Pluid Project

I can't remember how I heard about this project, but after reading about it, I decided to take part. "Pluid" means "comfort blanket" in Irish, and the point of the call-out was to think of ways we, as individuals, have found solace in this past year of covid lockdowns and isolation/separation from our usual life interactions.

I have actually not seen any major disruption to my work - in fact over the past year I have been inspired by so many things which I normally did not have access to. I have attended various artistic workshops & weekly artist talks through zoom and I have had the time and inclination to found Precariat Press, which I have blogged about here. In addition, I have been working on painting and printmaking for an upcoming exhibition next year, so I have been quite busy professionally. I have of course missed out on being able to meet up with friends physically and some major travel plans were cancelled last year (and I am not making any travel plans for this year). But I have been enjoying a lot of remote international entertainment - archaeology and music podcasts, theatre, opera, poetry readings, literary events, and music - and quite a lot of this I would have been unable to attend in person if there was no pandemic!

So essentially I would say that I found solace through activity!  I decided to make images inspired by my daily park walks and continuued my experiments with contact printmaking, after taking the Graphic Studio Dublin zoom workshop (facilitated by Clare Henderson) a awhile ago. I created several pieces in the format required by Pluid. Rosehips, ink on kozo paper (contact print), 15cm x 15cm, 2021.

Wild Rose, ink on kozo paper (contact print), 15cm x 15cm, 2021.

I was happy with two of the prints, so packaged them off and sent to Pluid to be included in the national comfort blanket exhibition. I am also happy if these prints help raise some funds for Piéta House, which I think is an amazing charity.

Open Fragment

In the past year especially, I have seen quite a lot of open calls for online opportunities. As I had recently dealt with destroying a large oilstick work from 1989 but couldn't part (yet) with a number of elements from the painting/drawing (I blogged about it here) the open call for "Open Fragment" was serendipitous! As recent work was requested I wrote to the curators for clarification - while the original work was created in 1989, the fragments created by destroying Sea of Roses could be seen as new works from 2021. 

The curators wrote back to me and encouraged me to make a submission and it was a simple enough process, so I did.

The online exhibition was organised by Pragmata Collective, a UK-based artist/curator duo (Adele Lazzeri and Toby Kidd) who are interested in an experimental approach to curation, which they fully outline in the exhibition statement.

I submitted an image of my piece along with a short statement about it. The various artist statements were submitted to an electronic device which randomly read out parts of statements during the online launch of the exhibition. It was very interesting to hear this electronic mash-up of words, though my computer could not handle the TWITCH site for the duration of the launch.

I retitled this fragment from Sea of Roses as Jetsam. I thought the definition of jetsam as "unwanted material or goods that have been thrown overboard from a ship and washed ashore, especially material that has been discarded to lighten the vessel" was appropriate to my destruction of the original 1989 work and personally lightening my load...

It took me awhile to figure out the numbering system, but that is because I was randomly clicking on the numbers on the site rather than simply looking up the list of artists which was provided.

Lá Fhéile Padraig!

Since my child was very little, we marked each month with seasonal decorations, so there was always something to look forward to. Many of the decorations are homemade and used every year, stored for annual use. I made paper shamrocks of varying sizes which could be blue-tacked up in any number of configurations. Here are some shamrocks with the LED lights on the glass bricks in the kitchen.

Decorations made in school have also been kept. This little decoration always hangs on the kitchen door at this time of year. Judging by the scribbles of colour and the pre-made regularity of the shapes, I think this decoration is very early in the primary years!

More shamrocks take up space on the other side of the glass bricks, in the entrance hallway opposite the coat rack.

The hallway is also the home to bunting, flags, more shamrocks, and a pendant on the door leading to the living room.

St Patrick's Day is Ireland's national holiday and this is the second year that live national festivities have been cancelled due to covid. It will still be celebrated in my house, however, with a festive meal and some Irish coffee. Abarta Heritage did a very interesting podcast, in their Amplify Archaeology series, that gives further information on the historical figure who was St Patrick; have a listen to it here. 

Lá Fhéile Padraig!