High streets shape us in ways we rarely pause to consider. They are the backdrop to school runs and Saturday mornings, to protests and celebrations, to arrivals and departures that quietly define a place. Above the shopfronts and behind the signage, layers of history and human experience accumulate, often unnoticed, yet deeply felt.

Your High Street pieces are described as “imagined spaces”. How do you balance memory, intuition, and observation when creating these stitched landscapes?

I think memory amalgamates in architecture, and our memories shape how we perceive places. When I look at a high street, I’m always asking myself: who was here before? Who designed this, and why?

Travelling up and down Wales often with filmmaker Noah Bakour made me see high streets differently. Seeing them through his lens as an outsider also made me reflect on my own identity as a Welsh-speaking South Walian. I began questioning whether I felt like an insider or outsider in Wales, which led me to think more deeply about themes of home, place and migration.

The project began in Wrexham, particularly the pedestrianised city-centre high street. I sketched and photographed at street level while Noah filmed from above using a drone. We walked the streets together, talking about how pedestrianisation can make places more accessible, yet in other ways less habitable. I sensed a struggle in the high street, people trying to use a space for purposes it was no longer designed for. This made me question who actually uses high streets today and which communities rely on them.

My approach felt almost archaeological investigating layers of social history and exile, then taking those layers apart and reconstructing them through print, paint and stitch. Wrexham is truly beautiful from above; in Noah’s films it looks like a European city people might visit on holiday, especially if it wins the City of Culture bid. Yet locally, people often speak very negatively about it. The mishmash of architectural styles, the empty buildings, felt like imprints of absense.

Using thread introduces a sense of duplicity it draws and obscures at the same time. Drawing in the street attracted attention, and people often seemed confused about what I was looking at. Noah’s drone was even attacked by birds, as if it were a foreign body intruding on their patch of sky. We began talking about “ghost walkers”, people who once used the high street and how the space transforms during football matches or protests. All of this feeds into how memory, intuition and direct observation sit together in the work.

You’ve said you’re careful not to tell the whole story? How do you decide what to leave unsaid, and why is that important to you?

The spaces I make are imagined, drawn from sketches and photographs rather than exact copies. I want to give a sense of place, not a complete description. My process is very physical and intuitive. I might throw paint at the surface before adding buildings, or rip areas away before rebuilding them. I work in layers of print, paint and stitch.

Leaving things unsaid is part of that process. I often create areas of white spaces so the viewer can imagine what might be there, and also to give the work, which can be quite intense space to breathe. I need to live with the work on the wall while I’m making it, sometimes leaving it for days before deciding what it needs or what should be left unresolved.

Conversations plays a huge role in this. I talk through the work with my project mentors-funded by my Arts Council of Wales grant. These are artists Julia Griffiths Jones, Gill St John, Nigel Hurlestone, the gallery Director, Philip Hughes, Photographer Dewi Tannatt Lloyd and filmmaker Noah Bakour – but also with anyone who will listen: people at my studio, my partner, children, parents. Often, I don’t fully understand what the work is about until after I’ve talked about it. Leaving space, visually and conceptually, allows those meanings to emerge rather than being fixed too early.

Textile art has often been sent as “craft” rather than “fine art”. How do you see your work challenging or expanding that perception?

I see my work as embroidery pushing beyond the boundaries of what is traditionally understood as craft. I don’t devalue craft of making at all, but I do see my work as fine art. It’s an expression of thought, process and practice – I just happen to use thread as my medium. There is nothing decorative about how I work.

Having the opportunity to show at Ruthin Craft Centre is a real honour and feels like an important moment in my career. As my friend and fellow artist Michael Goode said, “you have made it.” Sometimes the word “craft” in the title can muddy people’s understanding of what is shown there, but Ruthin is an extraordinary space. I often liken it to the Tate Modern in the middle of the countryside. Anyone with an interest in contemporary art should visit it. We are incredibly lucky to have a place like this in Wales.

High Streets are changing rapidly across Wales. What do you hope visitors will reflect on about their own community when they see your work?

I hope visitors reflect on how their own high streets function beyond shopping as social, cultural and emotional spaces. Through this work, I became very aware of who still uses high streets and why, particularly communities who rely on them because they don’t have access to transport or alternative shared spaces.

I want people to think about the layers of history embedded in these streets: what has been lost, what remains, and how buildings continue to carry traces of former lives and uses. Rather than seeing high streets only through narratives of decline, I hope visitors consider them as complex landscapes shaped by memory, resilience and adaptation.

Ultimately, I’d like people to look again at familiar places and reflect on their own sense of belonging, identity and connection within their community.

The exhibition includes a film by Noah Bakour. How does your work and his film connect, and what does that collaboration add?

