Posts Tagged ‘James Slevin’
Happy New Year
Gingerbread house by James Slevin.
Wishing you all a very Happy New Year! I hope all your dreams come true and if you have no dreams may you start dreaming again! There will be more posts soon so do visit again in the next few days. I am now using Linux so just getting used to the new system. It feels funny, I must be the least competent person on a computer that ever used Linux. Way to go for the new year! Lets do lots of things that we have absolutely no idea how to do! Now I am off to calm my steaming, frothing steed! Only joking really, she’s lovely! Now where are those steel toe capped boots and gum guard!
Land Art on the natural walking routes around North Clare
Yesterday, I handed in a proposal for a collaborative exhibition and site specific art works, so fingers crossed, some time next year when the heather is in bloom there will be Art works in all sorts of wild and wonderful places. Myself and my husband James Slevin, are going to be working on it together so I am very excited! We will be fusing organic with technology! I am really looking forward to working with James on it, I think that it is going to be really interesting to see what we make. Making a deadline on time is always a great feeling. Though I was like a angry rat yesterday trying to get it done! I am not sure when we will hear back but the best remedy for that is to apply for another exhibition straight away so I am not focusing all my attention and hopes on it.
Today, I went on one of the natural walking routes that we are planning to make some art on. I often go horse riding there as it is the only place near by that I can ride off the road. It is a bog road, it is really beautiful and so removed from the road a couple of kilometres away. I took some photographs and got some inspiration, I brought back some natural materials to work with including heather, bog oak, red grass and turf.
The photographs were taken with an old film camera, which is a lovely change from using digital, but sorry no images for now. I took some photographs of the stacks of turf. This year I spent a very short time stacking turf with a friend and it was such lovely satisfying feeling. I also make two hay cocks myself with hay I hand turned, this was really enjoyable for me. Now I go around with a scissors and cut roadside grass for Maya the horse. I guess I am a country girl!
We are saddened by the lack of off road walks for people walking and riding horses, so we want to try to do something to get more trails made. Even The Burren Way goes quite a distance on the road, this is sad when the landscape is so beautiful and the roads are so dangerous.
Coincidences on the Camino de Santiago
Baby buggy down the glen by the Falls Hotel Ennistymon
Yesterday while putting a rather sturdy three wheeled baby buggy in the boot of our 4×4 Lada Niva, I realised that I had bought the same buggy in Santiago two years before our son was to be born in that city. The reason I bought the buggy was because I had just fallen in love with James Slevin, who was pushing all of his supplies rather then carrying them on his back like the pilgrims, he was a long distance walker and I was determined to walk every step of the way beside, behind and in-front of him, it is not always practical to walk hand in hand wile pushing buggies, apart from the sweaty hand thing many of the places we went were tiny paths through woods and up mountains! Was me buying a baby buggy with a man I had only days before met and promptly fallen in love with, in this spiritual city such a strong yet unconscious affirmation that it would draw us back there two years later to give birth to our son?
Yesterday I got a little feel of that again as I pushed our Daughter and Son down the glen by the Falls Hotel in Ennistymon, it is a lovely walk, just a pity it is so short! At the moment James is planning a walk and is very sad to see that nearly all marked walks in Ireland are mainly on the road. If anybody knows of any walks not on roads in Ireland can you please let us know. There are a few lovely Green roads but they are not long enough to get off the gray roads for enough time to feel truly in nature.
Personal Statement
My art practice and everyday life can blur into one another so much that it is impossible to separate them. I often use everyday materials that are already in my life but somehow call me to create something with them, such as brown paper bags turned into poppy seed heads, a broken umbrella, the biker leathers James gave me for my 34th birthday. One day I put on these leathers and my back went for no apparent reason, we both thought that I needed to make some art with these leathers, some healing needed to be done, my back recovered!
My own art journey travels to the invisible and tries to make it visible and overlooked reconsidered and repositioned. I like to combine things which are rarely seen together; relocating them, such as painted words on clothes, both clothes for humans and in the past horses. I often use text in my art practice and see words as having a lot of power, like prayer flags.
However I do not limit myself to making or recreating objects solely, I move freely from the flatter lands of painting and drawing, printing, collage and photography and into the rolling hills of solid object land, I also enter the disappearing and reappearing land of video from time to time. As well as the land, sea and sky itself with environmental and time-based works. Sometimes these all overlap.
James Slevin is both my partner in life and my muse. In the past it was usual for male artists to have a female muses. We work together, I make, but he somehow sees from a distance with more clarity where the piece is going and guides it in a very gentle and perceptive manner, not changing its destiny but helping it to fully reach it.
(This statement is to go with my resent work, which is hand made objects and instillation art, though it is connected to my painting I have a separate statement for my painting written by a great friend and art writer.)
Is it a long way from Doolin to Dharamsala?
We are not really sure yet but we think it is quite far! Little did we know when James got his first motor bike a 125cc Yamaha Dragstar, that it was going to be his chariot for raising awareness about issues of peace and freedom for Tibet, all the way from Doolin to Dharamsala! James is my muse and is constantly inspiring me, certainly now is no exception! You will see some peaceful influence coming into my work, right about now!! I am asking myself what is peace, how do you make it, is it possible, would I like it! Yes! I can safely say I would like it, but enough to do anything about making it happen? It is close, if I am helped, supported and reminded constantly I think I would like to do lots! That is where the new peacerider.com web site by James Slevin will help us who are interested in Peace, to get inspired and maybe helped along on a smoother ride, to help create a peaceful world. I would highly recommend all to have a peak.
Peace for you, Peace for them, Peace for parents, Peace for children, Peace for individuals, Peace for animals, Peace for all sentient beings, Peace on our planet, Peace on the moon and Peace in our minds!
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