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Bog Treasures.
“Every layer they strip Seems camped on before. The bogholes might be
Atlantic seepage. The wet centre is bottomless.”
ive thousand years ago, on the windswept edge of Western Europe, near
the village of Ballycastle, halfway between Benwee Head and Killala Bay,
a community of farmers, cattlemen, crafters of wood and stone, men and women
of passionate beliefs were engaged in an organic and spiritual existence
alongside the daunting, relentless sea cliffs of North Mayo.
The primeval forest of Ireland was slowly and meticulously cleared with
polished stone axes, and a quarter million tons of fieldstone were replaced
by barley, wheat and cattle hemmed in by neatly arranged walls of liberated
stone. This ancient settlement was widely scattered about the landscape
and enjoyed the relative peace of a developed social order, not feeling
the need for defensive walls. It was undisturbed until a climatic change
of a few degrees brought increased rain and a gradual loss of fertility,
which contributed to the birth of the great bog of Mayo, a hundred square
miles between the Nephin Beg mountains to the south and west, and the peaks
of Slieve Fyagh, Benmore and Maumakeogh to the north.
Discovered only in recent times, this settlement, referred to as the
Ceide Fields, lay silent beneath a five-millennium collection of Atlantic
blanket bog up to ten meters thick. The Stone Age enclosures, megalithic
tombs, and evidence of a sophisticated level of Neolithic farming were captured
and preserved within the abnormal life cycles of the heathers, mosses, and
purple moor grass that never fully decay within the antiseptic action of
the bog.
Further south, along the coast of Blacksod Bay, the Ballycroy bog juts
precariously seaward and is subjected to continuous battering by frequent
storms and flood tides with dramatic lumbering and white-fringed marine
swells that deliver chaos to the high-banked shingle beaches. In a familiar
aftermath, hard and wind -dried fragments of disheveled blanket bog litter
the pummeled beaches, alongside the occasional roots, trunks or fallen branches
of sub fossil timber, paleo-botanical survivors and relics of the Ceide
Fields era, dislodged from the thick layer of moist surfside bog. This newly
emancipated bogwood is further assailed by tidal backwash and then duly
released into the great funnel of Black Sod Bay. Parcels of the bogwood
will eventually make it back to shore, riding a storm beyond the high water
mark to a place where a journey of another nature beckons.
“The bogwood seems to emit a haunting power, the perfect medium for a
sculptor’s imagination who chooses to work with the medium. Such treasures
refuse to be forced,” asserts sculptor Ronnie Graham of County Galway.
The initial transformation of this ancient medium has occurred over the
millennium, as the submersed wood took on altered characteristics. The yews
became a rich shade of auburn, the oak a fine black, self-lubricating wood,
and the pine assumed a golden hue. Add to this mix a unique artist’s touch
and the transformation takes an inward turn with the creation of flowing
forms, figures, faces and birds. Graham works from his Kinvara studio on
the edge of the stark and irrefutable beauty of the Burren. This unspoiled
botanical delight of a region is tucked into the northwest corner of County
Clare and bordered to the west by the Atlantic Ocean and Galway Bay.
Discussing a few of the natural forces which contribute to the distinctive
character of his work, Graham says, “Out of its underground home all bogwood
has various degrees of decay in motion. Insects ‘work’ the wood, burrowing,
setting up home, eating it, etc. Give them a few years along with the weathering
elements of the twelve seasons of an Irish year and the bogwood gets slowly
and naturally sculpted.”
Carving exclusively in bogwood for nearly twenty years, Graham has witnessed
a rise in popularity of a medium which has been historically recognized
as a source of fuel, furniture, rope, and bog-cluttering aggravation for
generations of turf cutters in pursuit of the hearth-warming peat.
Graham’s career as a woodcarver began in 1981, as a knee-jerk reaction
to the daily realities of life in Belfast and quickly accelerated to a fascination
with the process and challenges offered within the art of mallet upon chisel.
He moved to Galway in the early 1980s specifically to study and work with
the various bogwoods. Presently, as an established master carver, his work
can be found in collections and exhibitions from Harvard Square to Italy,
the most recent outing by invitation to an international exhibition hosted
by the Massachusetts State House in Boston.
The ability of Irish artists to persevere within the ebb and flow of
tourism, the oft-volatile world events, economic uncertainties and the tender
mercies of weather, requires a relentless talent. A lively sense of humor
and the ever-present ability to charm also helps in occasions when a commission
is endangered by a rare bout of snow and reveals tracks of a misguided bog
banger through a hallowed cultivation and leads directly to the doors of
a red-faced Lord of the Manor.
And then there is, of course, Kenny’s Gallery. “Vision is Ronnie Graham’s
great gift. He brings these ancient wood pieces alive, invests them with
an energy and a dignity that transforms them into unique works of art,”
explains gallery manager Tom Kenny.
Appropriately, the Kenny family history reveals another journey of mutual
endurance that began in 1940, when Tom’s parents, Des and Maureen Kenny,
rented two rooms on High Street in Galway. They lived in one room and opened
a bookshop in the other, started a lending library and a sixty-year trek
across the literary and artistic landscape of Western Ireland. From the
very beginning they sold limited editions of contemporary prints and displayed
paintings and sculptures by Irish artists on the walls, nooks, crannies
and atop the books. In 1968, they hosted a solo event by the famous Irish
artist Sean Keating. The exhibition was held in the converted living room
of their home, which became the first art gallery in the West of Ireland
and a valued tradition that continues today with the participation of three
generations of the Kenny family. Book launchings, signings and exhibitions
by artists of both Irish and international reputation remain a regular occurrence
from an updated, medieval location in the heart of Galway. A league of artistry
continues to flow into the mainstream of the art world from this place of
leather-bound rare books, Irish ephemera, the occasional masterpiece and
sure, a coveted journey’s end for many a traveler, scholar and artistic
trek. – By DJ Garrity
If you go:
Ceide Fields
Ballycastle, Ireland
8km west on the R314
Tel: +353 (0) 96 43325, Fax: +353 (0) 96 43261
www.museumsofmayo.com
Kenny’s Bookstore and Gallery
High Street, Galway, Ireland
Tel: +353 91 534760, Fax +353 91 568544
www.kennys.ie
Ronnie Graham
Kinvara, Ireland
www.irishbogwoodsculpture.com
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