Cardiff Christmas market is one of the best in the UK, and that’s in no small part of the organisers insistence on handmade, unique stalls. Artists from across Wales look to be a part of the market, so we head down and take a look at all the fantastic pieces on offer in the city centre.
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00:00 So I use fluid acrylic paints that I make really runny and reactive, and the whole process
00:09 is about directed chaos, I'd say.
00:12 It's about just pouring the paint, seeing what happens, going with the flow, and just
00:16 watching the process unfold.
00:19 And the way I see it is it becomes a collaboration between me and the viewer.
00:24 So I have so many people coming up to the store and pointing out the different things
00:27 that they see in the paintings.
00:29 And usually it's things that I've never seen before myself, so it's a really nice
00:33 kind of collaboration between the two.
00:35 Well, this is my son's stall.
00:38 Chris has Asperger's syndrome, and he draws hyperrealism art.
00:43 It helps him to deal with his condition.
00:47 It gives him something to express himself through.
00:49 Chris will hyperfocus.
00:50 It has to be perfect to him.
00:53 He says it's either right or it's wrong.
00:55 So some of these can take up to 100 hours.
00:58 That's the time he needs to draw all the detail.
01:02 Yeah, we previously we've owned our own art gallery for a number of years and retired
01:08 two years ago.
01:10 And my wife is the creative, not I, and she was looking for something that would occupy
01:15 her time.
01:16 She's a very clever artist and painter, and she's tried ceramics for the first time.
01:22 And thinking about Welsh heritage, really, that she decided on the Welsh ladies.
01:28 Found them, I won't say easy, because every one of them takes about six hours to make.
01:34 By the time there's a couple of firings on them.
01:37 But she decided that this would be the path that she wanted to follow.
01:40 Well, I've been interested in pottery for a very long time, but I had to make a living.
01:47 And then recently I retired back to Wales from Hong Kong and started making pottery.
01:58 And my wife said, well, if you're going to make a lot of it, we'll have to sell it.
02:01 And so we created Dragon Wife.
02:04 And I work in a studio in Cardiff, a place called Sustainable Studios.
02:12 And this is the product.
02:15 I say so.
02:16 I have an online shop and an online gallery, but it really is just like meeting people
02:20 face to face, seeing what they gravitate towards.
02:23 Because a lot of the time, the paintings I really appreciate, they find different ones
02:28 that maybe I didn't appreciate as much.
02:31 And so it's just that interaction.
02:32 You just can't get that online these days.
02:34 It's nice.
02:35 Yeah, it's great to show people what Christopher can do and raise awareness about autism as
02:40 well.
02:41 Just because somebody has a condition, it doesn't mean to say they can't achieve.
02:46 It's just finding something they love and practice.
02:49 Yeah, that's what makes Cardiff market or the Christmas market unique, because every
02:55 stall holder is totally different.
02:58 You won't find two stalls selling the same things.
03:00 He just popped out the way you are.
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