Me and The Sheelaghs

Me and the Sheelaghs

I feel like I have many, many things to blog about. But I thought it fitting to first talk about me and the Sheelaghs. You know, I am not a very political or vocal person. But I have this thing about Sheeelagh na Gigs. I think because we know so little about them definitively. Different groups, scientific, historical or religious have bits of facts about how Sheelagh na Gigs came to be, or when they became part of Church architecture, or why they were removed, but we don’t know how people felt about them. Were women in awe of these carvings? Did they visit and touch them to inspire fertility/ or the opposite- were women of child-bearing age warned to not look directly at them? It’s the lack of knowing the answers that attracts me. Isn’t a bit of a mystery nice, I get to think up my own thoughts about it.

Which is sort of how I feel about art in general- I can make something, it can have a use and a meaning, but when someone else has it, its up to them to find their use and meaning. I don’t control that. I might try sometimes though…

I was working on a piece the other day, and it was a tableau of a series of Sheelegh wall pieces, nine together in a grid. And I was thinking about how much I like Sheelagh na gigs. Then into my head came a memory of a piece I made when I was a student, one of the final pieces I made in graduate school. That too was a grid, though three dimensional. That too was of women, multiple images in a grid pattern. Thirty years apart, but a similar theme. Grids, patterns, women and mystery.

I don’t know what that means but I am sure a psychologist would have a field day with the inside of my brain. Or maybe we don’t need to know the answer to everything- like the Sheelaghs, mysteries are good.