Astronished: postcard art for the Hunt Museum

In 2006 the Hunt Museum in Limerick had a fundraising event called ‘Hunt the Postcard’ (at the Hunt). Blank postcards were distributed to hundreds of artists, who returned them with art on one side and their name on the other. These were exhibited anonymously over two days, then they were sold, with the proceeds going

to help the disadvantaged communities of the mid-west with a special emphasis on children so that they can visit the Museum and enjoy its varied exhibitions, along with all its educational programmes. [via]

A worthy cause, I’m sure you’ll agree. Last weekend they did it again, and I was delighted to be among the contributing artists (PDF, 60 KB). Ellen from Meet for Real had seen some of my collages at an event she co-hosted on art, business and creativity, and she kindly sent me two blank postcards along with guidelines from the museum. (Otherwise, being infinitely preoccupied, I might not have heard about it.)

One card was for an artist friend of mine; the other was for me to do my worst. When I had finished I decided it wasn’t my worst, after all, so I called it ‘Astronished’, took its photo, and sent it off. The collage fills the postcard; the grey border is just a white page used for contrast when I photographed it:

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You can click to enlarge it. I wonder if it sold, and if it did, who bought it. And why. But this is just idle curiosity. I don’t need to know. (If you’re reading, though, do say hello.) The Hunt Museum’s website has a brief notice about the event, written before last weekend. I will update this post when they release a new report, or if I come across any other relevant information. Questions, comments and criticism are welcome, but I reserve the right to be cryptic or evasive!

Blather and blarney and blindfolding the devil

“All Ireland went into the making of this book,” the Sunday Tribune wrote of English As We Speak It In Ireland by Patrick Weston Joyce (1827-1914). An exaggeration, certainly, but a forgivable one when describing this wonderful, idiosyncratic collection of Irish-English sayings, proverbs, expressions, folklore, vocabulary and barely categorisable linguistic oddities. There are chapters on grammar, old customs, swearing, and proverbs; there is one devoted to exaggeration and redundancy; there is even a chapter exploring the expressions pertaining to the devil. As the title page declares: “The life of a people is pictured in their speech”.

This blog post is not a review of P. W. Joyce’s book, just a hearty endorsement. Such has been my pleasure as I read it over the last few days that I want to recommend it warmly to anyone listening – that is, reading – who has an interest in Ireland’s folk history or in the endlessly witty and strange innovations the English language underwent under the influence of the Irish tongue. Growing up in the rural west, I was exposed to all manner of colourful turns of phrase and modes of speech. Some I inherited and use to this day; others I lost along the way. Joyce’s book has reacquainted me with a few and introduced me to many others, as fresh today as they might have been a century or two ago.

Irish-English has a great many words and phrases used to describe a person’s lack of intelligence, decency, or industry; one of my favourites is: “There’s a great deal of sense outside your head.” Upon the approach of a conceited person – a pusthaghaun (m) or pusthoge (f) – you could say, with cheerful sarcasm, that here comes “half the town”, a translation of the Irish leath an bhaile /læh ən ‘wɒljə/ or /ljæh ən ‘wɒljə/. A useless fellow is “fit to mind mice at a cross-roads”. Contrary to Freud, a Munster saying insists that “a slip of the tongue is no fault of the mind”. Upon hearing of danger or tragedy, a person might exclaim: “The Lord between us and all harm!” A spaug (Irish: spág) is a big clumsy foot. I’ve heard these last two a lot.

You could say, of a very familiar person, that you’d know their shadow on a furze bush. If someone falls well short of an aim or target, they “didn’t come within the bray of an ass of it”. A version I’m more familiar with, especially in a sporting context, is that they didn’t come “within an ass’s roar” of something. Apparently the phrase harks back to ancient times, when sounds such as bells and animal noises were used as approximate measures of distance. The donkey also appears in a popular expression used of a garrulous person: they would “talk the jawbone off an ass” (or “the hind legs off a donkey”); English As We Speak It In Ireland cites an equivalent saying: that they would “talk the teeth off a saw”.

In praise of cormorants

This sculpture by John Coll is one of my favourite pieces of street art in Galway. Anyone who has spent time in the city will appreciate the iconographic status of the resident cormorants drying their wings in the Atlantic breezes. (Sometimes the sun even comes out to help.)

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Artful things

In some of my spare time I make art. Had I more spare time (or the power of bilocation or biological fission), I would make more art. Lots of all sorts of it. These days, when I can, I mostly create collages or set my colouring pencils loose on a sketchbook, but it would be gratifying to have the luxury of a weekend, a month, or a decade to play around with charcoals, clay, paint, pipe cleaners, and other willing materials. And I’d like to try my hand at stop-motion animation, and stained glass.

(Window by Harry Clarke, about whom more below.)

These days, though, I am too busy with editing work, volunteer work, writing, and countless other activities, online and off, to afford art more than a few evening hours at a time. No doubt many of you can empathise. The business of a busy world is to become busier in spite of one’s efforts to simplify.

A culchie joins Culch.ie

This is a short post to let my readers know that I’m now contributing to Culch.ie, Ireland’s top pop-culture group blog. The Culch.ie website has a fun, busy and bright collection of commentary on music, films, books, events, games, comedy and so on, with a broad range of contributors and a lovely community. I’m delighted to have been invited to join.

To those unfamiliar with the word culchie: it is slang for a person from outside Dublin, or beyond the Pale. It used to be widely considered derogatory, like muck savage, but has become a popular self-deprecating term (or self-depreciating, if you prefer). There is even an annual Culchie Festival that celebrates all things rural Irish.

Since “culch” can be read (or said) as short for “culture”, the website’s address is doubly apt. My first post there is about scary radiators in films. Don’t ask – but do read if you like, add a comment if you’re so inclined, and have a look around while you’re there.

Their puzzling devoutness

Two caveats: the law is not my strong point, and structure is not this post’s strong point – I wrote it in a hurried state of discombobulated semi-disbelief. So corrections and points of information are welcome, as indeed are any other comments.

In 1937, British historian and philosopher Olaf Stapledon published a science fiction novel called Star Maker. It is a book so imaginative, thoughtful and beautifully written that the great wonder is that it never achieved the same public renown as the works of, say, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells or Arthur C. Clarke. Certainly Star Maker is acclaimed as a masterpiece of science fiction, but its crossover success has been limited: it does not seem to be widely read by people who are not fans of the genre. (I would love to hear reports to the contrary.)

I was recently reminded of Stapledon’s story by the exasperating senselessness of those who saw fit to criminalise blasphemy in Ireland. As the Defamation Bill staggered through the Oireachtas (Irish national parliament), Bock described it as a waste of the Garda Síochána’s time, among other things, John Naughton examined the constitution of a “backward statelet”, Jason Walsh offered further analysis and historical context, while Martyn Turner’s satirical cartoons encapsulated the absurdity. In the Irish Times, Eoin O’Dell explained the bill’s dubious constitutionality, and in the Guardian Padraig Reidy protested that “Irish law has now enshrined the notion that the taking of offence is more important than free expression.” Despite an eleventh-hour twist and the best efforts of a newly formed lobby group, the defamation bill was passed today, including the aforementioned provisions on blasphemous libel. The links above are but a small selection of the protest and commentary on the matter.

Swanlike boat, boatlike swan

Swanlike boat:

Boatlike swan:

These two photos and the next one were taken last weekend in Galway, Ireland. Photos no.4 to 6 are a bit older. Post edited to add two more photos, one from yesterday and one from March.

Here’s where the boat was (view from Nimmo’s Pier):