glass glas

glass glas...completed in August 2012. 49" wide x 23" high and 7/8" deep (approximately 125cm x 58cm x 2cm), screenprinting and drawing on birch panels and steel. The two outside panels are thin steel bonded to the wood panels; the central square panel is wood. The three panels are worked on separately, then fastened together as one piece. Again, this work deals with ideas contained in previous work pertaining to boundary language, idiotic symmetry, memory, private and public narrative, private and public space, time, light...the list seems to keep growing! The wing panels are derived from photographs taken in a hotel room in Lisdoonvarna, Co. Clare, Ireland, in May of 2011, while the central panel is from a photo of a slough somewhere in southern Saskatchewan, Canada, taken two years earlier. Although these began originally as photographic images with no particular purpose, they eventually find some connection through my meanderings. The photographs then supply a structure on which the image and its meanings are built - the 'construction' lines are easily visible in the central panel (and they also may obliquely reference the system of land surveying used in Canada which divides the country into square miles known as sections). The screenprinting stencils are created by printing (on an inkjet printer) the original photograph (in black ink) in sections that fit onto 8.5" x 11" transparencies. These transparencies are then spliced together to generate the 'big' transparency that will be used to make the screenprint stencil (the wing panels each involve six transparencies spliced together, the central panel has twelve). It is puzzling but also interesting that the computer will 'interpret' information in such a way so as to produce the optimum image through its choices, rather than mine, meaning that the individual transparencies, although originally derived from the same photo using the same printing preferences, end up being visually different from each other as statements about light and space, relative to what the camera - or I, for that matter - recorded, hence the accidental construction grid.
Lisdoonvarna is famous for its matchmaking festival in the fall, which involves a great deal of dancing, apparently, so this piece had a working title of dance dance. Within the central panel, if the viewer looks closely, can be read the scraffito text of some Joni Mitchell (Alberta born and Saskatchewan raised) lyrics from her song 'All I Want' on her stunningly beautiful album 'Blue', which was released when I had just turned twenty, a long time ago...what I wanted then is still all I want. But the working title seemed both obvious and obtuse, and I preferred something that was less obvious and possibly more obtuse. There was a toss-up eventually between clare claire and glass glas, the first playing on words describing space (as in County Clare) and light (as in clear/claire), the second on materials of transparency (glass) and reflection (glas, Irish 'green', Welsh 'blue', Scottish 'water', amongst other meanings in other languages). There is, of course, a great deal else not being said at all...

blue blue

blue blue...completed near the end of January 2012. Length 56", width 16", 7/8" deep (~140x40x2cm). Screenprinting and drawing on three wood panels which were then fastened together as one piece. The central panel is thin sheet steel bonded to the wood.

'May the road always rise to meet you...'

The left image is derived from a photo I took on Inish More, the largest of the three Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland. I was on the 'rock road', which is exactly what it sounds like, a narrow road on bare rock running along the height of land on the southeasterly side of the island. From the road, one can look southwest across the gentle grey slope of the Burren-esque landscape to the Atlantic beyond. This image was taken a kilometre or so east of Liam O'Flaherty's home and his elegant memorial at Gort na gCapall, looking northwest towards the village of Kilmurvey, at the foot of the long slope that rises to the extraordinary stone walls of Dun Aonghasa (Dun Angus). In one of their sagas the Vikings speak of  'the enemy before you, and a cliff at your back'. They could have been speaking of Dun Angus.

The right image comes from the Canadian prairies, somewhere in the southernmost part of Saskatchewan. I grew up on the prairies and I am still awed by and drawn to the powerful peace and beauty of this landscape in all seasons, the home at one time of the Blackfoot and Sioux first nations, amongst others, and more recently but still long gone, the great Metis buffalo hunters and their families. The lonely expanses still seem to whisper longingly for Poundmaker, Crowfoot, Sitting Bull, Gabriel Dumont and Louis Riel and all of the magnificent people who lived here for five millennia before we 'settlers' arrived with our fenceposts and barbed wire to divide and partition, frequently for no apparent reason, this seemingly endless sea of grass.

