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I started my May Daily project back in the midst of the first 2020 lockdown in West Cork. I posted one image a day for the month of May and each image was shared on social media on the same day I took it. All the images were taken by me using a tripod and the camera’s 10 second self timer with very little or no post production editing. It was a daily ritual and offering for friends and social media followers during the confusing time of Covid.

It’s been six years since 2020 and May Daily is in its fifth round. The May Daily project is changing in the wake of AI scraping and algorithmic diversion. It’s time to do things a bit differently. Join me as a substack subscriber or consider becoming a paid subscriber to support me as I deep dive into this year’s May Daily experiment. As a paid subscriber this month you will get a weekly digest of all the May Daily work I make this month and an opportunity to buy for discounted prints from the series later this year!

The first of May marks the beginning of Bealtaine, a celtic celebration of summer in the northern hemisphere - unruly, energetic, rebellious and fecund - yet back in 2020 our screens were ( and are still ever increasingly) filled with contradictory, distracting, violent and traumatic narratives.

The May Daily project was, at first, a way out of this tunnel vision: a chance to occupy my mind and body after the intensity and energy collapse I experienced around this time and be more present with the stories of the land. Up until then I had been preparing a solo exhibition, Land Walks Land Talks Land Marks, at the West Cork Arts Centre which included a full public programme of talks, screenings and workshops. But these events had to be stopped halfway through as the arts centre had to close down.

Being forced to move from this social production mindset into a more impulsive, solitary response to the environment, felt liberating; I had no idea how each image would emerge, which hedge, field or plant would catch my attention and draw me in. Restricting myself to the hyper local, micro worlds of plants, animals, illegal dumps and empty roads paradoxically gave rise to new ways of seeing and behaving on the land. I wanted the images to surprise me and I soon learnt how some approaches were more successful than others. The less I worked with preconceived ideas, the better the images turned out. But it was at times challenging to spend everyday in this continual dance with presence and staying with the pulse of now, and now, and now, like some kind of animal sniffing scent trails or calling for help.

The Mayday distress call is a relatively new invention, a phonetic of the French ‘M’aider’ (‘help me’) invented as an emergency signal in the 1920’s by an airport radio controller. It replaced the older SOS signal which no longer functioned in the new voice centred radio technology. As an artist engaging with human and nature relationships, 100 years on from the birth of the Mayday signal, I was exploring what a distress call for nature might feel and look like. . Whether consciously or not, the May Daily photographic process was a dive into this territory, giving me space to explore and play with visual language for the micro emergencies, stories of fractures and connections between the human and the ‘more than human’ realm.

At the time I had been reading Donna Haraway’s ‘Staying with the Trouble’ and Anna Tsing’s ‘Mushroom at the End of the World’, both seminal writings on the radical thinking and resourceful living needed for these unstable times. I keenly felt the awkwardness of going on with everyday life in the face of unimaginable distress - I felt the privilege of where I found myself in the world when the difficulties others were facing were clearly visible on my phone - what right did I have to play with images while

the world was burning, the climate was burning , there was social upheaval, all the disease - Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!

Now it is Mayday! for photography itself. Once proof of the ‘real’ it has become swallowed up in a nebulous post-truth cosmos. In the short space of time since I started this series in 2020, instant photographic image manipulation has become obligatory and the ‘decisive photographic moment’ (as Henri Cartier Bresson put it) has long since transformed into an ever changeable visual reality. Don’t get me wrong, this new plasticity is exciting but it forces me again to question more deeply why I use photography in the way I do.

The methodologies behind May Daily drew from the energy and impulse of working with analogue photography. A process restricted by light, time and active chemicals making image production both a spacial phenomina, tactile and ultimately highly unpredictable. I had spent some years working in the primitive edges of lens-less technology by stretching the duration and scale in my photographic image making. I was paring back photography to the basic physics of light moving through space and the alchemy of capturing that light on a physical surface.

I set up ‘meetings’ with different people in front of these rudimentary cameras. I transformed suitcases, eggs and living rooms into lens-less cameras. It was a sculptural, performance-like process that gave time for playful social interactions.