For both Noah and I, home is a moveable and evolving place. I spent much of my twenties travelling the world, while Noah, still in his twenties, fled war in Syria to come to the UK. His family has recently returned to Syria to rebuild their lives. His experiences have made him wise beyond his years, while mine have, in some ways, kept me young.

Working with Noah is a privilege. He brings far more to my life than I could ever bring to his. Through him, I learn about worlds beyond my own – as a young person, a filmmaker, and someone displaced from their country. Our work connects through shared ideas of movement, borders, exile and belonging.

Supporting Noah through this Arts Council of Wales funded project was also a turning point for me, enabling me to step away from teaching and focus on my own practice. Photographer Dewi Tannatt Lloyd and I met Noah through an arts-in-health project at Oasis in Splott in 2022, and a tutor student relationship developed. Since then, Noah’s practice has grown significantly from voluntary projects while he was an asylum seeker to commissions with major institutions and his own Arts Council Creative steps funding. The collaboration adds depth, perspective and generosity to the exhibition, grounding it in lived experience rather than abstraction. It also adds contexts. For the exhibition Opening the singer and performer Aouyb Boukhalfa sang in Arabic, English and Welsh. I also know Aouyb from working at Oasis and it was an honour to have someone international of the World come to a small town in North Wales and wow everyone who was viewing my show. I wanted everyone to understand the value of Asylum seekers and refugees to our communities and to see how much more we gain from working with people from different cultures. Aouyb is incredibly professional and his performance took my work to another level.

You’re based in Penarth, but your work draws on high streets across Wales. Is there a particular street or memory that feels most personal to you?

Many of the high streets I explored lie along the route between Cardiff and Ruthin often border towns. Noah and I talked a lot about borders as we travelled. These included Wrexham, Llangollen, Ruthin, Abergavenny, Crickhowell, as well as many streets in and around Cardiff, particularly City Road, which reminds me of Green Lanes where I lived in London.

City Road holds a very personal resonance. A comment made during a talk to a Merched y Wawr group unlocked an early memory for me – catching a bus as a four-year-old from Lisvane to City Road in Cardiff to attend school. Seeing the bingo hall, the spaces above the shops from the top deck of the bus, and gradually recognising these landmarks became a source of comfort during what felt like a traumatic transition. I hadn’t fully understood how deeply this stayed with me until someone else articulated a similar memory.

There is also a piece in the exhibition about Green Lanes in London, which nods back to taking students on circular bus trips to draw. Much of the work is about flashes of place as you move through them. When people ask how long the work takes, I say the physical making took about two years, but the thinking behind it took 53 years, the same age as me. I read something since that David Bowie said that artists often decide what their work is about after creating it as the process of making is a form of communication in itself. I think this is what happened here. My High Street work is about my experiences of changing High streets over years and years and the work speaks for itself.

What do you wish people will take away from this exhibition?

I hope people leave with a deeper awareness of how place, memory and identity are intertwined. The work isn’t about presenting a complete story, but about evoking how places are built from layers of lived experience over time.

I’d like visitors to reflect on the idea that home isn’t fixed, it can be fragmented, moveable and imagined. Even when buildings disappear or change function, emotional connections endure.

I also want people to consider buying big pieces of art. The work in my show is of all different sizes, but scale was one of the areas I wanted to develop. Greg Parsosn the curator deliberately arranged to have the work hung up higher than the eyeline, so that it gives this feeling of clouds and sky. I want people to look up above shops and look at facades and use the architecture to consider what was there before.

Most of all, I hope the exhibition encourages conversation. My practice is as much about thinking and talking as it is about making. If people leave wanting to share their own memories of streets, buildings or journeys, then the work continues beyond the gallery.

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Disgrifir eich gweithiau Stryd Fawr fel “mannau dychmygol”. Sut ydych chi’n cydbwyso cof, greddf ac arsylwi wrth greu’r tirweddau wedi’u pwytho hyn?

Rwy’n credu bod cof yn ymdoddi i bensaernïaeth, a bod ein hatgofion yn siapio’r ffordd yr ydym yn gweld llefydd. Rwy’n edrych o’m cwmpas ac yn meddwl: pwy oedd yma o’r blaen? Pwy ddyluniodd hyn, a pham? Teithiais i fyny ac i lawr Cymru, yn aml gyda’r gwneuthurwr ffilmiau o Siria, Noah Bakour, a dechreuais weld strydoedd mawr drwy ei lygaid ef fel rhywun o’r tu allan. Wnaeth wneud i mi ystyried fy hunaniaeth fel Cymraes o Gaerdydd. Fe wnaeth fy Nhad dyfu fyny yn Sydney yn Awstralia a Mam o Llanerfyl yn Sir Drefaldwyn a wedi cwrdd yn Llundain yn y 60au. Yn De Llundain ges i fy ngeni a tyfes fynyyng Nghaerdydd ond wedi byw mewn nifer rhan o’r byd. Dechreuais gwestiynu fy hunaniaeth a beth ydy fy lle yn y gymdeithas yng Nghymru? O hynny oll daeth themâu cartref, lle a mudo.

