Category: The Blog

Artist Focus: Barbara Seery

On the last day of the ROOTS exhibition, 19th January 2025, we celebrate the amazing success of the exhibition – how Jane Clarke’s poetry and the visual responses of element15 artists have resonated with viewers, drawing them back for a second and third visit. And we look at the work of the fifteenth and final artist in the collective, Barbara Seery, whose artistic practice has been nurtured and nudged by the power of the Collective which provides her with community, encouragement, challenge and inspiration.

Barbara’s natural element is in the area of project management so sometimes creating work for a forthcoming exhibition can involve a struggle to keep the creative process to the forefront. But in this instance the emotional pull of Jane Clarke’s words made an immediate and profound impact that sustained the work of the hands, the making, above all else. Jane’s poem, ‘ROOTS’ was newly written when she shared it with the Collective in June 2023 and it had not been published or even finished. As with all Jane’s work, it was very personal and she subsequently felt maybe she shouldn’t have shared it with a group she was only getting to know. But she had shared it in a safe space with people who got it! For Barbara it hit a vein of memory and emotion in relation to her mother’s final years that she had buried or never properly addressed.

...Three and a half hours to loosen
the threads that sew me to my mother.
One last bend and I'm home.

Fruit-scented hydrangea tumbles
out over the pillars at the gate,
a mass of lace-caps, creamy-white

as milk strained into a basin.
My mother taught me how to tie
tendrils to the trellis, not too tight.

Roots, Jane Clarke

So much about this poem spoke to Barbara about her own relationship with her much loved mother. She remembered the relief and the guilt that came when she returned home after spending time with her mother in her final years. At a time when life was busy with young children, full time work and a home to create, the questions linger – did she do enough, did she give enough, was she fully present to her mother?

Hydrangea, one of her mother’s favourites, with its blowsy flowerheads and layered petals is a visual motif that Barbara frequently returns to in her work. This large piece was created using screen printing, discharge printing, applique, textile paint, machine stitch and hundreds of French knots. It incorporates maps, printed on sheer voile, tracking the poets imagined route cross country from her mother’s home in Co. Roscommon to her own new home in Co. Wicklow and the white hydrangea greeting her at the gate.

Barbara’s second artwork was made in response to the poem ‘Becoming’ which has visibly impacted so many people visiting the exhibition.

I am becoming mother
to my mother; closer

to mother than I have ever
been.  I feed, bathe

and console my mother
who fed, bathed and consoled me.

I read my mother stories
till she falls asleep

to dream of her mother
coming to take her from me.

Becoming, Jane Clarke

‘Becoming’ is a quadriptych, four pieces of stitch on paper. A number of ideas are incorporated in the work – the circle of life, the thread colours fading into autumnal tones, holes appearing in the fabric of our lives and the final unravelling. Barbara took the unusual approach of leaving the back of the stitched paper exposed and visible as a reflection of the untidiness of fading human life.

All of the poems chosen by Barbara relate to the relationship between the poet and her mother. Whilst not a conscious decision Barbara believes her choices reflect the close relationship she had with her own mother as an ‘afterthought’ child, coming many years later than her siblings. The final poem she chose is called ‘The Trouble’ which begins with the lines “The trouble between mothers and daughters is how to forgive the one to whom you owe too much…”. Barbara’s interpretation of the poem, not necessarily the poets intention, lies in the idea of not meeting our parent’s expectations, of not quite fitting into the family mould.

Angular shapes were screen printed onto silk fabric while the same shapes were stitched on to an overlay of transparent silk organza with raw edges. The organza is held proud of the base fabric, floating from a brass rod embedded into the frame. The shapes don’t align reflecting family relationships becoming frayed as the child struggles to emerge into adulthood and independence.

As we prepare to deinstall the exhibition next week, we wish to thank everyone who came to see it, those who took the time to write beautiful words in our visitors book or have sent messages of praise and support to Jane and ourselves. We hope the exhibition might find an opportunity to reach another audience in the future.

As an art medium, textiles seem to have made a breakthrough in the last two years as the number of exhibitions featuring thread work in prestigious art bastions has exploded : ‘Unravel’ in the Barbican London, ‘Woven Histories’ in the National Gallery of Canada and in MOMA, and ‘Every Tangle of Thread and Rope’ at the Tate Modern to name just a few. Currently there is a retrospective of Columbian textile artist Olga de Ameral’s work in the Fondation Cartier in Paris that is truly monumental. To quote one art commentator “Art history is being rewritten one thread at a time”. We are very proud to have made a very small contribution here in Ireland.

