At the Edge of Ireland (30 page)

Bees buzzed about; the birds were still chattering away; the stream chittered down over the rocks in the deep shadows behind the big tropical leaves; another cool breeze slipped over into our cleft. And we all smiled again. Together.

And I began to understand some of the many influences floating behind the works of Cormac Boydell.

 

E
VENTUALLY—WHEN THE SECOND
plate of Rachael's ginger cookies had been devoured—Cormac excused himself and retreated down through the dense foliage to his reclusive cavelike studio. We wondered if we should leave too, but we were curious about Rachael and her own creative work.

“Oh well—he's the famous one in the family…,” she said with a wry grin. “Compared to Cormac, my work's more like a hobby—I don't even have a permanent gallery yet.”

“Yes, but you've had a load of shows, according to something I read in our local paper,” said Anne. “They were very complimentary. And they mentioned your studio here—something about it feeling like being in a floating balloon!”

Rachael chuckled. “You want to take a peep?”

“We'd love to!” (in unison).

And so we left the craggy confines of the garden and the “jungle” deep in the rocky cleft and climbed up a series of steep steps to a high ridge. Suddenly the still, moist air around the house was replaced by the invigorating thwack of sprightly sea breezes redolent with the briny bouquet of ocean spray.

And there it was—Rachael's small, compact studio perched resolutely atop the ridge with vast vistas of seascapes, cliffs, and the mountainous spine of Beara retreating eastward into a golden afternoon haze.

“Beautiful!” gushed Anne.

“Fantastic!” I said. “I want it!”

Rachael laughed. “Well, maybe you want it now. But on stormy days when the wind's trying to tear this little place apart and you wish you'd roped the thing down as you kept promising yourself you would, or when that deep winter chill really sets in and you just can't get the place warmed up…you may not be quite so enthusiastic!”

“Oh I guess I'd learn to cope,” I said. “Beara seems to teach you that—the power and beauty of places like this seem to overwhelm all the hardships and inconveniences. We've met quite a few people here living in old cottages without any running water, using clapped-out generators for electricity, peat for fire fuel…just like the last century, except that the livestock, if they have any, now at least they have their own accommodations! No more pigs under the beds and fighting the family cow for a space by the fire…”

“Oh, that's so true. You should have seen our place when we first moved in. It's a palace today compared to how it was…But, even now it's still pretty basic…”

“Well, this place certainly isn't,” I said, admiring the meticulously organized appearance of her small studio. There was everything an artist would need to generate, intensify, and satisfy almost every creative urge. I particularly admired her eclectic collection of CDs—Tibetan Buddhist chants, Modern Jazz Quartet, Monty Python, Tracy Chapman…

“Ah well, they're all a part of me, y'see,” Rachael said softly. Then she started to pull out a series of drawers filled with a bizarre miscellany of objects to be used one day in her works—poppy seed heads, bleached skeletal bits and pieces from animals and birds, chunks of copper ore rock from the nearby mines, clusters of sharp, dark hedgehog's spines, knots of ancient “bog oak,” pieces of dried fish skin, whole bird wings with hundreds of meticulously colored feathers, bunches of wizened red chili peppers…

Rachael was watching our amazed faces as we wondered how she intended to use these remarkable repositories of nature in her creations.

“I told you—all parts of me.” She chuckled. Her comment reminded me of one of KofiAnnan's sayings: “We all have multiple identities.” “Maybe you should read this first before I start showing you some of the actual pieces.” She pointed to something she'd written herself pinned up on the wall:

I make things that symbolically denote a special act, rite of passage, or shared human experience. My choice and use of materials are intrinsic to the work. Often the work is about my life and my friends' lives, but I also use images from stories—especially mythology and other “teaching stories”—which have potent universal themes.

I nodded. “Well, it's not the usual gobbledygook you get at many art exhibitions. Tom Wolfe ridiculed all that esoteric arty verbiage that nobody really understands in his biting little book
The Painted Word
.”

Rachael laughed. “Yeah—there's far too much mumbo jumbo surrounding art. You can instill depth and resonance in what you create without having to make it exclusionary—elitist. I mean, people may not always know precisely what I'm trying to say in some of my works, but they're often so intrigued by the actual objects themselves—their uniqueness and strangeness—that they invent their own stories. And that's just fine. It's all about perception and interpretation—the more interpretations a piece stimulates, the more successful I think it is…”

“Well—I guess it's time we saw some of the actual objects,” said Anne, although both of us had been sneaking glances at the potpourri of strange and seductive works around the studio, some complete in meticulously crafted boxes, others still at an initial assembly phase. One major piece, displayed in a series of carefully shaped containers in the shape of a rib cage—a “healing chest”—possessed a variety of tiny hearts fashioned from such diverse and bizarre materials as hedgehog spines, baby thrush feathers, turf ash, and glass—all reminders of tenderness, vulnerability, and “the extinction of passion.” Despite the work's strangeness, it possessed an aura of silent healing.

“Pieces like this—I think—emerge from a fantastic trip I once took in a camper van all around New Mexico,” Rachael told us, her sharp, bird-bright eyes flashing as memories flooded in. “One place in particular—the old adobe church in Chimayo—was a real center for spiritual healing. The place was full of votive offerings, symbolic gifts of thanks, and a wall full of abandoned crutches no longer needed after successful healings had taken place. Oh! and a sacred ‘sand room' for deep prayer. You had a feeling that people who came here seeking recovery and renewal were tapping into really deep and ancient forces. They used objects—especially natural objects of wood or rock or feathers or seeds—as tokens. Ways to enter the spirit world and use its healing powers. Ways of linking themselves to ancient myths, folk beliefs, and rituals that for eons of time have offered solutions to all the ailments we have to deal with throughout our lives.”