Dechreuais fy ngwaith celf yn Wrecsam, yn enwedig y stryd fawr yng nghanol y ddinas. Brasluniais a thynnais luniau tra roedd Noah yn creu ffilmiau drôn o’r awyr. Wnaethom drafod pam mae gwneud strydoedd yn rhai i gerddwyr?  Pwy sy’n defnyddio’r stryd fawr fel canolfan siopa? Ai cymunedau heb fynediad at gludiant?

Roeddwn yn teimlo fy mod yn cloddio haenau o archaeoleg, yn datgymalu haenau o hanes cymdeithasol ac yn eu hail-greu drwy haenau o brint, paent a phwyth. O’r awyr mae Wrecsam yn wirioneddol brydferth. Mae’n edrych fel dinas Ewropeaidd y byddai pobl yn ymweld â hi ar wyliau. Ac efallai os fydd Wercsam yn cael ei ddethol fel ‘Dinas Diwylliant Prydain’ fydd pobl o dros y byd yn mynd yna yn fuan. Mae pobl leol yn aml yn negyddol amdan Wrecsam fel tref.  Mae defnyddio edau yn rhoi ymdeimlad o ddyblygrwydd a delweddaeth i’r cymysgedd o adeiladau yna.

Rhywsut yn eironic, ymosodwyd ar drôn Noah gan adar, fel pe na baent yn fodlon ar y corff estron hwnnw yn eu gofod awyr. Roedd tynnu lluniau ar y stryd yn denu sylw hefyd. Dechreuon ni drafod y syniad o “gerddwyr ysbryd” y bobl a fu’n defnyddio’r stryd o’r blaen a sut mae Wrecsam yn newid pan ddaw gêm bêl-droed neu brotest i’r dref.

Rydych wedi dweud eich bod yn ofalus i beidio â dweud y stori gyfan. Sut ydych chi’n penderfynu beth i’w adael heb ei ddweud, a pham mae hynny’n bwysig?

Mae rhai o’r lleoliadau yn fy lluniau yn ddychmygol, wedi’u creu o frasluniau a ffotograffau. Maent yn awgrymu lle yn hytrach na’i gopïo’n union. Rwy’n aml yn taflu paent ar yr arwyneb cyn ychwanegu adeiladau, neu’n rhwygo rhannau o’r defnydd cyn eu hail-gyfansoddi. Rwy’n hoffi adeiladu haenau gyda phrint, paent a phwyth, ond hefyd creu mannau gwag i’r gwyliwr ddychmygu yr hyn gall fod yna. Mae hynny’n rhoi lle i’r gwaith anadlu.

Rwy’n hongian y gwaith ar y wal wrth ei greu, weithiau’n ei adael am ddyddiau. Rwy’n trafod fy ngwaith gyda mentoriaid a theulu, ac rwy’n credu bod trafodaeth yn hanfodol  weithiau dim ond ar ôl siarad amdano y deallaf beth yw’r gwaith. Tra yn dysgu plant rwyf o hyd yn ceisio annog trafodaeth am ei gwaith celf am y rheswm yma.

Mae celf tecstilau wedi’i gweld yn aml fel “crefft” yn hytrach na “chelf gain”. Sut mae eich gwaith yn herio hynny?

Rwy’n gweld fy ngwaith fel brodwaith sy’n gwthio y tu hwnt i ffiniau crefft. Nid wyf yn tanbrisio crefft, ond rwy’n ei weld fel celf gain, mynegiant o feddyliau, proses ac ymarfer. Nid oes dim addurniadol am fy null. Mae arddangos yng Nhanolfan Grefft Rhuthun yn fraint fawr. Er bod y gair “crefft” yn gallu cymylu dealltwriaeth rhai, mae’n ofod anhygoel fel Tate Modern yng nghefn gwlad. Rydym yn lwcus iawn yng Nghymru i’w gael.

Mae strydoedd mawr yn newid yn gyflym ledled Cymru. Beth yr hoffech i ymwelwyr fyfyrio arno am eu cymuned eu hunain wrth weld eich gwaith?

Rwy’n gobeithio y bydd pobl yn edrych ar eu strydoedd eu hunain gyda llygaid newydd  gan sylwi ar yr haenau o hanes, y pensaernïaeth, a’r straeon tawel sydd wedi’u gwreiddio yn y waliau. Mae stryd fawr yn fwy na man i siopa; mae’n fan cyfarfod, yn lwyfan i brotest, yn ofod ar gyfer dathlu neu galaru. Hoffwn i ymwelwyr feddwl pwy sydd wedi cerdded yno o’u blaenau, pwy sydd heb lais, a sut mae newid economaidd a chymdeithasol yn siapio’r lleoedd hyn. Efallai y byddant yn gofyn: pwy sy’n perthyn yma? A beth sy’n cael ei golli neu ei ennill wrth i’n trefi esblygu?

