"Where to begin?- that was the question at what point to make the first mark? One line placed on the canvas committed her to innumerable risks, to frequent and irrevocable decisions." -Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse.

Blues, pearls, waves, salt and the sea... Where to begin indeed, this is how I work, on lines where I can see it all until I'm confident enough to stick it down, to commit to it...

Today I love blueberries and my sea green jumper, I love my grandmothers cameo ring and the blue of the sky. Today I love my polaroid film in anticipation of the camera I finally bought and as always, I can't stand fairweather friends. Today the woman I want to be sleeps soundly and dreams only of the present. She reads whole books in one sitting and the newspaper with her morning coffee...

That Sinking Feeling...

That Autumn the trees were laden with fruit, each one bitter and hollow, the cakes made from them needed ladles of sugar, and still they caused dreams so deep and murky that even the bravest feared drowning...

Autumn is coming quickly, washing in, in torrents, today smelt of rain and earth. That rich, brown scent of Autumn. The light is golden, underneath the storm clouds...
I'm not sure I like this narrative, I'm getting nothing done, every time I turn around another day has come and gone... My notebooks are instead filling with lists, lists of what I love, what I don't and who i want to be...

I love the smell of rain, and the sound of pearls. I love jumpers over dresses and bare feet. I love compasses and loathe clocks.
The woman I want to be speaks fluent french, plays piano and leaves apple cake to cool on her windowsills. The woman I want to be trusts herself and owns red silk shoes, she eats pears walking down the street, she accepts a compliment about her looks and her secrets are only recipes...

Theres a storm brewing...

all through that summer it rained, deep green, salty rain which fell in sheets so suddenly and so heavy the world became blurred... and so the lost settled in, roosting in the blue china and between the sheets...

It has been raining for so long now, deep grey days, thunder rolling in, I love this weather, its great for a cup of tea and a book, not so good for light, or long walks or pretty skirts... its writing weather, I'm trying to progress my narratives, unsuccessfully, I may just leave it for now and work on my dissertation, I need to get it out of the way...

Narratives and Fairy Tales in the Visual Arts, eugh so much work to do!

She could call up a storm with a single thread of her raven hair...

Love notes...

He left notes for her in the oddest of places...

I have been reminded recently to be thankful for the little things; thankful for good health, a house full of laughter, good friends and good food. Talks that go on all night, the sound of rain on the roof, pear tart and a creamy cup of coffee...

The woman I want to be laughs more, takes everything in her stride, doesn't get stressed, the rain doesn't deter her, she gets up early and cares nothing about what everyone else thinks... maybe someday.

I hope to turn this image into a card, or possibly a postcard... we'll see...

Polaroid, Polaroid, Polaroid...

Oh I want a Polaroid camera... I love that they are instant, a moment perfectly captured and printed, not stored away in a cold machine, I love that they are tangible, a moment, an image to be held, I love how they see light, their eye finding the vague beauty in life, not the nitty-gritty everything of digital, I love the aged tone of them, I love the tradition of writing on them, dates, notes, narratives... really I think I'm just in love with the whole idea of them.

There are some wonderful Polaroid blogs out there, I adore nectar and light, a beautiful name, wonderful images and a great outlook on life, photography and food...

This image is from polyvore, if anyone knows its origins let me know.

This is an sx-70 the one I'm after, this image from "Polaroid of the day", its a beautiful camera, folds down and tucks away. I've been shopping around, on ebay mainly, fingers crossed I'll pick one up soon.

It would be a perfect media for me to explore with my narratives, I'm getting quite excited about all I plan to explore and experiment with this year, I actually cant wait to get back to uni, if I just had my essay over and done with...

Blossom...

He bought her a house in the woods and tea with flowers in the morning when she woke...
Apple cake and sunlight on the windowsills
Fresh sheets on the line
Laughter in every room...

Salty superstitions... a story of apple blossom, love, lost souls, storms, superstition, the sea, pearls, pebbles, white slips and blue jeans... I'm working on it...

Plant apple trees for a happy marriage, add the blossom to bridal boquets.- Old superstitions.

In Irish mythology there is an island across the sea, the isle of promise, an isle of medows and orchards where golden apples grow. The island belongs to the god of the sea, and few ever return...

Milk and Honey...

Drink tea before bed with milk and honey, tell the bees, breathe in the late summer light and rest safe from time a few minutes longer...



I was hoping by this point in the summer I would be photographing lots of images with that beautiful honeyed light, the late summer brings, but it has been stormy for weeks, raining for what feels like months and always grey. Night seems to fall quickly without those long sunsets I had hoped for, hours of gold and rose light, as thick as syrup...

