Rooftop archive 10 - mid 1990s

I showed some of the drawings from 1992 that began my obsession with windows and the stonework ruins in the rooftop archive post, here. In that post I also give links to previous rooftop archive posts. When I moved to Ireland in 1993 I brought with me a series of large paintings that I had completed in Toronto the previous year and had full intention of creating more in this series. This series became the exhibition My Tower of Strength and toured arts centres throughout the island of Ireland 1994-1998.   

Early in 1994 I relocated to rural Kerry where I was reunited with my favourite castle ruin, ie, Ballycarbery Castle near Cahersiveen.

I was offered an exhibition at St John's Art Centre in Listowel first and thought it was the perfect place to display My Tower of Strength (a former church, open stonework walls) but I wanted more paintings in the exhibition and got to work on these window drawings, which were studies for the Ballycarbery paintings. 

There were five Ballycarbery paintings altogether, but I'm not sure which of these six drawings did not make it into my final decision plans for what I would paint! It may have been this one, but I'm not sure...

The Ballycarbery paintings, which were the brightest (predominantly yellows, greens and pinks) works in the series and all completed in early 1994 before the touring exhibition began. Although St John's  was the first to offer me a show, the touring began in Siamsa Tire, Tralee, who also wanted the exhibition at a slightly earlier date.

Ballycarbery Castle had a great many intact windows to choose from and I enjoyed drawing them. 

All of these sketches are acrylic on paper and 76 cm x 56 cm.

When I moved to rural Kerry, I thought the phenomenon of drying peat hanging out of ruined outbuilding windows was most interesting. Surprisingly, I never took this concept further than sketches and photographs, especially as I moved to a house near Portmagee in 1995 and my husband stacked peat in ruined windows of our own abandoned outbuildings! As with previous window ruin drawings, this is acrylic on paper, 76 cm x 56 cm.

The Tower at Rua Red

I was so excited a few months ago when a friend told me the Jesse Jones exhibition, “The Tower”, at Rua Red gallery in Tallaght was a continuation of her exhibition “Tremble Tremble”, which had been Ireland’s entry to the Venice Biennale in 2017. While I did not get to see that exhibition in Venice, I did see it a few times when it was shown again in Ireland the following year. I wrote about it here and I also wrote about the "in conversation" evening between Jesse Jones and Olwen Fouéré here. 

As in 2018, I was stunned and amazed by Jones’s monumental multi-disciplinary work involving collaborations in film, dance, sculpture and performance. Wow! As I stayed for the duration of several performances I ended up with two “milagros” (hope/healing/spiritual charms), which I cherish.  

I was thrilled to learn that there will be a third installation in this amazing series of artworks from Jones. I lifted the last two photos from the Rua Red website and publicity (with apologies as I could not find the photo credits) because I wanted to give a sense of the magnitude of “The Tower”, which is a totally indescribable work, and I most certainly did not want to take photographs during this incredible performance event.

Home Project continues...

I've done some more work on the "Home" project. The "House with the Green Door" was the second house I lived in. My family moved there when I was two and we left when I was four but I still have quite a lot of memories from that place! As I mentioned last week, this house was across the road from St Martin's, the school that my older siblings went to. I specifically remember playing in the schoolyard one day, it must have been on the weekend, and I had to climb over a tree that had fallen in the storm the night before (perhaps it was hit by lightning?); I got a splinter in one of my fingers from the tree bark and ran home crying.

With the help of google streetview, I did sketches of all the places (including apartment buildings) but for now I will skip those sketches and jump ahead to my emigration to Ireland in 1988! My parents had already returned "home" five years previously, so were well ensconced. At that time I was still dithering about where I wanted to be, but I lived with my parents in the middle of Bray town on and off for about 2 years.

Then I moved back to Ireland at the end of 1993 with my partner (now my husband). We moved down to rural Kerry in early 1994 and the house we rented, beside a small humpback bridge in a small village, was a renovated traditional cottage. We lived there nearly a year and a half.

