MY SIRIUS RESIDENCY, Cobh, Ireland, Summer 2022.
(FROM MY TUMBLR ARCHIVES 2015-2022)
SUMMER 2022
May 26: I am staying as a guest resident artist and researcher at SIRIUS in Cobh (Cove) Ireland, just outside Cork thanks to curator Miguel Amado who is director here along with a great support team (click: SIRIUS). The building itself is a mid-19th century former yachting club that was built at least partly in a neo-Romanesque style by British colonizers, and it sits overlooking the deepest natural harbor in Europe (which is also the last place in 1912 where the fated Titanic was docked to take on its last passengers).
I am on the porch overlooking this same deep ship harbor now. Just behind me, and just inside the large central gallery space of the centre, is the famous work, Here Now: The Ogham Cycle One mural (1995/1996) by Patrick Ireland aka Brian O'Doherty (or is it the other way round?) pictured joyfully above following a year-long restoration of the piece (2018/2019). Anyway, the work is now sealed behind an interior set of white walls that both protect and obscure it, although its presence is nonetheless tangible still. Check out this book on O’Doherty’s work by Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes: CLICK.
For now, I find time in the evenings to do a bit of distracted sketching as the place, and its various ghosts, gradually seep into my skin and mind.
May 27: It is also the case that just across the harbor are a gaggle of industrial factories manufacturing resins, ammonia, urea, nitrogen (for fertilizer), methanol and many other petrochemical linked substances. Most or all of these facilities are owned by UK, US, or European corporations, including both operating and abandoned sites, but also a proposed 240000 tonne toxic waste incinerator that is facing local resistance. Indeed, the Cork Harbour Alliance for a Save Environment ( CHASE) is “dedicated to protecting the health of their communities and safeguarding the Cork Harbour environment for future generations,” more about which to come.
June 9: Martello towers (sketch below) were built all around the British Empire in order to help repel a possible invasion (that never took place) by Napoleon Bonaparte in the early 1800s.There are Fifty on the Irish Coastline alone (some also in the “new world” including Quebec City and Halifax, also across the US South and the Virgin Islands, but also in India and everywhere that the Brits held sway). Five of these circular, thick-walled mini-forts are still standing along the Cork Harbour where I am in residence now. One is just outside Cobh as seen from the local commuter train that I take on a frequent basis to Cork City. (FYI: I had to do this sketch fast and on the go as we passed this part of the cost.).
Also, just outside and next door to the Sirius centre is the (primarily tourist filled) Quays Bar, that, while I have not yet patronized, pumps fish-n-chips flavored exhaust into the local atmosphere from about 4PM onwards till 9PM. Meanwhile, an array of diners (only on a warmish night) gather outside nearby as I spied upon them from my perch next door overlooking the harbor:
Here is local painter John Adams in his studio in Cobh. Afterwards we hiked up the to the (very not tourist) Anchor Bar and talked about art, politics, Ireland and related issues late into the evening. So late that I had to return later the next day to retrieve items I inadvertently left behind (a scarf, a rain jacket, and so forth). Onwards…
And even in the short time that I have been here in Cobh (just a couple of weeks now although off and on with travels elsewhere to Lisbon) the village is already changing with this nearby building skeleton (sketched during my first few days) now going through a physical makeover (as of June 9 2022). Ireland is truly being squeezed by limited housing, raging demand, and a free market economic giddiness, with those with cash coming out on top (all too familiar).