4” x 6” x 8” (open) 13 cm x 15.5 cm x 20 cm (open)
2023, edition of 25, includes booklet with text by the artist, housed in an archival box
$700
This five panel tunnel book evokes a drive through the blanket bog along the west coast of Ireland in County Mayo. A herd of sheep stops the car and the viewer contemplates the hillside, with piles of peat, cut and stacked to dry. Printed on a Vandercook SP-15, from hand-cut linoleum prints, on Mohawk Superfine text and cover weight paper, the side panels take the viewer along the road from farmland into the bog. The last panel is a five-color reduction linoleum print of the landscape. The back of the tunnel book includes a poem, hand-set in Garamond italic, written by the artist about the blanket bog.
Booklet text:
On the west coast of Ireland, around Ballycastle in County Mayo, the bog extends to the ocean cliffs, covering the land like a blanket. Saturated by the warm and rainy climate, the oxygen-depleted, acidic soil creates a unique ecosystem that supports a hardy variety of plants, animals and insects. The bog is a living, growing thing as mosses and ferns grow, die and are buried and smothered by successive growth layers. This organic matter can’t decompose in the anaerobic, acidic soil, and builds up and compresses into peat over the millenia.
Farmers have traditionally cut turf (peat) to burn to heat their homes. Just outside of Ballycastle, an extensive area of neolithic habitation, called Céide Fields, was discovered by a farmer cutting turf, when he unearthed stone walls under the bog.
Turf cutting became a major destructive force when the government-funded company, Bord na Mόna, drained and harvested bog land on an industrial scale to fuel large electric plants. This practice has almost stopped, and the company is now exploring other energy sources, such as wind power. Large areas of bog are now protected, and vast areas that were drained are being re-wetted in hopes that the bog will eventually recover.
My gratitude goes to the Ballinglen Arts Foundation for their support. I have been fortunate to walk in the bog and to experience this landscape.
Blanket Bog
stone walls found under the bog
traces of neolithic farmland.
still, sheep graze by the roadside
cairns of peat stacked to dry
people and land interwoven.
stone walls found under the bog
traces of neolithic farmland.
still, sheep graze by the roadside
cairns of peat stacked to dry
people and land interwoven.
