Focail Farraige
My ongoing series, Focail Farraige, is based on old Irish words related to the sea. These words hold more than definitions — they are a window into a different relationship to nature and the unknown. Using clay (my primary medium) to connect more deeply and creatively with Irish (a language I am learning, slowly) has expanded my appreciation for both forms of expression and the perspectives they provide. In the series, I combine abstract and figurative techniques – creating narratives more like snapshots of a dream or childlike fantasy than literal representations – to fit the mythological and often whimsical flavor of the words.
I discovered many of these words through Manchán Magan’s Sea Tamagotchi project, which is an extraordinary effort to celebrate and record these words before they fall out of use. I highly recommend checking it out.
View pieces in the series here.
Gestures
My first Gestures Installation, shown January 2023 at 9th Street Espresso in New York City, is composed of 81 unique ceramic “gestures,” which show variations on closing, opening, and contorting our physical and emotional bodies. The last several years have been marked by unpredictable closures and openings (and re-closures and re-openings) that have forced many of us into awkward shapes and configurations – often caught between acceptance and denial, surrender and grip. While the pandemic certainly dramatized these motions, the gestures featured here speak not only to a specific time period, but also to the ongoing cycles and undulations of our lives — of curling and unfurling, constricting and releasing, and the spaces and shapes we hold in between.