Projects 'Archive'

I will be adding an archive to highlight a selection of projects, both past and on-going, including information and sample images that are representative of the associated works.

check out the art 

HERE

for my writing, read samples
HERE

Same Plas, Another Time...

The current exhibition in the Stable Block at Plas Tan y Bwlch, Maentwrog, includes a selection of my responses to the Creative Residencies I have undertaken there. More related works will be shown later this year, in a solo exhibition at the Canolfan Maenofferen Centre, in nearby Blaenau Ffestiniog.

Remy Dean talking about his art at Plas Tan y Bwlch, part of the Gwynedd Helfa Gelf 2017 Arts Festival 
(photographs © Kim Vertue)

You can read  more about these Residencies HERE

This Must Be The Plas...

Helfa Gelf is now an annual event - an Arts Trail through North Wales during September that involves hundreds of artists, crafters - creatives of all kinds - in an exciting and varied festival of events. Many creatives open the doors of their studios to the public, presenting an opportunity to interact and share their creative practices. The open studios season is during September and is also preceded - and then followed by - a programme of exhibitions, workshops and courses for creative professionals, interested novices, and all those between. Helfa Gelf presents a unique opportunity to meet and chat with artists, makers and doers in their creative spaces, see them at work, perhaps have a go yourself, and see their finished work - which is often available to purchase at special 'trade prices' - ideal if you want to get some unique Yuletide shopping sorted ahead of the rush...

This year, I will be at Plas Tan y Bwlch for the Helfa Gelf festival, picking-up on the Residency that I began there last year...

There will be readings from my books, 'pop-up' exhibitions of photography and other visual responses, and plenty of chat about art and folklore. Work produced during my 2016 Residency will be on show and I will also host free 'drop-in' creative workshops, and 'taster sessions' from the forthcoming Creative Writing Course: A Sense of Space, to be hosted at Plas Tan y Bwlch in March 2018.

For more info, dates and times, see my Helfa Gelf Artist's Profile Page (click images below) and while you are there, have a good look around their website at all the many and varied artists that will be welcoming you into their work spaces throughout September 2017...

Click here to read about the  Helfa Gelf 2015 Residency that I took part in 

at 'Haus of Helfa' aka 'The Tedder House' in Llandudno...

The Stars, At Our Feet - The Plas Tan y Bwlch Journals (part 2)

Iron : made in the stars, gifted to the universe upon their deaths. More plentiful than any other metal. It is in our blood. It is in the land. The acid waters from the high, peated moorland carried the iron down to deposit it as pans of bog-iron in the extensive marshlands that once surrounded the village of Maentwrog. This iron was discovered and worked by the ancient smiths of the Bronze Age, ushering in a new Age of : Iron.

Left: bisected lump of 'bog-iron' displayed at Plas Tan y Bwlch (photograph by Remy Dean, 2016)
Right: galaxy Pictor A - when the light we see left this distant galaxy, 500 million years ago,
what is now the slate of the Cwmorthin quarries was still sediment and ashes...
(image courtesy of Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and NASA, 2016)

Nebulae of rust stain the starscapes of tiny pits and scratches left by the footsteps of quarriers. Slate, once above their head, now at their feet reflecting the infinite night above. Of the land, of the stars.

The Stars, At Our Feet (i) photograph by Remy Dean, 2016

In December 2015, the Snowdonia National Park was officially designated the world's tenth International Dark Sky Reserve. This news, and the poetic image of slate miners returning to their barracks on a rare, clear night, their heavy work-boots splashing in the puddles and mixing the reflection of the stars with their own, were the seeds for an on-going series of images I have titled, The Stars, At Our Feet...

The Stars, At Our Feet (ii) photograph by Remy Dean, 2016

I took the title for this series of photographs from a poem by an anonymous Cwmorthin miner, found written on the back of a shipping slip, dated 1889.

You can read the News Release about Snowdonia becoming a Dark Skies Reserve HERE.

Find more about the Cwmorthin Quarries HERE.

Read about Peter Crew's archaeological excavations at Bryn y Castell hillfort and subsequent findings related to bog iron and the Iron Age significance of the Maentwrog area HERE.

Work produced during this Residency will be on show in the Stable Block,

Plas Tan y Bwlch, over this Yuletide, and through Spring 2017...

