Wales Album: visiting Meri Wells, part four

Meri Wells by the fireplace.

Clive Hicks-Jenkins with a Meri Wells friend.

The gallery by night...

Leaving Meri Wells
Welsh poppies by star- and porch-light.

And when I return to Ty Isaf,
a Meri Wells "bishop"
stands by my bed.

Meri Wells is everywhere at Ty Isaf.
Here's the guardian of the paddock...

...or else the guardian of the garden below.

Wales Album: visiting Meri Wells, part three

The owner of a crafts gallery in North Carolina has prodded me to get moving on the Wales Album; she wants to see more pottery... So off we go to Wales once more. Be sure and click to make the images larger if you want to catch Jack in the garden or glimpse poppies and bluebells.

Meri Wells with me and cups and the feet of Peter Wakelin.
Clive Hicks-Jenkins behind my little camera.
The barn ruins in the background...



"We can't all be Mad Hatters" --Wizard Howl

Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
River and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside--
    from Robert Louis Stevenson, "The Swing,"
       from A Child's Garden of Verses

Peter's feet again leading the way over a slope
decked out in English bluebells and mango-colored
and orange Welsh poppies.

A Meri-flock a-flying--

A rabbit friend, come to hide in the bracken
and munch on bluebells and poppies
and forget-me-nots.

Wales Album: visiting Meri Wells, part two

What is that--precious jar of unguent,
ambrosia gone soft and dangerous,
clay cradling beads of gold to soothe the sea
when the storms rise and the selkies toss?

Perhaps it is a gift for my youngest child,
who is 14 today. Happy birthday!

Pensive, dreaming of landscapes we do not know.

Gallery frolic and caw.

He held my hand. Was both fearsome and sweet.



Riot of forms... the house gallery.



When I was Alice,
I fell into the well of his eye.
Took me years to climb back up
and crawl out into the light.



Caught, looking up almost in surprise.
Find a pierced stone and look through it.
You might find out what he sees.

Another glimpse of Meri Wells and Clive Hicks-Jenkins,
with Peter Wakelin on the grass.
This time Clive is smiling.
And I did not say, "Wensleydale."
I promise you that.

Wales Album: visiting Meri Wells, part one

Wandering, I find pottery guardians in the garden.
Am I in Wales?  Elsewhere, I think.

A glimpse of the ceramics studio and sheep field beyond,
with a table topped with an old piece of slate
that Meri traded for some concrete blocks.

A headless and quartered creature
pinned to the boards!

Meri Wells's studio, with a view of field and mountain.

Here I am rambling the yard--
earth alive with little scenes,
cunning nooks and crannies and surprises.



Table offerings...



Guard of the boundary between realms?
Warrior shepherd who bars the way?

A peep at the seventeenth-century house.
The thick flagstones inside are laid
directly on the ground, and sometimes
shift when the field mice tunnel underneath.



Maen hir of clay, pierced for looking

into another world.

Monolith among the bluebells.

Tea in the cool Welsh afternoon.

Meri Wells and Clive Hicks Jenkins,

with Peter Wakelin taking his ease on the grass.