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BOXES beyond borders

Category: Ireland

Love

My aim was to transform the cold sterile box, by covering it and filling it with love.

On the outside: What could be richer and warmer than a mothers love for her new baby?

On the inside: What could be lighter and brighter than the spiritual love awakened at time of birth?

Memory

This box is about memory. The interior, the little empty scarlet sarcophagus, symbolizes that which is memorized, which can never be recaptured exactly; the red on the outside is only an echo, and is overlaid, confused, obscured, and changed by later colors. I mourn the loss of that intimate vermilion promise.

I am a painter and a writer, and for the past four years I have been writing a large biography, of a couple whose lives overlapped with mine, though I never met them. I have spent these years sifting other people’s memories, both written and spoken, in pursuit of the exact, impossible hue of my subjects’ lives. This, too, is represented here.

I have only one chance. My box sails out across the waters of the world. Bon voyage, box. I’ll remember you.

Rewind and Understand

The theme I am using for this box is the notion of self-exploration. Society has become chaotic and volatile. One must look within and access their own position. It is only then can one figure out their meaning in the scheme of things.

The theme depicted by the box represents a journey. This incorporates the spiritual, the physical, and psychological dimensions. The function of the box serves as a medium for self-realization.

The blurred box cover represents how people are finding an inner-spirit and harmony. It is unclear and difficult to define. Once we search in between the lines– the torn lining, clarity may be achieved.

Once the box is opened, all becomes clear. Lucidity is found in the “blurred words”. The engraved message is re-written in clear legible writing. This represents the move from inner confusion to understanding.

Human beings constitute a fragmented whole. This implies an elusiveness about human nature and its expression. Without questions, where is individuality? The liberation of the “self” allows change, progress. With rigorous self examination, pieces of the “puzzle of life” penetrate the surface. The box is an example of this.

Women have access to their feelings. They are allowed to “own” them. Possession of thoughts, ideas, dreams are what this box characterizes. If we look back (rewind) we can understand why we are the way we are. The journey continues…..

 

Mother Ireland

This box as I first saw it started off as a “box nichili”, the more I analyzed it the more vague it became. But as I admired the perfect symmetry and beauty of this innocuous little box, we developed a very strong bond, and I knew I would be very loathe to part with it. It was this bonding that inspired my theme.

Mother Ireland bore her children in the knowledge that emigration was inevitable. The egg represents the womb, with the never to be severed umbilical cords spreading out to all parts of the world and generation after generation respecting and remembering their roots.

I shall never forget you my “bosca bag”, and I sincerely hope wheresoever your sojourn takes you, you will be my “box popoli”, “vox humana”.

Slan agus beannacht my little wooden friend.

 

Tread Carefully

I have attempted to interpret the fragility of human nature, the openness and the trust which gradually closes from fear and self preservation. “Remember The Day Someone Gave You A Chance” is from a non violence poster, in it a lid had lifted from a jar and a butterfly flew free, free from fear, free to dream, to imagine, to love and to be loved.

Alpha-Omega

My work shows our life’s journey from birth to death. These events are the bond that links all human beings. In between we encounter life’s challenges, both good and bad. The torso represents our beginning, the copper wire warrior figure shows our battle with life’s forces, and the lino block suggests our passage through time in the unknown. The jagged edges on the mirror glass show our testing times, where the smooth line of the circle represents life’s calmer waters. In traditional Celtic Art this holds the promise of eternity. For this reason I have included the circles and spiral symbols.

 

Heartease

This box is about joy and renewal. Everything begins and ends, lives and dies in circles. There is such power in each little thought, small gestures and tiny boxes. The heart is a sure image of love, feeling and strength. It has infinite capacity for both great joy and great sorrow, even after the ache and grief of loss:

The core remains intact.

Pink budded, protected

with swathes of leaf,

and occasional thorn.

Crafty Contemporaries

This box symbolizes the entrapment of the domestic sphere. The witness of the box symbolizes the innocence and naiveté of women in the past. The sewing kit placed in the box makes reference to contemporary women artists of today who have used old skills from the domestic sphere and given them new life.

 

Being

My box represents the three aspects of being. The lower section shows bones and clay through glass, representing the transient nature of the human body- physical being. On the box itself I drew my doodles and ancient Irish symbols representing the collective unconscious of mental being. Finally, the angel on top represents the spiritual being.

Intimate Fragility

We are born into an intimate relationship of close bodily contact with our mothers. Touch is so basic, the mother of all senses that we tend to take it for granted. Without our noticing it, we have gradually become less and less tactile, more and more distant and physical untouchability has been accompanied by emotional remoteness.

The most tactile receptor on our body is the skin, and with force can be torn to shreds like our emotions. The symbol and carrier of life is the egg, characteristically feminine and fragile. The shell of an egg appears hard, tough skinned, breading through to the secondary layer its protective skin, we find it thin and fragile.

Material alone can define work, if perception is directed first to the material, the ideas in the work are often undervalued and the message becomes secondary to the medium. Hemming in the box in fabricated egg I have reinforced my ideals.