Loathe to leave the beautiful Kerry, we found a farmouse to rent near Portmagee. I couldn't sketch it from google streetview as it is not visible from the road! I found this photograph of myself and my husband in the field in front of our yellow farmhouse. The summer of 1995 was a glorious one, and I recall having regular swims in Portmagee Channel (the water and Valentia Island can be seen in the distance. We simply had to go for a walk in the field behind our house and we were upon our own private beachfront.

After my Dad died in September 1995, my husband and I were travelling frequently between Bray and Kerry. It was an exhausting drive in an old banger that could not accelerate to pass rural traffic. We moved back to Bray in the fall of 1996 to a house that was available just a few doors away from my Mum. Being part of the same terrace, this house mirrored my Mum's house, though it didn't have the renovations that my Dad had completed. We lived in this house for a good few years, until our daughter was born in 2002 and we moved to the edge of town - where we have been since!

Jesse Jones at The Project Arts Centre, Dublin

Jesse Jones was the artist chosen to represent Ireland at last year's 57th Venice Biennale. As I had met Jesse briefly a few years ago, I was curious as to what she was going to exhibit, and then followed the presentation avidly through social media and the catalogue. So when I heard that the complete presentation of "Tremble Tremble" was going to be shown at The Projet Arts Cente in Dublin this summer I was completely excited and chomping at the bit for the opening day.

The exhibition opened nearly two weeks ago and I met an artist friend to attend.

We were both blown away! Although I had read the catalogue essays with interest, they could not prepare me for the exhibition. Essentially it was a multimedia performance, where the main performer, Olwen Fouére,  was present on film via two huge, oblong video screens.

What a presence! I cannot describe this artwork adequately - it defies description. But the mythic exhibition continues in Dublin till July 18, and I am under the impression that it will tour to other venues around Ireland. Have a look at Project's website here for further information on the exhibition.

Mellifont Abbey & Monasterboice

During the Easter holidays, we took a family mini-road trip to the Boyne Valley area, and stayed in Drogheda for two nights. On our last day we headed slightly north of the city to see the beautiful Mellifont Abbey and Monasterboice. I had seen these sites before, in 1978, when visiting Ireland on holiday but have not had the chance to see them again since, so I was happy.

This would have been the gateway to the Abbey.

 I didn't remember Mellifont Abbey being such a large site.

The "lavabo" is the building where the monks would have washed up before meals.

Monasterboice, the cemetery and church dedicated to the obscure saint -- St. Buit -- contains two of the best examples of Irish high crosses. This is the larger of the two, and I am wondering if there has been some reconstruction as the base seems more eroded than the rest of it.

As you can see, it was also a gorgeous day - and a round tower to boot! (to Buit?)

There is also a very old sundial in the cemetery. Gorgeous!

Brú na Boinne

My 92 year old mother had never been to Newgrange, so another visit there was a necessity!

A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Brú na Boinne is a collection of ancient passage graves north of the Boyne River, i.e., an ancient cemetery. The largest of the passage graves are found at Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth. Newgrange and Knowth are accessible only via an impressive visitor centre, and the visitor must take the buses provided to the site in order to see them. It is a visit totally worth taking, but arrive early as tickets are limited and sold on a first-come first-serve basis. (The only way tickets can be reserved in advance are if you go on an officially organised tour.)

The entrance to Newgrange (above) is fronted by the most amazing megalith. 

The chief archaeologist at Knowth did not subscribe to Professor MJ O'Kelly's take on the quartz and river-rolled rocks found in front of the largest mound there. As can be seen below, the rocks were left as they were found at Knowth (below) in comparison to O'Kelly's speculative reconstruction design of Newgrange's facade.

The entrance megalith to Knowth isn't as impressive as that at Newgrange (though impressive nonetheless!) and unfortunately due to building in another historical era, the passage is not accessible as it is at Newgrange. 

Knowth is an amazing site, and I highly recommend that a visitor see both it and Newgrange, as there are different things about each that are unique. Knowth's mound is larger and has many satellite grave mounds beside it. Knowth alone holds 30% of all megalithic art found in Europe.

