The project was originally developed by young people and youth worker Mike Hodges at Miskin (Mountain Ash) youth centre, to use the excellent woodwork equipment donated to the youth club by private sponsorship and bring new art based elements to the youth club programme.
Over the weeks of exploratory work we looked at playfully rearranging portraits using cut outs and shadow images. Our visit to the National Museum Cardiff gave us the imagery we finally used to make the chess pieces. All the pieces are taken directly from the collection.
The participants' drawings were projected onto wood and they took turns cutting all the pieces on a fine jigsaw. The work of the artist David Nash was an influence on the texture of the final pieces. The shadows and textures really showed up in our experiments with cardboard interpretations of Welsh knot-work.
Terry Chinn, Project Artist