Summer has come to Cletwr, the airy café halfway between Aberystwyth and Machynlleth and the last stop for refreshments in north Ceredigion.

The new art exhibitions at Cletwr both involve taking pieces of one thing and turning them into another something quite different. A kind of magic!

‘Our Quilty Life’ is the joint work of Jenny Hall and Sue McKillop who got together as a quilting team after meeting at Maldwyn Quilters.

Their quilts are made in blocks sewn together but these blocks are made up from smaller scraps and fragments of material.

The artists tell us that “historically the women of the household would use whatever scraps of fabric they had to make their quilts, using old clothing, bedding and even sacking”.

Phil Wheeler is well known in Machynlleth for his musical activities in the town but he is also a visual artist. His exhibition at Cletwr is titled ‘Slivers not Slithers'. Phil uses pieces of a very different kind to those in the quilt exhibition. His pieces are scrap materials and old piano veneer, which is waxed, bubbled, painted, splashed, and scarped. He chops these pieces into even smaller pieces, finding the smallest ones to be most effective. He then sticks these pieces onto canvas or reused ply wood.

He suggests “that the viewer looks closely at his paintings to discover images such as, figures, sheep, cracks, gaps, holes, cats, and fish”.

The two exhibitions have something else in common in that they use their work to help other people. As part of the Maldwyn Quilter’s group dozens of quilts are donated each year to the Linus Project which is currently supporting women’s refuges. Phil Wheeler also donates money from sales of his paintings to charity. Both exhibitions can be enjoyed until August over coffee or lunch at Cletwr.