Aos Dara Symposium 2022

I went down to Tomnafinnoge Wood, near Tinahely, Co Wicklow, in order to check out the sculptures that formed this year’s contribution to the forest art trail, after the third Aos Dara symposium ended. The four artists who created work on the symposium this year were James Hayes, Niall O'Neill, Dave Kinane and Sarah Kineen. The project was facilitated by the Courthouse Arts Centre, Tinahely. Hayes, O'Neill and Kinane have all participated in the two previous symposia. I wrote about the first Aos Dara Symposium in 2019 in a Circa Online short review here, and I blogged about the second symposium (during lockdown in 2020) in which I participated here, here and here.

It was great to see the work, which you first happen upon from the path, 

and then, curious, you can explore with a closer view. This is a piece carved by James Hayes.

Again, visible from the path the piece by Niall O'Neill invites you to take a closer look.

O'Neill decided to continue working on his very large and intricate tree carving from the first symposium. It must be noted here that the artists could only use fallen material and hand tools for carving.

Although Dave Kinane's piece was originally created in a glade off a walking trail, he moved it across the river into another open glade. It can be seen from the path

but any desire for a closer look is still met by a rushing body of water. However, it is highly visible from the path in a number of places.

It is helpful that each work is signposted on the trail. Sarah Kineen's work appears at first to be a jumble of small sticks as if in preparation for a bonfire.

Closer inspection reveals a lovingly woven container of golden leaves that Kineen had gathered from the forest floor.

May future symposia leave further artworks for the enjoyment of walkers (or runners!) in this gorgeous forest. While I was there I had a chance to see a piece from the first symposium, still holding its own with added moss and mushrooms several years later.

pastel drawings

I have been busy with a lot of writing lately (poetry, short stories, art criticism). At the end of January my short review of William Crozier: the Edge of the Landscape at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) was published as part of CIRCA magazine's This Matters Now series. I saw this exhibition a few months ago, and blogged about it here, but you can read the review here. I was also delighted that my short story, Prayers for My Children was published a few days ago in the online journal, Tales from the Forest; you can read it here.

Last week I decided that, even though I hadn't finished cleaning up the studio, I wanted to do some visual work, other than ceramics. I pulled out some chalk pastels and heavy grey paper and began drawing.

As may be apparent from my prints and handmade books over the past year or two (see here, here, and here), I am inspired by my times of "shinrinyoku" (walks in the woods for good health)

and by walks along the seaside where I become obsessed with pebbles at the shore (also see here and here).

I really enjoyed drawing with the chalk pastels as I was able to lay down shapes and colour to effect quite quickly.

Writing

I make New Year resolutions each year, which I know that with some work, are possible to do and therefore I don't feel weighed down by failure when the impossible becomes obvious!

The past few years I have included in my list of resolutions to work more on my writing, which has been set aside (unfairly?) in favour of my preference for painting. The art magazine, CIRCA, to which I contributed art reviews for a number of years seems to have folded, so my writing has generally taken the form of FaceBook and blog posts, which I have tried to do regularly.

My other writing outlet has been poetry. My first published poem was "Portrait" in the New Irish Writing section of The Sunday Tribune (now defunct) in the spring of 1989. Following this a number of my poems were published in literary journals and magazines in Ireland and Canada, then I abruptly stopped writing and submitting poems in the mid-1990s.

Poetry has begun to re-emerge in my notebooks in the past few years and I have gotten the gumption to submit a few poems to literary publications in Ireland. So it was with great pleasure that I received a positive reply from Cyphers, a Dublin journal, that two of my Haiku poems would be appearing in the spring issue. An even greater pleasure was to receive my contributor's copy in the post recently.