In 2016, together with three Polish families in Ireland, I transformed their living rooms into giant pinhole cameras where I placed multiple pieces of photographic tiled to create one large scale single image. Each family posed outside their house, some for over 20 minutes due to the long exposure times necessary for light to reach the paper inside the darkened room. Their homes were essentially taking a picture of them and the resulting image captured still objects in sharp detail while breathing bodies appeared blurred, depending on how much they moved during the exposure time.

Now with AI image generators , there is little apparent need to take new images. One could argue there is enough visual vocabulary out there in the digital ether to create infinite variations. Why take a photo of myself jumping into a hedge or putting my fingers into a foxglove when we can let the computer do the work assembling and surprising us with its abilities. But at what cost? Little did I know that sharing my May Daily journey back then meant I was exposing my images to AI data scraping. So I’m exploring new ways of sharing this work. The truth for me is that the photograph functions more as a catalyst for experience. A frame, within which an activity or exchange takes place. In many ways it is less about the final image than the experience itself. I would say this is fundamental to how I create work, an emphasis on the process.

I want to accentuate the ‘human made’ activity represented in the still and moving images I make. I see this as a provocation to nurture both our physical and imaginative relationship with the actuality of the world around us. I hope you an join me for this May adventure by subscribing below. Thanks for reading.

I’m standing thigh deep in a lake, sickle in hand and two friends in tow, one with their baby strapped to them. Nothing prepares you for being completely immersed in a place and moment like this. The clear blue March skies, the dense vertical mass of reed stems mirrored in the water, the sound of birds and wind in the reeds are a delight for the senses. It is a big job but with fellow friendly harvesters and conversation as companionship, time flies. We’re collecting reeds for the barn’s ceiling. It is definitely not an efficient choice. It is slower and much more labour intensive but will ultimately be a local, low impact material to finish the barn’s interior. Various generous souls have come to help me during my reed collecting outings and each time we all agree it is a balm for the soul - having the chats, seeing your effort rewarded in physical form. In stark contrast, the other more efficient alternative to this is for me to drive to my hardware shop to buy plywood that is produced and shipped from Brazil. Collecting reeds is a different kind of physical work involving wading through the water, cutting, bundling and carrying the bunches of reeds but it is social, elemental work that reaches back to human body centred technology. This physical connection to land, labour and building is something we are increasingly removed from in modern ‘Western’ culture while, in the grand scheme of human history, this manual technology is something our bodies (and I’d argue our minds) are much more familiar with than digital technology.

Harvesting reeds is one of many stand out moments during the last three years of working on The Straw Barn project that made me aware of the incredible reserves of knowledge held in the body and in the social dimension of labour. For me this self building project took a great deal of creative head space and physical work these last 3 years and it is only now I can begin to reflect on how its process of creation intersects with my own ongoing arts practice. In this second substack on ‘A Quare Barn’ I’d like to share how some of the building process that overlaps and even, I argue, embodies the concept of social sculpture.

Lumbung

Lumbung is the Indonesian word for a communal rice-barn, where the surplus harvest is stored for the benefit of the community. Lumbung became a central mode of operation that underpinned Documenta 15 curated by Indonesian collective RuanGrupa. Documenta is an art festival held every 5 years in Kassel, Germany and is perhaps most famous as a place where in 1982, the artist Joseph Beuys created the seminal artwork and social sculpture, 7000 Oaks - City Forestation Instead of City Administration. An immense project in which 7000 Oak trees were planted throughout the city alongside a basalt rock (stele) and many of the trees and rocks still remain in the city today - now fully grown.

I went to Documenta in September 2022 just a year before building the Straw Barn, not realising now how much its form and content would inform and consolidate my thinking behind the building project. The festival is often considered a litmus test of the kind of arts work to come in the art world but in my case the ethos is something I keep returning to as the project becomes grounded in reality.

Here is a short diary of reflections during Documenta back in 2022 -

“It (Documenta) is a surge of collective endeavor, fires being lit in many parts of the globe. They shine a light on troubles, tensions, inequalities but also celebrate new visions, new ways of being in the world, learning from practices of the past and rooted in creativity, friendship, community and hope.

