Artist Eimear Molony found inspiration in three poems from Jane Clarke’s collection. Being of a similar age as the poet, Eimear found she had experienced many of the life events that are documented so poignantly in the poems. At first this made interacting with the poetry quite difficult and it required longer than usual for Eimear to channel her emotions into ideas and designs for the artworks. She used a commonplace journal and sketchbooks to build and develop a narrative. By joining her own experiences to those of the poet, Eimear created the foundation with which to build on.

Since 2020, Eimear has included a character in all her artwork which represents us all in our interaction with our environments – in the three pieces for the ROOTS exhibition the characters are present with open hands expressing an openness to all experiences, both good and bad. The squares are pixels which represent memories or experiences in our past, both positive and negative, which we carry with us.

‘Perspective’, based on the poem ‘Against the Flow‘, is a reflection on the different elements retained from the past which we carry with us as we set out to forge our own paths in life. It takes time and distance to find the language to articulate these past experiences and recognise the impact they have on us.

Eimear uses a sewing machine to draw the design on the ground fabric – a technique known as free machine embroidery – where the ‘feed dogs’ on the sewing machine are disengaged and the user has control of the direction the cloth is fed to the needle.

‘The Gift’ was inspired by the poem ‘all I will need‘ where the poet describes her mother’s fading days and her wish to gift some of her belongings to her daughter. The character in Eimear’s artwork is excavating memories, represented by the pixels, some of which are accepted and are seen as a gift. The magenta asemic writing signifies the memories that are best forgotten.

The tools stitched into the piece are ones that are used by both the artist and the poet, and the tuning fork represents resonating memories. The colour palette of the ground and the threads used reflect the colours found in the landscape of the places where both Eimear and the poet have lived in the past.

Eimear’s third artwork, ‘Resonance’ was inspired by the poem ‘The Finest Specimen‘. The background is composed of numerous layers of different materials and coloured threads representing the complexity and richness of our past. In this instance the pixels are those stories passed down to us by our ancestors, which are precious and therefore, outlined in gold.

...he showed me a Bible with miniature print
on gossamer paper which he touched as if it were
pure gold.  This was your great-grandmother's ...

Each individual has their own unique history and memories, represented in ‘Resonance’ by different coloured pixels, which contribute to the rich tapestry of our lives and our interactions with each other. Eimear asks us to think about a piece of family history or folklore that resonates or has had an impact on our lives?

Thank you Eimear for sharing the background to her pieces. Thank you to Jane Clarke for her collaboration and to her publisher, Bloodaxe Books, for permission to use her poems. Thanks also to the OPW for the opportunity to exhibit and Kildare County Council for funding through the Arts Act Grant.

To see these works up close and personal, visit the exhibition ROOTS, a dialogue in textile and poetry, in the Coach House Gallery, Dublin Castle. Open 7 days a week, 10 am – 5 pm, closed for lunch 1.15 – 1.45 pm. The Coach House will close from lunchtime Christmas Eve and reopen on 28th December.

Some of Jane’s books are now available in the gift shop in Chester Beatty Library next to the Coach House