[read part 1 here]

Plas People Past Present - The Plas Tan y Bwlch Journals (Part 1)

Approaching the house where it sits upon high, overlooking the perfected bend in the river Dwyryd, I walk a steep winding path sided by ancient trees. The leaves are beginning to tan. After this dull muggy summer, when it rained enough to drown cars and wash away the chrysalides from their sheltering soil into rampant rivers and the eternal seize, it cannot be the tanning of the sunshine but the brush of autumn that is bronzing the leaves with its subtle signal to fall. The branches and trunks record the sodden summer in new rings, hold a sample of our air within their grain, breathe in what we exhale.

So to the house. My hand upon handles turned by Lady Mary, whose skill also turned wood and carved church rails. My feet step on stairs ascended and descended daily by her maids and footmen. I touch the ever present past and walk the corridors of time that measures its steps with mine, second for second into a share of the future. The past remains mine as much as yours, though what we know of it is told in the coded marks they left us. Stone upon stone, word after word, the scratches left by rings on the age-polished door handles and the smooth stone of steps bowed by thousands of footfalls, to which I add my own.

For Helfa Gelf 2016, I am delighted to be Writer in Residence at Plas Tan y Bwlch, and have already started exploring the rich heritage of this great house and the land that surrounds it. I will be using combinations of text, artefact and images to document my findings and responses, which will be recorded here in this on-line journal.

I will be in residence at Plas Tan y Bwlch on Saturdays and Sundays until the end of September.

Those dates are 10th & 11th, 17th & 18th, 24th & 25th.

You will find me in the ground floor Bar, where you will be able to see some examples of my work, take part in creative workshops, listen to readings, and buy books.

I will host the Creative Writing workshops each morning from 11:00 to 12:00, and there will be readings and storytelling beginning at 14:00 each afternoon. Readings will include a special preview from my forthcoming fairy-tale-fantasy, This (recommended for age groups of 9+, though suitable for all). There will also be short-form creative writing activities at any time you 'drop-in'.

I am looking forward to lots of fascinating chats about art and writing, local history and folklore... Bring it!

Follow my twitter feed for up-dates.

more info about the Residency at my Helfa Gelf page

and find out more about Plas Tan y Bwlch at their website

[read part 2]

Summer of '16

This summer promises to be very 'British', but regardless of the climate - both political and atmospheric - and whether we have a proper summer this year at all, here are some dates for the diary:

I have recently been working on a final version of This. This is my new novel, and first of the This, That and the Other series of three... Hey, that would be a trilogy! The books are my first for children and young adults and I am writing them in consultation with Zel Cariad, my resident expert on all things fairy and dragon related. So with Zel's invaluable help, and by channeling the veteran child within myself, I have written a fairy-tale fantasy that winds its epic yarn between the world of the 'Fair Ones' and that world where we now dwell...

"She did not know that before the next day dawned, she would have seen things that she never thought she would ever see, and that soon she would change forever. She would be changed from being a fairly normal little girl into being a very special and extraordinary person. It began a long time ago… but for Rietta, it all started when she met another very special and extraordinary person."

- taken from 'This', by Remy Dean with Zel Cariad 

The book is set for publication late this Autumn, but I will be reading preview extracts from This at these following events (click listings for more info and directions):

'The Legendary Llangollen Faery Festival' : 13 and 14 August 2016

'Sci-Fi Wales', Llandudno : 3 September 2016

...and I will also be

Writer in Residence at Plas Tan y Bwlch, Maentwrog, during September 2016.

I will be responding to the house and its environs using texts, images and artefacts... producing new work, signing copies of my books (Final Bough and The Race Glass) and reading from This on the second, third, and fourth weekends (those dates are 10, 11, 17, 18, 24 and 25 of September)

Plas Tan y Bwlch ...steeped in history and seeping with stories

Plas Tan y Bwlch overlooks the village of Maentwrog, named after Twrog's Stone, the ancient stone supposedly hurled there by a giant to smash a pagan altar, and now sited in the Mediaeval graveyard of a church surrounded by a grove of ancient yews. The site is mentioned in the Mabinogion as the place where king Pryderi was defeated in magical combat by Gwydion, and is where, centuries later, the Bible was translated into Welsh-language, and more recently where iron age dwellings and unique bog-iron foundries have been excavated. So, the place and the Plas, are seeping with stories, both ancient and modern.

Hope you get chance to drop in and have a chat!

You can read all about my previous Writing Residency at last year's Haus Of Helfa here...

also...

Recently, I have 'bravely' delved into the haphazard chaos of boxes that is my writer's archive and have already been reminded of some old, though still relevant features and interviews that have never been digitised. So, in my 'spare time', I intend to rescue some choice examples from their dusty obscurity and put them to work again, by uploading them to this weblog. So watch this space for occasional blasts from the past related to film, cult-television, mainstream rock and alternative music...