Ruangrupa, an artist collective from Indonesia feeds these ‘fires’ through inviting a diverse network of collectives, arts and social initiates into a collective practice of Lumbung - a methodology that invites togetherness, mutual aid and freedom of expression. They call this practice ‘harvesting of knowledge for a global granary’. The practice of Lumbung allows for an ever evolving form to emerge as each artist or collective enters the conversation. There is a vast collection of works and projects in Documenta 15. Rather than finished art objects, many of the presentations are residues from a lived experience, a public engagement or a collective action. The viewer is left to assemble the pieces, a mesh of ideas, processes, materials, photographs and films. It doesn’t always make it easy for the viewer to decipher. Sometimes looking at the giant mind maps and ramshackle workshop spaces installed in the galleries feel like you missed the party. But for me the pieces that drew me in were those that didn’t necessarily preach their ideas or issues but unfolded through a felt experience. An outdoor kitchen at the back of grand Fridericianum museum was a tarp-covered outdoor space with makeshift shelves stocking basic food, a cooker, and a sink. It was a social hub for artists to cook together, drink, play music, play card games, mingle and dream up new projects. This informal approach was exciting in the context of the formal setting of the museum and seemed to encapsulate their radically casual and uncommercial celebration of process over product”

Meitheal

The Straw Barn is I believe at its heart a social sculpture. It is not an artwork per se, but the very social and physical process that unfolds in its making is profoundly creative. The term social sculpture in the context of contemporary art reaches back in time to Beuys’s influential work in Kassel but also stretches far beyond to the roots of folk art and early human activity. Building shelter is a creative act and one that needs collective effort. Meitheal (Meh-hull) an Irish word for shared work, centres the currency of exchange in much the same way as Lumbung was for Indonesians. Up until relatively recently houses in Ireland were still built in a meitheal - as artist Adrian Duncan discusses in his book Little Republics.

The Green Rope, is a social sculpture project I started before visiting Ruangrupa’s Documenta, embedded meitheal into the mode of artistic production. The Green Rope is a súgán rope made collectively from wild plants foraged locally and extends over time through a landscape. The súgán is an ancient tool reappropriated in this project as a means for human and ecological reconnection. The length of rope correlates to the length of time shared between people and nature: a physical record of time. It offers a tacit space for exchange and turns observers into participants.

The Strawn Barn emerged after years of dreaming, chatting to folks, designing, planning and then 3 years of building, the people whose knowledge, skills, manual strength, technical expertise, kindness, and nourishing cooking have helped manifest something very special which will, we hope, over time continue to evolve as more people become part of its story. In the early stages I worked with my talented architect friend Tabitha Pope and Jonathan (Jonny) Cathalane to design a multipurpose space that was significant for a domestic setting but still retained a human scale and most importantly a haven from the extreme coastal elements. With the high moisture environment of the west of Ireland, breathability of the building was essential. With many potential options considered, we came across Eco Cocon, a European company specialising in prefabricated straw bale buildings and found they could construct and ship the walls to our exact design. Eco Cocon has found an innovative way to evolve the straw bale building process. After a lot of deliberation and consultation we decided to go ahead with the straw structure - not an easy decision given the upfront cost and the fact I would miss building the structure from scratch. However, the prefabricated structure would save us time and labour in the early stages of building in the wild weather of West Cork and allow us more focus on doing the internal work ourselves. The process was not perfect. There was drama, like when at 5am in the morning a storm ripped the protective sheeting from the straw walls, drenching the dry straw in rain and turned the foundations into a paddling pool.

One of the biggest learnings from building was the amount of problem solving, decision making and patience needed at every step of the process - one decision, impacting another down the line. As an artist, every stage of a project or artwork is a result of an almost infinite series of impulses, failures, aesthetic choices and practical decisions. This is true with the creation of the building, the difference being the scale, the different skills, expertise, materials, laws and longevity required to manifest a building project.