I smiled as she described this remarkable place. I had spent a couple of days there a few years back while writing my “Hidden America” series of articles for
National Geographic Traveler
. The power and ethos of healing and gratitude there were almost tangible. I still have a small vial of “blessed sand,” which I regard as a protective token (so far—so good!).

It was not easy to absorb all the rich symbolism of Rachel's creations, but their diversity and uniqueness were unforgettable: amusing “creatures” created from meldings of birds' feathers and wings, skeletal heads, and snakeskin legs; one alarming kneeling figure with a huge ejaculation of wire wool “fire” from his huge mouth; a series of “clothes for the spirit,” including the lacy delicacy of a pair of gloves made from fish skins; “fire shoes” made from dried chili peppers and desert berries delicately sewn together, and an “earth hat” constructed of translucent skins shed by snakes and bound with handmade paper.

Her skills in glass and metal casting, weaving, spinning, and sewing permeated her creations. But perhaps the most amazing—the one that made both of us gasp in admiration—was Rachael's “Veil.”

It was a masterwork requiring a definite “suspension of disbelief.” Made entirely out of spindled threads of spiderwebs arduously collected by Rachael from the rafters, windows, and doors of barns on the Beara Peninsula, “The Veil” was meticulously spun and woven into a heavy, platinum-colored headdress. Like most of her works, it possessed a powerful potpourri of symbols—a thick, impenetrable “female” veil, but crafted in such a dense manner that it also resembled a warrior's chain mail helmet. One review pinned to the studio wall suggested that “its interconnected, yet separate components, represent a possible healing between the male and female psyches…The importance Rachael Parry attaches to the mythical, the personal, and the metaphysical, particularly where women and their relationships with themselves and others are concerned, is clear in all her works.”

Anne was obviously moved by the power and symbolism of Rachael's creations: “I think it's a combination of the loving, empathetic female spirit with a harder, more perceptive, less forgiving energy…Even your softer, more sensual objects have a little sting in the tail…”

Rachael laughed. Her finely faceted face sparkled. “Actually, that's the exact idea I've been playing with recently—the ‘sting in the tail' idea. Softness with a sear of pain. The eternal dichotomy…”

“You can't have one without the other,” suggested Anne.

“Well, I suppose you could—but wouldn't life be boring? Far less colorful.”

“Ah!” I said. “So that explains the explosive vibrancy of all Cormac's plates and bowls. You keep life colorful—dichotomous—for him!”

“I'm not sure he'd describe it that way…” Rachael laughed.

“Well—I'm sure he's in good and loving hands. I mean, look at what this reviewer writes,” I said, pointing to a clip pinned to a wall by her CD collection. ‘Her work is imbued with a desire to promote healing.'”

“Well yes—that's true right enough, but sometimes it's a matter of ‘healer, heal thyself' too…Look, let me show you something I'm working on. It's still incomplete, but when our daughter, Molly, left home recently, I recognized a sort of ending of motherhood by casting my own breasts. Then I structured them, using ground-up turf on the outside and soft white gannet feathers on the inside as a lining—a symbolic kind of relining of my ‘breast nest'…”

Cormac Boydell

It was a delicately entrancing work with, once again, a striking dichotomy between the rough earth turf exterior and the softness of the interior couched in the gentle shapes of female breasts.

We stayed talking with Rachael a lot longer than we'd intended. In fact we were there until Cormac finally rejoined us (surprised to see us still hanging around) and insisted it was time for more of her ginger cookies. And so we stayed even longer…

A
FTER THOSE INTRIGUING INTERLUDES WITH
C
ORMAC
and Rachael, we thought things were pretty much over for a while in terms of meeting prominent “creators” on the peninsula. But on Beara, as we learned over and over again, things are rarely over. Connections spawn connections, insights reveal more insights, friends create new friends, and the magic of spontaneous synergisms and synchronicities flourishes.

Rachael was strolling with us down through her Edenic garden to our car. “Oh, by the way, you'll have met Tim, right?” she asked. “Tim Goulding?”

“No,” we said in unison.

“Oh—ah!—well. That'll be a nice surprise for you. He's a lovely man—artist, composer, onetime rock musician—and another ‘cleft-dweller' like us. Lives just up the road. Go to where it turns sharply to climb over the pass to Eyeries and take the rough track on the left. You go up a very narrow rocky valley—the house is painted blue and the garden is even wilder than ours…but it's worth the journey.”

And so it goes. The serendipitous linking of creative spirits here who enjoy mutual nurture and nourishment on this wonderfully wild Irish finger of land.

Tim was home and didn't seem at all surprised or irritated by our impromptu visit. Rachael had indeed been right. Here was another hand-built home secreted away in a deeply incised cleft in the strata and guarded by enormous upthrusting bulwarks of dark rock. And so dense was the junglelike profusion of small tiered gardens that the house and its outbuildings revealed themselves only gradually in coy surprises.

“And all this,” suggested Anne, “all this gorgeous exuberance, I imagine, gives you what Cormac and Rachael have found in their cleft—that sense of being utterly immersed in nature and inspired by it. From these tiny scatters of wildflowers and your enormous subtropical specimens to the sheer power of those bare rock precipices towering over everything.”

Tim laughed. “So, you know my work? My paintings?”

Anne was honest. “Actually, no. Sorry. In fact, I didn't know of you at all until earlier on today when Rachael suggested we visit you.”