I currently have work on display in Oriel Ynys Mon in Llangefni as part of the Association of Contemporary Jewellers Wales Christmas exhibition ‘Sparkle/Disglair’. There is some fantastic work on show, and I’m not sure I have ever seen such a gathering of work by contemporary jewellers in North Wales. The exhibition finishes on Christmas Eve, and all work is for sale.
I’m taking part in Helfa Gelf this year, I’ll be open on 28th & 29th September. There are artists opening their doors every weekend this month, check out the website and support the artists by going to visit! 
Spaceman, Aluminium Etching by Wendy Leah Dawson, 2011
The other day a friend asked me what I wanted to be when I was little, you know – what did I want to be when I grew up? I answered ‘an artist, it’s all I’ve ever wanted to be’. That’s not really the whole truth, I had an even more unrealistic ambition – to go to the Moon, I’d go tomorrow, I’d take any opportunity to get up there. The fact I took the easy option and settled for daydreaming about it instead is the biggest disappointment of my life (I’m that out of touch with reality).
Neil Armstrong just died, I’m thinking about space a lot again… I’m sure there will be lots of memories tweeted over the next few days, but this interview is particularly poignant and sets my imagination alight…
These are some of my etchings inspired by space exploration, ‘Curiosity’ is exciting in so many ways, but we need more humans out there…
Lunar Border, Aluminium Etching by Wendy Leah Dawson, 2011.
Tempus Fugit, Aluminium Etchings by Wendy Leah Dawson, 2011.
Arc ring, brass sketch tracing the motion of the fingers by Wendy Leah Dawson.
Arc ring, brass sketch tracing the motion of the fingers by Wendy Leah Dawson.
Arc ring, brass sketch tracing the motion of the fingers by Wendy Leah Dawson.
Winner of the Student Award in the Welsh Artist of the Year competition 2012.
My Scrutiny Ring, part of the Observation Jewellery series, has won the Student Award in the Welsh Artist of the Year Competition 2012. You can see the ring on display in St Davids Hall, Cardiff until 6th August 2012.
It was made as part of a series of observation devices intended for individual fascinated with the world around them. It is constructed from silver and optical glass taken from camera lenses, and is displayed with a bumble bee that died on the path outside my workshop when I was making the ring. The ring is kinetic, each of the arms revolves around the observation platform, and is hinged to allow positioning at any angle. Alongside the ring is a stop-motion animation showing the object repositioning itself, the combination of the character of the bee and the movement of the object gives a sense of personality to an otherwise inanimate scientific instrument, and for a fleeting moment brings life to the dead bee.
My work is strongly influenced by my fathers trade as a clockmaker, I live in a world surrounded by clocks and watches, so the objects I make are intrecate and inspired by mechanisms, although I am also working more and more with new technology and digital media. I was one of the exhibiting artists in the Blinc Digital Arts Festival in Conwy, which allowed me to work with stop-motion animation, and directly influenced the work I entered for the Welsh Artist of the Year competition.
This gallery contains 2 photos.
Yesterday I met some mild mannered Conwy Valley bees, and I’m still trying to work out what amazed me most… Whether it was the way they build up the honeycomb like little living rapid prototypers, layer at a time…? Or … Continue reading
Observation Ring, Silver and Optical Glass, Wendy Leah Dawson 2011.
Wyth 8
Eight Women Artists from across North Wales exhibiting together in celebration of
International Women’s Day 2012
Click the link below to see a video of the Amser/Time projection…
Amser/Time by Wendy Leah Dawson and Tim Pugh
‘Amser/Time’ Blinc Digital Arts Festival, Conwy Castle, 2011. Stop-motion animation & 3D projection made by Wendy Leah Dawson and Tim Pugh, with sound by Ed Wright and post-production by Minimal Media.
'Time/Amser' work in progress.
While the rest of the UK was experiencing unseasonably hot weather for September, I was sitting in my middle room under studio lighting moving little shells, cogs, watches and wheels for several stop-motion animations with Tim Pugh from morning ‘til night. It was incredibly hot, a bit cramped, and I think we both went a little bit loopy for a couple of weeks, not least because we were both new to stop-motion and not really sure how it would all turn out.
The objects we chose for the animation are very familiar to me, my dad is a clockmaker so the house is full of intriguing bits and bobs, the inner workings of clocks, dials, hands, watch parts, and a clock dial made by Conwy’s most recent horologist. Alongside these items are natural objects reflecting the locality of Conwy – mussel shells, small snail shells collected at Conwy morfa, local pebbles, and a little bee. We are interested in the human obsession with time, the way we seek to control it by measuring the seconds and mapping out our days, and the fleeting nature of time.
These animations are inspired by a specific event in the castle’s history, when in 1401 the castle was besieged by Owain Glyndwr’s supporters and the town subsequently burnt to the ground. The time that has passed since that moment is vast and minute, so much has changed in this locality, but certain constants remain – the flow of the river, the turn of the tides and the rising and setting of the sun.
‘Time’ is pretty much finished now, Minimal Media have taken our thousands and thousands of images and worked some 3D magic, and Ed Wright has recorded some of the ticky tickers in my house and created a haunting soundtrack. Now we just need to get the animation to the technical people in London who will feed it into a machine that spits out light.
You can see some of the animations before the green-screen magic and post production here, imagine them 50 feet tall going off like fireworks on the front of Conwy Castle, then you know what we are hoping to achieve…