In June 2023 we finally opened the ground, dug to the bedrock and laid the foundations. The Eco Cocon truck from Latvia arrived the following month - a giant articulated lorry totally packed with timber and straw blocks which were unloaded in a neighbours field and transported by local diggers and load-all to our land and stored under tarps. On a blustery sunny dry day in July we started to move the straw units onto site. The assembly of straw bales was incredibly fast and satisfying that it even got our builder Jonny calling the process of assembling the straw walls ‘strawgasms’.

The assembly of the four walls, a mezzanine structure and water tight roof took less than a month but this speed was our biggest deception. After our initial excitement, Jonny reminded us that ‘ this is just the beginning’. We found ourselves racing ahead with the project planning, lining up each job one after the other, cladding the exterior, windows installed, plastering, flooring, and insulating the roof. But it soon became apparent each job took three times the length of time and were heavily reliant on both Andrew and I both being available to work alongside extra helping hands here and there from volunteers. Weeks, turned to months, and months turned into a year.

In May 2024 Danielle, a volunteer from Italy, was interested in developing his experience of natural plastering. He came at the perfect time and had the perfect attitude - Slow and steady, little and often. With Danielle the clay plastering progressed but not at the pace I had initially planned but instead within the flow of our daily life commitments.

We didn’t know it then but it would be over two years before we could see the space we imagined taking shape. In that time there would be many people involved. From our neighbour moving the straw units with his tractor to helpers from Oregon USA who helped lay the wood floor. Each task was a massive undertaking and steep learning curve which was buoyed by the extra hands and expertise that wove in and out of the process. Jonny’s open minded building design approach, Kyle’s skilled fast and pragmatic window sill design and floor laying, Gearoid’s wealth of experience and stamina in preparing the ground all contributed to it.

We are beyond grateful to everyone, over 60 people who have been and will continue to be part of its evolution; Jonny, Tabitha, Dermot, Gearoid, Leon, Sean H, Tim, Berni, Dennis, Oran, Christie, Sean, Colin, Alan, Giles , Massimo, Danielle, Teddy, Cyril, Maël, Kyle, Cormac, Dede, Lennon, Vincent, Moritz, Ophelia, Lucija, Tomasz, Daithi, Emma, Alex, Eoghan, Max, Georgia, Tessa, Baptiste, Silke, Yuri, Jack, Lorraine, Victor, Sidonie, Julia, Henry, Andrew, Emma, Alison, Amanda, Zoe, Piotr, Simon, Didi, Joe, Sonia, Maria, Eoghan, Lennon, Sara, Romain, Merlin.

There is something very satisfying about seeing someone walking through a field carrying a bunch of reeds on their shoulder: an echo of the past, living in the present. I suspect no one in this area has seen that sight for a very long time. As we load up the car with the unwieldy bundle of reeds, an older man walks past ‘ are ye going thatching’ he asks? Yes, I say, slightly avoiding having to explain this unusual project. He tells me he’s lived here all his life and remembers seeing lads in this very field cutting reeds back when he was 15 years old. This, he thinks, would have been around the late 1950’s when some cottages here still had thatched roofs. I’m struck by the thought that we were unwittingly walking and working in the footsteps of these lads. What would they make of the Straw Barn?

Our upcoming Spring Equinox potato setting workshop at The Straw Barn is this Sunday 22nd March is fast approaching and to mark St Patricks Day, we have 4 reduced price tickets (40% off) available for our substack subscribers - a total bargain but only available until Friday this week.

the potatoes are laughing is the first workshop I’ll be hosting a workshop with great friend, colleague and Permaculturalist Roísín Foley this Sunday March 22nd 11 - 3pm at The Straw Barn in West Cork, Ireland. It’ll kick start the growing season and would suit anyone interested in starting a kitchen garden or refreshing their knowledge of growing food - in this case starting with early potatoes. There will be a hearty lunch provided and extra special surprises on the day.

To get your discounted ticket book via this link

https://buytickets.at/thestrawbarn/2098222
using discount code: springspudz26

Please bring warm clothes and waterproofs

T H E W O R K S H O P

the potatoes are laughing (tá na prátai ag gáire - Irish for when potatoes split their skin in the pot)

Thinking of the garden as an extension of the home and a space for creativity, permaculturist Róisín Foley and artist William Bock will host an introduction to the potato setting. Combining hands-on traditional and experimental methods, we’ll demonstrate ways to deepen our connections to growing food.