Artist Focus: Hannaleena Ahonen

Finland has a rich tradition of crafts that reflect the country’s deep connection to nature and its commitment to functional yet beautiful design. Finnish crafts have a distinctive aesthetic, blending simplicity, elegance, and a reverence for natural materials. Artist, Hannaleena Ahonen hails from Finland and has brought with her a unique artistic style that defines her work. For the ROOTS exhibition, Hannaleena produced four pieces, each showing her imagination and embroidery skills at their best.

Hannaleena’s family are all makers. Her father made candles and designed and built his own machinery for that purpose. Her mother was multi-talented: boatbuilding, sheering sheep and making her own yarn. She also made pottery and had her own kiln, wove rugs and tapestry on a floor loom, and had a flair for painting and drawing. Being steeped in such creativity, it is not surprising that their children are also makers. Hannaleena’s sisters knit, make household furnishings, weave rattan chairs, do punch needling and weave bags. Some also excel in fine art and one is a sculptor.

Therefore, one might presume that Hannaleena’s route to fine art was an easy one. But, as is frequently the case, her school experience managed to knock her confidence when she struggled with drawing and painting and, as a result, she did not consider herself as a creative. Whilst she continued with making practical things, it wasn’t until she joined element15 that she allowed herself to move out of her comfort zone and to start creating some of the things she held in her imagination, that had a story to tell. This has been a life changing challenge for her, in a good way!

The image that Jane Clarke draws with her words in the poem ‘Map’ resonated with Hannaleena and prompted her to respond. There was comfort in using materials familiar to her … that lovely brown tissue that is dressmaking pattern paper, buttons collected over the years and an array of yarns from ‘the stash’.

She pinned a Simplicity pattern
on sky blue denim,
fed the fabric
through the machine .....

A paper pattern's like a map,
she said, arrow heads give direction,
Dots mark collars and pockets,
where to tuck or pleat,
notches show fittings
for waist, hips and breasts ...

That was when we believed
if I followed the map
I could be
whoever I wanted to be.

Map, Jane Clarke

Having teenage children Hannaleena can identify with the idea of trying to prepare them for adulthood. The plaster cast she made for the ‘Bodice’ piece was moulded out of her daughter’s torso and gives deep meaning to it. We might plan a life for our children, but they face many obstacles and challenges and may not want the secure, safe path which we imagine for them. All parents hope that their children’s struggles and path in life will reveal a much more fulfilling future than expected. The colours Hannaleena has used in the crochet covered buttons that adorn this piece, move from white to full colour, to a rainbow of possibilities in fact.

Similar themes are explored in the poem ‘Against The Flow’ which compares the struggle to find one’s own path through life to that of the salmon negotiating boulders and obstructions as it swims upstream to spawn. In response to this poem, Hannaleena screen printed a water design onto cotton and then slowly joined the small squares of fabric together to form a quilt which she named ‘Flow’. Pebbles, or the obstacles to be negotiated, were created using crochet in earthy, silted colours and the piece is displayed in a pedestal, its undulating folds reflecting the water flow.

Hannaleena’s final piece, ‘Clematis’ is in response the poem ‘September 1914’ about the first world war. The poem speaks of a soldier’s work harvesting and planting in his garden “the week before he left for France”. To create a garden, to plant seeds and bulbs to flower next year is a statement of hope, a belief in a future one may not have. Hannaleena too gardens in hope of a future and takes pleasure in the return of the clematis each year trailing across her little terrace. This small, beautifully stitched piece is shown in an antique frame that is befitting of the subject matter.

Thank you to Hannaleena for sharing the background to her work. Thanks 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.

This is the final week to see these works in 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 p.m. Jane’s books are now available in the gift shop in Chester Beatty Library next to the Coach House Gallery.

Artist Focus: Kathrina Hughes

Artist Kathrina Hughes’s childhood was steeped in the quiet rhythms of rural life, growing up on a farm in the west of Ireland. The fields tilled by her father with horse-drawn machinery, a land which had been in his family for generations and for which he cared with skill and patience. The history and the generations of lives woven into the soil, as described in Jane Clarke’s poem “Crossings”, resonated with Kathrina as a journey across time, space and the beauty of the land she called home. The poem is formed by listing possible crossings and pathways created by man and beast across the land, the marks we make …

...a gap in a hawthorn hedge
stepping stones in a stream
an oak log slick with frost
a three-arch masonry bridge
a cow path down to a river ...

