea, at one point we were pelted by rain and I thought I was going to blow off the cliff. I had never experienced anything like it! Rose, the artist who runs the residency, said "Welcome to West Wales!",smiling, when we finished our walk. I felt like I was getting back to my wild mermaid roots or something. So it sealed the deal that I needed to make a mermaid. Later that week, I went on a walk down to Mwnt and cried when I saw the beach from an overlooking field. Thus Morfudd the mermaid of Mwnt was born. 

Something else that happened my first day at the residency, when I took that invigorating windy walk, was I got my period. It was the full moon. I've been tracking my period with the moon cycles for a few years, on the recommendation of my brilliant acupuncturist Diana Keener. I used to start my menstrual cycle (or moon cycle) pretty darn regularly with the new moon, however in the fall of 2018 it abruptly jumped to the full moon and has been pretty consistent since. I conceived the mermaid and her backstory as she related to my sex/love life. She represented the part of me who falls for someone who seems different than all the others. I get their attention, much like mermaids and their siren songs, and then I start thinking that I can engineer or control the relationship and it never ends how I "think it should". It seemed particularly potent that I started my period on the same night I had both the windy battered cliff experience, and started making Morfudd. Especially as periods are associated with sex, love, and binding magic in Hoodoo, Rootwork and European folk magic- notably Sicilian.

Alaw, the Naiad was started only a few days after Morfudd. Alaw represents the side of me that wantonly wants attention- that wants to get someone's attention for the sake of that attention. For a mirror's purpose if you will. Though Morfudd was quite a seductress, she had her eyes set on certain people, whereas Alaw really doesn't care. It's just whoever walks by, that she can lock eyes with. She loves admiring herself and lying on a rock in the sun by her waterfall. And playing with her hair. 

Rhaeadr Peiran, on the Hafod Estate. Alaw's residence.

The view overlooking Mwnt, whereupon seeing I felt such a powerful feeling I started to cry. Morfudd's favorite place to haunt.