You will learn how to build fertility in the soil by making a starter bed with potatoes, and learn the basics of: Site and soil health, selecting the right varieties of potatoes, planting plans (crop rotations and companion planting), resources (suppliers, books etc). We will start the workshop with a short creative exercise to focus our thinking and conversation while working together.

We’ll be mainly working outdoors but will adapt our activity according to the weather on the day.

Refreshments and a simple, tasty home cooked meal will be provided and shared together during the workshop.

About us

Róisín Foley is a Permaculturalist who is researching methodologies Hyper Locality and Perennial Thinking in the expanded field. She is currently working on a Masters of Art and Environment through TU Dublin. She is a working horticulturalist, with current work including the Kids Food Revolution, and a creative producer, who works with local artists, arts and environmental organisations. She has maintained a working studio and research practice since graduating from Crawford College in 2014. She is a member of Talamh Beo, The Irish Agroforestry Forum and is a Co-Director of BioFest West Cork.

William Bock is an interdisciplinary artist based in West Cork producing socially centred projects in Ireland and internationally. His practice delves into the experiences of living between cultures, landscapes and identities which encompasses the curation of public events, workshops and exhibitions. He is currently working on a research project commissioned by Creative Places West Cork Islands which builds on recent public art commissions presented at IMMA Dublin, Visual Carlow, Ormston House Limerick and Arthouse Jersey.

The potatoes are laughing is the first part of a series of seasonal workshops hosted in and around The Straw Barn, a new collaborative arts studio on the Irish Atlantic Coast, home to artist William Bock and dance practitioner Andrew Coombs. The studio hosts and advocates for nature-centred arts practice through practical learning, creative experimentation and queer hospitality.

Constellations of light pierce the vaulted metal roof, freckling your little hands with tiny suns. Your imagination is peaked in the half light of the barn.
You leap between the straw bales and find hidden gaps you can crawl through.
Your heart in your ears, wind rattling the corrugated sheeting,
as you shelter in a golden haven.

The Dineen’s barn was where I used to play with friends. It was a round roofed corrugated agricultural barn, a skeleton of steel constructed from reused train tracks and the roof was held up by timber supports. What this barn lacked in character compared to it’s stone, thatch and wood predecessors, it made up for in a uninterrupted volume of space and the gentle curved roof sitting sympathetically into the landscape.

The Dineen’s barn is the pulse behind designing a new arts space that my husband Andrew and I are building here on our land in West Cork. Instead of storing straw, our barn embeds straw within the walls of the building. It has been a dream to create a dedicated space for art making that is comfortable, practical, highly insulated and breathable - a far cry from the drafty cold charmless studios we’ve rented over the years. Trying to achieve this with natural materials, low impact methods of construction AND low cost took a great deal of research and planning alongside my talented architect friend Tabitha Pope and builder Jonathon Callaghan. It was a project several years in the making as I returned to rural Ireland after living and working in London.

But let’s not jump ahead too fast yet. Let’s take a step back.

My mother Lena passed away in 2016. It was an unbelievable loss, a tear in the fabric of my life. She left me her small cottage and a pocket of land overlooking the ocean. It was a bittersweet inheritance, a gift that offered myself and Andrew the chance to return to live in my birthplace - something we hadn’t considered until then.

The little cottage was built on the proportions of an old stone cabin that my mum loved. It celebrates one-room living long before micro homes were a thing and it’s design wove together the welcome of human proportions and simple materials. Now 30 years on with a fully grown garden around it, the cottage looks like it’s always been here. Our Straw Barn emerged from this thinking. I always appreciated the corrugated barns for their curved roofs that are so much part of the rural architectural vernacular around the country. In thinking about building a creative work space for both of us to work in - Andrew being a community dance artist and myself a multidisciplinary visual artist - the round roof offered both the volume of space and the circular, a dynamic form rarely seen now in modern rural buildings.