Mae’r arddangosfa’n cynnwys ffilm gan Noah Bakour. Sut mae eich gwaith chi a’i ffilm ef yn cysylltu, a beth mae’r cydweithio’n ei ychwanegu?

I Noah ac i mi, gall cartref fod yn le symudol; mae’n datblygu dros amser. Treuliais i lawer o’m hugeiniau yn teithio’r byd, tra bod Noah, yn ei hugeiniau, wedi ffoi o ryfel yn Syria i ddod i’r DU. Mae ei brofiadau wedi rhoi doethineb iddo y tu hwnt i’w oed, tra bod fy mhrofiadau i mewn rhyw ffordd wedi fy nghadw’n ifanc.

Mae gweithio gydag Noah yn fraint. Rwy’n dysgu ganddo am fyd y tu allan i’m byd fy hun fel person ifanc, fel gwneuthurwr ffilmiau, ac fel ffoadur sydd wedi’i ddadleoli o’I gartref gwreiddiol a’I ddiwylliant. Drwy grant creu gan Cyngor Celfyddydau Cymru, roedd cefnogi Noah hefyd yn gam pwysig i mi symud tuag at weithio’n annibynnol o fod yn athrawes.

Cwrddes i ag Noah drwy brosiect celf ac iechyd yn Oasis yn  Splott yng Nghaerdydd yn 2022, ac mae perthynas fentora wedi datblygu rhyngddom. Mae gyrfa Noah bellach yn ffynnu, gyda chomisiynau a grantiau ei hun. Mae ein cydweithio wedi bod yn sbardun i’r ddau ohonom ddatblygu ein hymarfer creadigol.

Rydych yn byw ym Mhenarth, ond mae eich gwaith yn tynnu ar strydoedd mawr ledled Cymru. A oes stryd neu atgof sy’n arbennig o bersonol i chi?

Rwyf wedi archwilio strydoedd ar y llwybr rhwng Caerdydd a Rhuthun. Trafododd Noah a minnau’r syniad o ffiniau wrth deithio arfordir Cymru a Lloegr. Mae City Road yng Nghaerdydd yn arbennig o bersonol i mi; mae’n fy atgoffa o Green Lanes yn Llundain, lle bûm yn byw.

Mae gen i hefyd gysylltiad personol â Abergwaun a Llanwnda, lle rydym yn aros ger Carreg Wastad, y safle goresgyniad y Ffrancwyr yn 1797. Mae brodwaith cymunedol Abergwaun yn neuadd y dref wedi bod yn ysbrydoliaeth i mi ers flynyddoedd.

Un o’m hatgofion cynharaf yw teithio ar fws deulawr o Lysfaen Yng Nghaerdydd i City Road i Ysgol Gymraeg Bryntaf yn bedair oed yn y 70au, gan weld y Neuadd Bingo  ‘Gaiety’ a’r gofodau uwchben y siopau o llawr uchaf y bws. Roedd adnabod y lleoedd hynny’n rhoi cysur i mi mewn cyfnod a oedd yn teimlo’n frawychus yn fy mywyd ifanc -dal bws i ysgol Gymraeg y ddinas. Dim ond yn ddiweddar y sylweddolais pa mor ddwfn oedd y cysylltiad hwnnw trwy trafodaeth ges i gan rhywun oedd wedi mynychu araith wnes i rhoi i grwp Merched y Wawr yn Rhuthun. Pan ofynnir pa mor hir mae darn yn ei gymryd i’w wneud, dywedaf mai nid y broses gorfforol sy’n cymryd yr amser ond y meddwl y tu ôl iddo. Cymerodd y sioe yn Rhuthun tua dwy flynedd i’w chreu, ond mewn gwirionedd mae’r syniad wedi cymryd 53 o flynyddoedd  i ddatnlygu yn fy meddwl – yr un oedran â fi.

Beth yr hoffech i bobl ei gymryd oddi wrth yr arddangosfa hon?

Hoffwn i bobl adael gyda mwy o ymwybyddiaeth o le ac o’u lle eu hunain o fewn hanes. Efallai y byddant yn gweld bod cartref yn haenog, yn gymhleth ac weithiau’n wrthgyferbyniol. Os gall fy ngwaith annog rhywun i edrych yn fwy gofalus, i werthfawrogi pensaernïaeth neu i ystyried straeon cudd eu stryd eu hunain, yna rwyf wedi cyflawni rhywbeth. Yn y pen draw, mae’r gwaith yn ymwneud â chysylltiad rhwng pobl, lleoedd a chof ac yn annog pobl i edrych i fyny..