The large mound at Knowth has an impressive amount of visible decorated stones. Here are three!

Before heading back to our base in Drogheda, we stopped by Dowth, where we had never been. My Mum stayed napping in the car, which was just as well as the mound is surrounded by a flock of sheep and the resulting mine field of their droppings! But without other tourists this place is extra special -- this burial site pre-dates the pyramids and Stonehenge. The mound is quite large, with some evidence that there has been an internal collapse of some sort. Only a few of the megalithic kerbstones are visible but following their trajectory one can imagine the location of the others below ground level (raised by time's sediment).

Post passage grave builders at Knowth and on this site, built souterrains for food storage and for protection.

A souterrain at Knowth precludes development of the passage grave for visitors, but the souterrain at Dowth is in a different spot from its entrance. It is barred however (presumably for public safety as Dowth is an open site) but one can peek through the bars at the structure of the passage grave. Having been inside Newgrange, it is easy enough to imagine the end chambers to which this would lead.

Grey Box Archive 3 - Dreams

I thought I would post some more pix from the so-called Grey Box Archive -- the box of small scale drawings & sketches that I re-discovered a few months ago. All the work in the box I had completely forgotten about, or if I had remembered any of it I thought I had destroyed ages ago. The following sketches are all based on dreams, all of which I remember having while in Ireland, except perhaps the last one, based on several dreams I had in Toronto in the summer of 1983.

Sketches above and below are from the same dream, about the house I grew up in Toronto. I remember having this dream while visiting my parents in Ireland during the summer of 1984.

I remember this being a very bright and chaotic dream -- moons and pink balloons seemed to be having an attic party, I came upon the party via a trap door in the floor (apparent on the left middle side of the drawing). This was another dream I had during that summer visit to Ireland in 1984.

Another moon dream, with a temple and journey to boot. Who knows. I think this was from either the 1984 holiday in Ireland or a later visit to my parents in 1987.

I know I did the next two dream collages while in Ireland, possible when I had moved over in 1988. 

The plane crash on the island did not refer to the Lockerbie disaster, though that event might have prevented me from sending this in the post as it was around that time.

In 1983 I had a series of dreams about dolphins, one of which was a group of dolphins leaping in turbulent waters. I then had a dream where figures were bouncing, foetally, in turbulent waters as an exact echo to the dolphin dream. I used these images of dolphins and foetal figures in water for many years in paintings and drawings. I started using the separated raining clouds after viewing clouds like this over the sea in Ireland in the late 80s and continued with that imagery (as gold rain) in many paintings and drawings between 1988 and 1992.

Grey Box Archive 2

 I mentioned a few posts ago that I discovered a box of drawings and sketches while looking for some paperwork. So I thought I would post a few more. The pencil sketch below is from the early 1980s, of the basement bar at the house where I grew up in Toronto. My parents returned to Ireland in 1983, so I was probably getting maudlin or nervous about the impending doom!

The wind is absolutely howling outside my window so this charcoal sketch seems appropriate. It is of the Irish Sea on a stormy day in either 1989 or 1990 when I had my earlier (second bout?) of living in this country.

In the summer of 1990 I returned to Toronto, and participated in a group show "Me & 9 Others" at the Orient Building at Queen & Bathurst. This is a sketch of the piece I later put together as part of an installation. It is an elongated house on a trellis. My Dad helped me build the house and the trellis (which in the final piece I painted yellow). In the final piece, you could peer in the window to see a figure surrounded by floating stars (made of fimo) and I wove live roses into the trellis, rather than scattering them; over the course of the exhibition they wilted and dried. Behind the sculpture was a large piece of paper, half left blank and the other half with an oilstick drawing of two waterspouts over a stormy sea. This piece is not documented very well -- I have a couple of polaroid details (somewhere...), The sculptural element was bought by poet Janette Platana, but that was 25 years ago, so I don't know if she still has it!

 This watercolour is from 1990 and was created in Ireland, but I don't remember exactly where -- Bray or Howth perhaps?