dylan thomas print project especially when the october wind
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THE SALE OF PRINTS ‘ESPECIALLY WHEN THE OCTOBER WIND, TWELVE PRINTMAKERS’ WAS LAUNCHED AT THE DYLAN THOMAS CENTRE ON MAY 6TH, 2003.
David Woolley, Director of the Dylan Thomas Centre made the following welcome:
Welcome to the Dylan Thomas Centre. As we build up slowly towards the climax of this wonderful year, what excites me the most about this 50th anniversary of Dylan Thomas’s death are the original and exciting new projects that are coming up all the time and I think tonight we are celebrating something very unique and special.
It is a great honour to welcome Aeronwy Thomas, who from the inception of this building, Swansea’s move towards finally paying the tribute that Dylan so much deserves, has been a wonderful supporter and I know for many years before that along with Jeff Towns, the Dylan Thomas Society and Swansea Little Theatre who have kept the flame alight for many years.
The exhibition was opened by the writer Malcolm Parr who also wrote the catalogue introduction. Dylan Thomas’s daughter Aeronwy Thomas was also present and read the poem to a large and appreciative audience, and made the following address:
Hello. The poem, ‘especially when the october wind’, has many natural images which is why, I think the printmakers chose it as their source. Having looked at the prints, they really have understood it as a source, they’ve understood the subtext and the significance of this poem for the poet.
The poem is in the usual tradition of a nature poem, birds, the wind itself, the October wind, leaves, trees are presented but not without the poet in nearly every line, making himself and the process of poetry felt, most evidently in such lines as “Some let me make you of the water’s speeches” i.e. making something of nature for his own ends, or the last line about “dark vowelled birds”. All the artists, the printmakers are aware of this.
Ceri Thomas selects the images of ravens, giving them crab-like beaks, a reference to the poet being caught by the “crabbing sun” and hearing the “raven cough in winter sticks”, leads the poet to shed “the syllabic blood” and drains his words.
Elissa Evans, has imposed herself on the natural landscape of leaf and tree, depicted with her own lips, hair and hands the same way that the poet transforms nature to his ends, i.e. to make a poem.
Likewise, the Swansea adopted artist, Peter Visscher, has scattered words or letter shapes, spawned in their turn by a leaf, held by hands, either belonging to the poet, the printmaker, or both.
Jackie Ford and Ruth Parmiter have figures walking through nature, on the beach and Cwmdonkin Park, and on one the words of the poem handwritten beside the natural scene, indecipherable, I think, because transformed into pictorial art.
I am now going to read the poem that all twelve printmakers have sourced in my opinion so successfully and so and so sensitively.
Andrew Davies, Assembly Member for Swansea West, Welsh Assembly Government, presented Dave Woolley with a set of the prints to become part of the permanent collection at the Dylan Thomas Centre. In doing so he made the following speech:
A recent visitor to Wales from the USA described Swansea as the ‘bohemian and cultural capital of Wales’. With a 20th Century inheritance that includes Ceri Richards, Dylan Thomas, Daniel Jones, Vernon Watkins and Alfred Janes it is an apt description. For how many cities could claim such a rich cultural inheritance?
And this incredibly rich tradition across the whole range of the visual and performing arts continues into the present day, and is personified in the work of the Swansea Print Workshop. I first became aware of their work a few years ago when I was asked to support an application for Lottery funding, and was hugely impressed by the great richness and breadth of the work carried out by those printmakers living and working in Swansea.
For me, one of Swansea’s unique characteristics is the gritty strength and creativity of its various communities, and the ability and willingness of these communities to work together and be inspired by each other’s work. In the 50th anniversary of the death of Dylan Thomas, I can think of no better tribute to his life and work than for those artists living in our city today to dedicate work inspired by his verse.
The prints are also in the collections of:
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The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth
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The National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh
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The Library of Trinity College, Dublin
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The Bodleian Library, Oxford
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The University Library, Cambridge
SWANSEA PRINT WORKSHOP DYLAN THOMAS 50TH ANNIVERSARY
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