Hannah Calavera

Artist in Residence January 2025

As a tattoo artist I spend most of my time making other people’s ideas into functional images but I had lost touch with my own instincts about what I wanted to convey in my personal art. Before I came to the Mud and Wool residency, I thought of an idea of illustrating a Welsh folk tale with different media to explore a wide theme as I thought it would give me more freedom but once I was in the magical environment of the Cambrian hills I realised the wide brief was more daunting. I did create some one-off images inspired by the tale but I felt pulled in another direction.

I became engrossed in the landscape, and after finding lots of fungi one day I was inspired to create some images focussing on the beautiful gill patterns! I became a little obsessed and decided to focus on this as a much smaller scope which made the ideas and pieces flow easily into one another.

Adam and Jo were amazingly supportive and assured me there was no shame in changing my mind about what I wanted from the residency and encouraged me to just follow my gut (which was much needed!).

My work in the end was inspired by mushrooms, psychedelic imagery, the connection from the mind to the land, and everyday magic in nature.

The original intent was to have more time at oil painting-a medium I was already well versed in, but after trying a few fun crafty things in the first week to get the juices flowing I couldn’t stop lino carving!

In the end I fell in love with lino cutting as a medium and ended up starting something that will be a project for many years to come! I intend to do a lino cutting of every species of mushroom I find, inspired by the environment and how the mushrooms speak to me.

The residency was not only a chance to explore a new medium but also provided plenty of inspiration and ideas as well as the cottage being the cosiest, most beautiful place to spend a whole month!

It was the perfect place to reconnect to the joy and spontaneity of focusing solely on art and what you want to do with no outside influences other than nature.

I feel like the month flew by and I would do it again in a heartbeat.