paving art

Artists Heather Parnell and David Mackie were appointed by Cardiff Council’s Neighbourhood Renewal team to work with pupils at Ysgol Mynydd Bychan to design an artwork or series of artworks for Canada Road.

In considering the site and the school, two themes became apparent to the artists as the most suitable themes to explore with the school pupils. The first theme was inspired by the area’s street names – named after the colonies – Canada, Africa, Australia, Newfoundland and New Zealand. Pupils worked with the artists to interpret images of art, design and botany from these countries through drawing motifs and patterns.

The other theme was textiles since Ysgol Mynydd Bychan has many examples of textiles from around the world hanging on the corridor walls. Textile patterns inspired some of the individual motifs but more significantly, the overall design of the artwork makes reference to the pattern of a traditional Welsh blanket.

The result is a paving ‘blanket’ created from a patchwork of 44 unique drawings by the school children, who were delighted to see their drawings permanently installed outside their school. There was much excitement the morning after the installation!

The technique used to recreate the children’s drawings on the paving slabs is to produce a template for each design with a resist where there is no line, so that when the slab is grit-blasted only the design appears. The indentation of the line is then filled with a toughened paint, in this case a dark charcoal grey colour. The country names are inset into the paving slabs in stainless steel.

The scheme was officially opened on 13th April 2011.

Media coverage: http://www.welshicons.org.uk/news/cardiff/canada-road-transformation/

High Street Family Practice moved premises in 2010 to a spacious new medical centre with state of the art facilities. The new centre is called West Quay Medical Centre and is located on Hood Road, less than 10 minutes from the old premises on High Street in Barry.

As part of the new build a percent for art public artwork was commissioned through their partners Matrix Medical, who were the developers of the scheme.
Artist Angharad Pearce Jones was appointed and consulted closely with the staff of the practice to select a theme and develop a design for the artwork. Many themes were discussed including medical themes and the industrial history of the area, which is in the Innovation Quarter of the Waterfront area of Barry. Angharad’s design combines the motif of the Tree of Hippocrates and the motif of a steam train wheel within a circle. Around the perimeter is a motto that the practice has used, “Working together in partnership with each other for each other”.

The location of the artwork is a circular area within the hard landscaping adjacent to the main entrance. Eight metres in diameter, the outline of the design was fabricated in metal by Angharad and laid onto a tarmac base. Sureset, a company specialising in resin bound paving, supplied and installed the colourful paving within the metal outlines. The paving is made from a variety of different materials to achieve the different colours. For instance, black is created with crushed coal.
The project on the Sureset website: http://www.sureset.co.uk/casestudies_medical.html
Angharad was excited by the possibilities of using coloured resin bound paving in an artwork and although she had previously used it to create a logo, this was her first project with Sureset on her own design (and possibly the first public art project to use this type of paving material).

This project also engaged more widely with the local community. Poet Phil Carradice facilitated poetry workshops at three local primary schools on the theme of physical and mental health and well-being. These workshops were supported by a grant from Academi.

In the summer of 2008 the Vale of Glamorgan Council appointed artist Charles Gurrey and poet Gillian Clarke to create a roundel for the newly redesigned public space in front of the Civic Offices.

To the left of the path leading to the main entrance of the Civic Offices from Holton Road is the Merchant Seaman’s Memorial and to the right is a new semi-circular seating area. The roundel is set into the paving within the seating area.

The brief to the artists was to create an artwork which in some way interpreted the concepts of civic and citizenship and to reflect Barry – the town and its citizens. However, this needed to be done with very few words in order to fit the space and in addition the poetic text needed to be in both Welsh and English. Gillian Clarke devised the following succinct lines which curve around within the circle:

“Severn tides lap Harbour and Knap
coal, wind and sea
- our history”

“Llanw a lli a llongau glo
dros y môr
- ein hanes ni”

Charles Gurrey designed the letters which were cast in bronze and set into a single piece of granite. The shapes of the letters are bold and sculptural, contemporary and legible, and suit the meaning of the text – Barry’s current day pride in its history. The background to the letters has a green, aged bronze patina whilst the letters standing proud are a shinier golden bronze but with a rubbed texture which has also picked up the green patina.

Charles Gurrey
Following a BA in Philosophy Politics and Economics at Oxford and an MPhil in Philosophy at Cambridge, Gurrey completed a five-year apprenticeship as architectural carver and decorative sculptor in Dick Reid's workshop in York. He then remained at that workshop as Principal Assistant until 1994 when he became a self-employed architectural carver and sculptor. Gurrey’s commissions include several works for York Minster, the complete scheme of figurework in stone for the West Front of Guildford Cathedral, and a sculpture for Dunorlan Park incorporating text by Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate at the time.

This public art project is the first of many to be commissioned for Barry Town Centre in the next few years as part of the ongoing regeneration of the town centre. A transformation has already taken place with the refurbishment of the Town Hall, King Square and Central Park - the first phase of regeneration work.

A public art strategy for Barry Town Centre was completed by Celfwaith in the summer of 2007 and this paving art project is the first public art project to be implemented from the strategy. The second phase of regeneration was to widen the pavements of Holton Road and install new street furniture to give more priority to the pedestrian.

There are 120 paving slabs with art designs integrated into the pavement along Holton Road, located at the junction points. Artists Heather Parnell, David Mackie and Andrew Rowe developed the theme for the artwork with children from two local Schools - Holton Rd Primary and St Helen's RC Junior Schools. Shops past and present and the types of wares shown in window displays were researched and children drew objects they imagined would be sold at chemists, toy shops, green grocers, hardware stores, confectioners, stationers and haberdashery shops.

The artists created the final designs, which have an almost trompe l'oeil effect, to look like shopping bags dropped on the floor with the contents falling out scattered across the pavement. The designs were etched into the paving slabs and filled in with a tough charcoal coloured paint to look literally like pencil drawings on the pavement. Within each design there is also an item in bronze relief such as a pencil, an orange or biscuits, to add colour and shine.