art research in ireland

In summer of 2013, I spent a month in Ireland. Part of my time was spent researching the homeplace of my Curry ancestors who left in the late 1800's, the rest was spent as part of a course looking at Art and Storytelling in Ireland.

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Erin Curry

untitled 

digital printed freckles on tissue, wildflowers, tape, thread, string 

2013

made in Limerick Ireland 

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studio process

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Erin Curry’s pocket

In Limerick, my pocket made a video by accident. It’s one of my favorite “finds” of the trip. 

(best seen in HD on Vimeo)

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Erin Curry

freckle self-portrait

(photo assistance Oliver Klicker) 

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Erin Curry

"origins"

freckle kite

digital print on tissue paper, bamboo, string, glue

2013

My freckles denote ancestral place and as well my specific body. In a place of near daily rain, night sky is often starless. My own freckle constellations fly above the landscape while reflecting the spotted stones below.  

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Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities (via stn-to-stn)

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Elsewhere is a negative mirror. The traveler discovers the little that is his, discovering the much he has not and will never have.

Marco Polo to Kublai Khan in Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino This was the perfect travel companion. 

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Always keeping in mind Ireland is a large island. 

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Curry homestead once upon a time

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=53.796801,-8.945785

Google magic to show the street view of the abandoned homestead. The folks who own the land are incredibly kind and allowed me to stay with them and introduced me to the local historian. Peter and Pio Flatley run a bed and breakfast in Knock for pilgrims to the Marian Knock Shrine. They told me that if one of their children wants to build a house there, they must keep at least one wall of the old house intact. The law places such importance on keeping roots while allowing for new growth, and seems to illustrate a trait I felt differs so strongly in America where many things are expected to fall apart and be discarded.  This little portion of land was once called "The City" by locals because it had 6 or 7 basically sharecropper homes on it. The estate was owned by a man who lived 20 miles away (Dillion?). The estate named it LaCarrow. 

I was told the land they worked (a little ways down the road) was bad for potatoes so the famine didn't affect them as strongly. Maybe they grew oats? As of right now the land they once worked is pretty empty and a little boggy. 

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From a distance only the light is visible, a speeding gleaming horizontal angel, trumpet out on an hard bend. The note bells. The note bells the beauty of the stretching train that pulls the light in a long gold thread. It catches in the wheels, it flashes on the doors, that open and close, that open and close, in commuter rhythm. On the overcoats and briefcases, brooches and sighs, the light snags in rough cut stones that stay umpolished. The man is busy, he hasn’t time to see the light that burns his clothes and illuminates his face, the light pouring down his shoulders with biblical zeal. His book is a plate of glass.

Jeanette Winterson, Art and Lies

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Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th ed., vol. 7) (New York, NY: The Encyclopaedia Britannica Company, 1910)

I drove through the Antrim Coast of Northern Ireland and got lost trying to find the grave of a Iron Age poet. A boggy field was covered in soft white flowers. Too tired and nervous about the narrow road I was on I regret not stopping to take a photo. It looked a little like this. 

The Swedish story of The Twelve Wild Ducks is a tale that features this little plant. There once was a queen who bore 12 sons, but desperately wanted a daughter. She made a pact with a witch to have a girl in exchange for the sons who were turned into ducks. When the girl grew up and complained of being lonely her mother told her the truth. The girl looked for three years to find her brothers and learned along the way that to break the enchantment she must not speak, cry, or laugh until she had made clothes for them out of cotton grass. After many years and additional trials and tribulations, she saves them.  

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I must have received this letter in elementary school. Aunt Pat was my grandfather’s sister. There are missing pages, but this is pretty precious. 

**Edit*** Found the pages! I was about 10 when this was written. p.s. Note my ancestor was a rebel. Wiki says: “On 22 August, nearly two months after the main uprisings had been defeated, about 1,000 French soldiers under General Humbertlanded in the north-west of the country, at Kilcummin in County Mayo. Joined by up to 5,000 local rebels, they had some initial success, inflicting a humiliating defeat on the British at the Castlebar (also known as the Castlebar races to commemorate the speed of the retreat) and setting up a short-lived "Republic of Connacht”. This sparked some supportive risings in Longford and Westmeath which were quickly defeated, and the main force was defeated at the battle of Ballinamuck, in County Longford, on 8 September 1798. The French troops who surrendered were repatriated to France in exchange for British prisoners of war, but hundreds of the captured Irish rebels were executed. This episode of the 1798 Rebellion became a major event in the heritage and collective memory of the West of Ireland and was commonly known in Irish as Bliain na bhFrancach and in English as “The Year of the French". 

Not sure if this means he was executed or escaped.

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Okay, so I'm home again and will be posting retroactively. 

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W. Peck, 1800s

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1887 Boston

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Flying a kite in the airport at 1 a.m. trying to think about being in Ireland. 

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From Sacred Ireland by Gary Meehan