Tigh Joe Mac's Bar, Kilronan

Finally, the central image is from the mirror and mantlepiece above the fireplace in one of the world's loveliest and coziest bars, Tigh Joe Mac's in Kilronan, the main town on Inishmore. It is here, after a long day of walking in wind, rain and sporadic sunshine that you'll find a warm turf fire, an equally warming beverage of your choice, never-ending craic, and sometimes an impromptu musical session*. Facing the mirror above the fireplace, one can see the reflection of a large painting on the wall of a four-man curragh, the skin and wood rowing/sailing craft used by the islanders for centuries to fish and to transport themselves and just about anything else to wherever it or they were wanted or needed. The painting in Tigh Joe Mac's is reminiscent of a similar illustration by Jack Butler Yeats in J.M. Synge's The Aran Islands (1907).

As in all my work, there is a public and private narrative contained within each piece and from piece to piece, only one aspect of the 'idiotic symmetry' that lies at the heart of these pieces, and which continues to drive my motivations and reasons for making the work.

 

*(added ten years later...28 November 2022): 

'It was a long walk, the full length of Inis Mór along the rock road, with side paths up to Dún Eoghanachta and Dún Aonghasa, so a warming pint or two by the turf fire in Tigh Joe Mac’s tiny bar was necessary. The handball kids were out on the patio, sending one of their crowd in periodically for more soft drinks to mix with their smuggled mickeys. Their chaperone Valerie eventually gave up and settled herself at a table inside. The Eurovision Song Contest was playing on the small tv behind the bar, eliciting frequent loud commentary by three or four young lads seated there. At another of the tables were three ancient islanders, dozing over their half pints.
‘Fuck this!’ said Valerie suddenly and loudly, and from under her bench pulled out an accordion and started playing a wild tune. The lads at the bar spun around in surprise. The bartender reached over and clicked off the tv. The ancients snapped awake, wide-eyed. Valerie ran through a few lively pieces, then plopped the accordion down as the bartender put a pint before her. The bar was suddenly enveloped in silence. Then:

‘Sing us one of the old songs, Betty’ croaked one of her companions. ‘Oh, no, I can’t sing any more,’ says Betty, ‘My voice is gone now’. Betty looks like she’s made of tissue paper, difficult to imagine a voice inside her at all. ‘Ach, no! Your voice is not gone at all. I can hear you when I walk past your house’ piped up the other. ‘Oh no, I really can’t. I’m out of tune now, and practice’ she protested, but not very convincingly. All eyes in the bar were on Betty now. Another few moments of silence, then she sat up straight, raised her eyes to the ceiling… and I swear an angel started to sing, in Irish, that late spring afternoon in Tigh Joe Mac’s, after a long walk down Inis Mór.'

This is the magic of Ireland. It stays with you forever, wherever you go, wherever you are, whatever you're doing.

New work...quiet quiet

This work continues where my previous work was interrupted (see the Prairie Long Poems for example on  http://coconutmonkeypress.blogspot.com
In May 2011 I spent a month in Ireland, mostly on the central and southern west coast. Images collected there are being combined with images collected on a trip to the Canadian prairies during the summer of 2009. This piece is called quiet quiet. The two exterior images are views downriver and upriver respectively from the centre of Leam Bridge in Galway, aka The Quiet Man Bridge, as it features in the film starring John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara c. 1952. The central image is the outdoor Shamrock Drive-In at Killarney, Manitoba in Canada. The piece is approximately 130cm x 40cm (52"x16"), screenprinting and drawing on wood panels, the central image being on steel plate affixed to a wood panel. In the signboard of the drive-in image, I've rearranged some of the letters to suggest the film showing is 'The Quiet M...'

Return of Coconut Monkey Press

After some time, I've decided to get back to this blog with updates...due to my absence, my original blogs* were impossible to access (even the blogosphere is bureaucratic!), but please check back at your leisure for new stuff!
* http://coconutmonkeypress.blogspot.com 

I have found that I cannot edit the posts in 'Coconut Monkey Press'. This photos of the work do not enlarge for viewing as they were originally intended to do - and once did - by clicking on the image; however, if you right-click on the image and choose 'Open in a new tab', the image will open for viewing in a new tab. My apologies for this inconvenience and/or confusion but it is completely out of my control to update any aspect of this older version of my blog.