Crossings, Jane Clarke

Kathrina made two pieces in response to the poem. She used silk noil fabric eco dyed into muted earth tones in ‘Crossings I’. The work is an emotional bridge between past and present, where each meditative stitch carries the weight of memory. Originally planned as a flat piece, the work was manipulated into contours and hollows, like the furrows her father plowed. The fabric subtly shifts and moves creating the illusion of flow and change, of time unfolding.

For “Crossings II” Kathrina used rust-dyed cotton organdie, a delicate, translucent fabric, chosen for its ability to evoke a way of seeing through the surface to what lies beyond. The fabric was dyed using rusted nails, old tools and forgotten objects wrapped in bundles and dipped in tea. The process was slow, allowing the natural elements to leave their mark on the fabric over days or even weeks. There is something profound about the passage of time in this process, the anticipation of what will be revealed, the careful unwrapping of the bundles to see what marks have been left by nature, just as the marks of time have been left on the land.

‘Crossings II’, Kathrina Hughes

Once the fabric was washed and dried, Kathrina used gold metallic thread and to further embellish it. The Cretan stitch was used as a metaphor for crossing, as it is formed by continually crossing threads to create a pattern, a perfect symbol for the journeys we make in life, the pathways we navigate and obstacles we face. The organdie is held in place using specimen pins, which leaves it floating in the frame.

Kathrina’s father had a shed, a workspace, a refuge just like the one described in Jane’s poem, ‘Harness Room’. It contained the tools he needed to mend farm machinery and fix household items, a sacred place where tools worn down by years of use were still wiped clean of oil and grease after a long day’s work on the farm. On rainy days, it became a playroom for childhood imagination to flourish. Kathrina’s mother would roll out a rug on the concrete floor and the children would transform the space and the tools in it, into their sanctuary of play and warmth.

The old dresser, where her father stored small items, holds a special place in Kathrina’s heart and this piece, ‘Harness Room’, is an homage to the cacophony of nails, screws, washers, twine and bits and pieces that lay there. The rust impressions on the fabric symbolise the wear and tear of time, each piece of material placed carefully is an echo of the patience and care her father showed in his work. Each stitch is a tribute to his dedication, to the family history associated with the shed and to the importance of the objects that help shape our lives.

‘Planting Trees’ is the fourth piece Kathrina has made for this exhibition, this time in response to the poem of the same name. Her father’s strength of connection to the land and the trees and hedgerows planted there is mirrored in the poem. Even in the face of illness he continued to care for his farm, the animals and his family. His strength and resilience has left an indelible mark on her memory. Kathrina used natural elements, time and patience to create designs on the cotton base fabric. Leaves and foliage, rolled in cotton, tied into bundles and steamed, allowing their imprint to soak through. Some prints emerge bold and defined while others appear more subtle, like whispers of memory.

Block printing and screen printing were used for the tree shapes, along with applique, machine and hand stitch. Again Kathrina sees the stitching as a metaphor for the intricate, interwoven connections between generations and the land – the threads that tie one moment in time to the next.

... He's unable to move from his bed,
but when we ask about the row of beech
beside the bridge, he's clear as a bell,
my father's father's father planted them ...
... Tomorrow, I'll get dressed,
we'll go down to see them again.

Planting Trees, Jane Clarke

Thank you to Kathrina for sharing the background to her work. Thanks 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 p.m. Jane’s books are now available in the gift shop in Chester Beatty Library next to the Coach House Gallery.

Artist Focus: Dee Kelly

Trapunto, from the Italian ‘to quilt’, is a method of quilting also called ‘stuffed technique’. Its a puffy, decorative feature using at least two layers of fabric, whereby the underside is slit and padded producing a raised surface. At the time when artist Dee Kelly started to read Jane Clarke’s poetry, she was sampling the ancient art of hand quilting and trapunto in particular. The technique and the poem, Raspberries, seemed to meet in that perfect moment in time.

Sunday morning stillness
in a thicket of canes -
my mother reaches
for quilted berries,
eases them red and willing
from yellow stalks....

Raspberries, Jane Clarke

The ‘quilted berries’ of the poem brought Dee back to childhood tasks of planting raspberry canes with her father and jam making with her mother. Seven packed into the car, gathering wild blackberries on Sunday jaunts to the Dublin mountains, hands and clothes juice stained, a glass bottle of orange with a straw the highlight for the children and a pint for her father.

