Back in February I walked the river Wye from source to mouth as a starting point for a new collaboration between me and my friend, artist, and writer Patrick Farmer. We did the walk over 8 days, documenting, collecting, talking, reading, remembering, trying to stay actually near the river, and sneezing a lot, because we both got ill straight off the bat. The Wye begins in the Plynlimon hills along with the Avon and the Severn, which it meets again surrounded by M.O.D land. The river crosses the border of England and Wales many times over its course and has a rich history of disputes, industry, and natural tourism. The geology along the river changes from slates and quartz to iron and copper and huge monoliths of limestone. Below are a few pictures from along the trip. Over the next few months i'll be making glazes from collected materials, researching the origins of the millions of shards of pottery strewn along the banks, and making a new work that explores ideas of circular processes in ceramics and the natural world and our changing relationship with rivers.