Cultural Restoration

I was born in Ireland while massive cultural and economic flux was becoming visible. The Dineen’s farm was a rarity; a classic Irish smallholding that was tilled by hand with horse and plough. My mum took this picture of Paddy Dineen ploughing in the field above our house with Oileán Bhríhe behind him. Small pockets of this old manual world still remained in West Cork then but they were fast being consumed by modern ideas and technologies.

Looking at old pictures my mum took of the cottage back in 1995, I notice oats growing in the field next to ours. Crops like these are non existent in this area now, with virtually all land used for growing grass as feed for industrial diary farms. My recent artistic work has looked at the cultural and environmental implications of this transition; from meitheal (shared labour) to machine, from small mixed crop to monocultural farming. While technological changes have improved rural life in so many ways, I’m curious about the collective cultural loss that arises from these changes in our landscape and our activity within it. Changes that have happened so fast that I feel our bodies - or even souls - haven’t been able to catch up with this speed driven new reality. Self building our new studio was both a necessity - to keep building costs down but also - and perhaps unconsciously at the time - a way of physically grounding myself in a place, constrained by the limitations of my body and the manual labour.

Cultural restoration is an idea that resonates for me and I believe it goes hand in hand with nature restoration. Ploughing the land like Paddy Dineen does in the photo, is curious and meaningful to me. Yes it was hard, yes it was relentless work and no I’m not suggesting we all go back to ploughing fields again. But rather what is significant to me is that he is present on the land and spending time in one place. During his activity he is able to notice the weather changes, his neighbours passing or stopping for a chat and the rhythms of nature impacting the earth. It is a quietly radical, in our modern reality, to stay and work in one place rather than many, - to ‘dig where you stand’ as Sven Lindqvist said. This idea of presence and embodied learning is the guiding the ethos of building the Straw barn on our land. In rural communities, much of the infrastructure that once kept us local out of practical and economic necessity has become scarce: community halls, pubs, local farm coops and shops and even having the skills to build our own homes. This lack of hyper local infrastructure means we spend more time and money travelling to somewhere else to work or socialise. Since leaving London I became acutely aware of this paradox; we live in close proximity to incredible natural environments but with profound geographic dislocation. The pandemic of course forced this upon us under very harsh circumstances, but the impact on those two years have created ripples and changed behaviours still being felt today.

After my local pub closed down recently, a place my friends and I played music together through the winter, I realised how valuable and scarce these gathering spaces have become. The Straw Barn is our opportunity to provide a space for connection, collaboration and a deeper learnings about our relationships with nature.

As climate change accelerates and patterns of migration—human and non-human—become more visible, more felt and more extreme, adaptability and resourcefulness are no longer abstract ideas but vital tools. The Straw Barn will be a space for us to respond to and experiment with ways to engage with this complex reality and find alternative or ‘Quare’ ways of living and working, perhaps a little closer to home.

Up next Month > A Quare Barn | Part Two

The year has turned on its axis. I’d like invite you ‘round the fire’, so to speak, to share something I’ve worked on over the last year and something I’m excited about this year.

You’re reading this because you subscribed to my mailing list or you have mysteriously found your to this digital fireside. You are free to leave at any time but you might just be curious to stay for the warmth, the craic and the juicy gossip.

I’ve lost a good deal of trust in how other social platforms use my information and I’m starting to find an alternative ‘space’ online here on Substack to share the process behind projects and to dive a bit deeper into what motivates me as an artist. If you would like to stay on as a subscriber, you’ll hear about my collaborations, projects, events, curious one-off or special edition artworks. As you might already know my artistic work is interdisciplinary, nature centred and often socially engaged and there will be also an opportunity for you to support this unfolding work. Creating meaningful relationships with communities and the environments they inhabit is an often slow and unpredictable journey. The funding landscape for artists working in this way is precarious. Regular, small donations create a vital web of support for me to continue to sustain and share this work I do. Whether you support as a paid subscriber or are just curious to drop in here for a peek, you’ll get a more nuanced perspective on what I’m working on. I think online Substack might be somewhere to build a meaningful connection with you guys until we meet in person, which I hope is soon. Let’s see how it goes.