The poem beautifully captures the slow memory loss of the poets mother …”something has slipped into her mind and every night, like a stoat among voles, it hunts down her memories.” In response Dee started her piece ‘Not to Forget’ as a lap sized memory quilt, to touch and feel. As the work developed she wasn’t entirely happy with result so she very bravely unpicked it, bleached the background fabric to reduce its vibrancy and introduced the the woven raspberry leaves. Cut from pages of an old book, each leave is painstakingly woven and each branch has a message on the end leaf.

Dee encourages us to make a conscious decision to be the caretaker of family memories before they are lost, to cherish moments with our parents while we have them and to be patient and kind when aging and illness takes hold of the body and mind of those we love.

‘Spark-Flame-Wildfire’ is Dee’s second piece in the ROOTS exhibition and is in response to Jane Clarke’s poem, ‘Wildfire’. In April 2021 a wildfire damaged or destroyed a range of precious habitats over 2000 hectares in Killarney National Park, including ancient oak and other woodlands, wet heath, dry heath, blanket bog, exposed rock vegetation, and Molinia wet grassland. Dee feels heartbroken at the loss of plant and animal life.

...chiffchaff, robins, goldcrests
dropping light as twigs.
Pipistrelles and lesser horseshoes
shrivel as they fly....

Wildfire, Jane Clarke

In her art practice Dee salvages and recycles everything from kitchen packaging to vintage textiles as one small step in reducing waste, the dumping of which can sometimes cause forest fires. In this piece, Dee unraveled vegetable and fruit net bags to form the yarn used to stitch French knots into the background fabric. The wire outlining the flame is from the wire mesh covering a wine bottle.

The extraordinary patience it took to create the hundreds of French knots in this way is rewarded by a very dramatic finished piece. Recently one young visitor to the exhibition from a school in Sligo commented that he had seen red, orange and lemon coloured fruit/veg netting before, but he wondered what exotic thing was contained in purple netting? We had to check back with Dee for that answer as none of us had thought to ask – unfortunately it was nothing more exotic than shallots!

Dee’s love of nature is always evident in her artworks and these two pieces, though very different, are true to that love.

Thank you to Dee for sharing the background to her work. Thanks 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.

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

Artist Focus: Marie Dunne

It is not common for the First World War to provide inspiration for poetry or, indeed textile art, as one would struggle to find much beauty in the subject matter. In 2017, Jane Clarke was invited to write a sequence of poems in response to the Auerbach family archive which consisted of family photos, documents and letters giving a unique insight into how the war affected the members the family. From this trove Jane was moved to produce 21 poems, one of which, ‘Ling‘ in turn inspired artist Marie Dunne to make ‘The Message’, a large, striking hanging. It turns out that the personal experiences and written words of those involved and impacted by war can provide inspiration and some beauty.

A sprig of heather falling
from his sister's letter
carries him home
to the slopes of Slieve Donard -
a sea of honey-scented ling,
purple flowers teeming with bees.

Ling, Jane Clarke

It was initially the descriptions of nature, the heather growing low on mountain tops, that drew Marie to the poem. It describes the correspondence between brother and sister, Albert and Lucy Auerbach, and the reminder of home in the form of a sprig of heather that Lucy included in one of the last letters Albert received on the front line. Albert joined up on the first day of the war and died two months before it ended.

For Marie, ideas of resilience in the face of adversity and the strength of the siblings relationship were central in her creative thinking. A circular shape to represent the cycle of life, a simplified motif for a heather flower and even the purple heart medal all came to mind in her planning – her love of the colour purple was an undeniable influence also. The base fabric for this large hanging is Lutradur which was painted and burnt in places to create holes. The heather flower motifs were made using tulle and free machine embroidery.

‘New Beginning’ is Marie’s second piece in the exhibition, based on the poem ‘The Key‘. Jane’s poem about moving into a new home with her partner, reminded Marie of the first days in her family home as a child and the symbolism of ‘getting the key’. The joy of having a secure tenancy, a garden to be tilled and planted by her father, a West of Ireland man well used to working the soil. The novelty of having a stair that she and her siblings could run up and down, lingering to play on the big step on the turn.

Repurposing previous artworks, Marie created her third work, ‘June‘ in response to the poem of the same name. She reimagined, reworked, cut, shaped and stitched what was a flat collage made of lutradur, into a sculpture of leaves using stitch and wire. It represents new beginnings and an abundance, that time of year when everything is blossoming and scent fills the air “to the sultry-scented brim“. The month of June has significance for both the poet and the artist, as it is the birth month of people they love.

This piece has been sold and will make its way to its forever home when the exhibition ends in January.

Thank you to Marie for sharing the background to her work. Thanks 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 Gallery.