Exciting Art for Pool Street – Easter 2024

There will also be an opportunity for children and the public to help construct it over the next few weeks.

This is a new venture for Lois and I, we have been best friends for over 30 years, and this is the first time ever for us to work together on a major public art project.

We have both worked on large projects separately, Lois is a theatre and television set designer and I a public art and architectural sculptor, but this is the first opportunity for us to come together to collaborate on anything big together. We were fortunate to win this competition by applying to a call for submissions from ‘Canfas’ – an art project from Y Galeri Caernarfon.

The inspiration for our installation came from two sources. One was to look to the past and learn about the hustle and bustle of the busiest commercial street in Caernarfon – Stryd Y Llyn. Having looked at the history of the street, it became clear that there were many traders of textiles and different crafts such as – weaving, sewing, tailoring, quilting, leather work and wool.

And the other theme that was obvious to us was the history of the River Cadnant and the surrounding water system, the archives referred us back to the flow of the river running through the town and the lake, which is the origin of the name Stryd y Llyn. The river is now invisible and runs under the town.

And so we both wanted to use textile techniques to create a large visual river down Pool Street, something impressive and colourful, light and fun – representing the flow of the Cadnant River and using textile techniques such as:- weaving, stitching, tying, roping and ribboning.

The street will be one flow of colours, strips of material moving in the wind, running from top to bottom in different blues and greens, white and silver waves above our heads.