Dinnseanchas

When I first met Seán Cronin, a native of the Borlin Valley, he told me of an old man back in the early last century whose dying wish was for his body to be returned to his home place in Gougane Barra, the next valley east. It was said that his body was carried by hand over the mountain, This little story stayed with me on my visits to the Borlin and Coomhola valleys in West Cork Ireland as one of the 7 commissioned artists in the Dinnseanchas Project produced and funded by the Hometree charity and Creative Ireland. The Dinnseanchas (lore of place) project weaves voices of farmers, artists, and communities reflecting on land, language, and belonging in Ireland’s coastal uplands.

During the year I met with older farmers and community members in the West Cork hills who have lived through dramatic changes in their lifetime. Their stories of hardship and profound community cooperation and care for the land were remarkable. This story of a human’s deep belonging to a home place, the labour in living (and dying) in this landscape and the deep loss felt for an older culture departing are familiar narratives. But it does reach to the very craggy heart of where we find ourselves today in these rural communities in the wake of more monumental species loss, climate change and cultural loss. What from the past might we hold onto and what might we lay to rest?

We carry a mirror over the mountain.

One at each corner, myself and Seán Cronin at the front and Jenny and Aaron at the back, arms around each other’s shoulders as though bearing a coffin. Blue skies and fast-moving clouds reflect on the mirror’s surface. Seen from above, the mirror carves a blue rectangle of sky into the brown mountain heath.

We move tentatively forward feeling with our feet as we carry the mirror, little mounds of fionnán grass, heather and blooming furze carpet our route. In places the track disappears and our footing falters but Sean knows his way through these hills. He has walked this route since a young lad, like generations before him, when it was quicker to walk over the hills than drive around them.

We are heading over to Gougane Barra to meet Breda who, alongside her son, Neil, have been collecting an astonishing amount of Irish place names from their valley. Before we get there we must descend through an Phoill - the hole, a sharp cleft in the rock which is devastatingly steep. It was the quickest (and most used) route across from one valley to another. It brings us all onto our bums. We slowly slide, grab, lever and shuffle our way down the mossy, slippery dark passageway. We pass the mirror down from one person to the next. It’s now that my idea of bringing a mirror with us seems ridiculous.

Later in Cronin’s bar we gather to watch Breda unroll her map on the table. The map includes over 80 Irish names and their English translations. Names remembered by Breda and members of the community. I read some of those along the route that took us here.

An Poil Cúimín Ghadhar - The dogs hollow

Cumar na Caillí - Glen of the hag

Lochán an Phoill - The lake in the hole

Doirín Samhlach (Samhaltach) - the little imaginary oak wood.

Carraigín na Seaga - little rock of the crow

Slánán - Health stream

and then a name for the little stream in the valley

Mún an Duine Bhuile - The pee of the cranky man

It is a treasure map to a hidden landscape. What strikes me most is the everydayness of names that were first and foremost practical, like town signposts. But unlike present day signage these place names are born of the people, animals, rocks and plants that once and, in places, still do populate this landscape. Just before we leave Cronin’s bar I notice the mirror is leaning against the wall where Breda sits, reflecting her and all of us about the table talking. In thinking and talking about the future, I realise the value of looking back, not with sentimentality but with clear eyed curiosity at the ways in which we used to interact and connect with our locality. It makes me wonder how we might name our landscape anew for today.

In late December 2025 just after Christmas Seán Cronin and myself organised a community screening of the Mirror Walk and Dinnseanchas Film at his house in the Borlin the Valley. It was a remarkably full house, so much so that there was a traffic jam up the valley. The screening was followed by live music and set dancing with all ages present. It was a groundswell of local interest, perhaps a sign of things to come.

Up next month > The Straw Barn

Next month I’ll share the story behind our Straw Barn, a new collaborative arts studio myself and my husband having been building since 2023. It is situated on the wild Irish West Cork Atlantic coast and will be a haven for the arts, intercultural exchange and natured centred knowledge. Join me here in February..