The leaves have started to turn, and the garden seems stunned by so much rain, I have barely seen any bees. As much as I love autumn, I had hoped to capture the summer dying summer, but it seems to have died suddenly in the night...

I'll have to re-think or make do, try to allow this story to progress as organically as the sea story...




Store wishes and truths in jars, between the jams and the tea, for those worst of days...

As I have already said this is a story of lace, loss and love. I want to have something frail and delicate about it. Something not quite tangible.

I collected two huge jars of dandelion seeds back at the start of the summer, I love how light they are, like lace...

The French use dandelion flowers much the same way we use buttercups, holding them to your chin and judging your future by the glow. The Americans use the seed heads to wish, the English as clocks, the number of puffs of breaths it takes to clear the seeds being the time, and here there is a tradition of asking a question and 3 or less puffs means yes, more means no.

More Polyvore...

Walk me home, barefoot along the shore, and I'll read your future from the footprints in the sand and the salt in your hair...
Polyvore is really helpful to me, to expand my narratives and as a source of inspiration. :)
If you aren't already on it I suggest you sign up, its addictive...

Polyvore...

Bring me the ocean in a tea cup...
My new favourite toy... I've always done my ideas books and sketchbooks with collage, writing and my images so polyvore is pretty perfect for me :)

Salty superstition...

Slip a pearl into his pocket, draw a swallow on his foot, hide his boots, fill his bath water with salt, add black pepper to his food, grind peony root and add it to the wash, wrap strands of his hair around oak branches, buy him shirts of sky blue... it won't matter; if she wants him there's no stopping her, you can't argue with the sea...

I'm working on two narratives for my final year and one sculpture project, this may change as I continue, but just now it's the "haunted" story and the bog cotton, along with this narrative, a story of pearls, superstition and the sea. It started to come through as I worked on last years Rose narrative, I would sit down to write for the rose photographs and would find myself writing a different story... or I would just decide to photograph the pearls instead, I would see the image in my mind and need to create it...

I'm not as sure of this one as I am of haunted but it will be interesting to see how it progresses, I feel it must be in my head and is a story that needs told, so I hope to allow it to develop organically and see what it is... is that strange? :)

As the storms rolled in that spring the apple blossomed early, its fresh scent rose in waves drawing schools of rosy salmon into the shallows, and when they were cut open their bellies were full of bones and buckles, pearls and rings, and lost souls that settled right on the sea green slabs of the harbour. They clung to the salt and seaweed on the men’s boots and travelled home with them, settling in on the garden paths and in the branches of those apple trees...

I wrote the above narrative a long time ago, it was just waiting in one of my many notebooks, and so when I photographed the pearls it just seemed perfect. What is interesting me with this one is the mnemonics, I seem to be unconsciously triggering myself to progress the narrative..

I grew up having holidays on a Donegal island, and an island on Strangford Lough, my parents spent years at sea before I was born, making it around the world twice on various ships, and family mythology tells that an ancestor was washed up in cork from a foreign land (we guess Spain). My friends are surfers and sailors and so given all that I suppose the salt water is in my blood... there's that mythology again ;)

That May the air turned hazy, and as the boats set out the forget-me-not wove itself through the grass, little pieces of sky fallen to earth, a sure sign of a love to be lost...

Bones...

frail petticoats in white
a truth hidden a year too long
those sheets turning grey in the deep summer rain
and time slowing to stop by the mosses and the hawthorn in bloom.


Hawthorn in the house, brings in death.- Old Irish superstition.
Chemically the hawthorn flower is said to have the same scent as a decaying body, and so this more than likely gave rise to this belief. However in parts of England hawthorne is said to bring fertility and will protect a child if placed in its crib, I find this disturbing...
The hawthorn has long since gone over here, I got a few photos before it did, however not enough of them, the same with the queen-annes-lace, from tuesdays' post, I'll just have to make do.

Inspiration...

I found this beautiful image on polyvore, I'm obsessed with foxgloves and the uses of herbs and flowers, just now.

I've been spending a lot of late nights, drinking lots of tea, writing and learning the oddest of things...

I think its important to keep reading and learning, we can never know enough, as an artist knowledge and the odd pieces of information, not just the obvious, can become a whole body of work...

Books inspire me more than visuals, as odd as that may be, poetry too, Sara Teasdale and E.E Cummings are favourites right now.

I'm very excited about getting back to college now, I have so many ideas...

Below is an image by photographer Sara Morris, I love her work it has that sense of the magic in the everyday that I am trying to capture in my own images.

Haunted...

All through the summer it tapped at the windows and doors, and very slowly, so no one noticed, it laced its way around the house turning everything to milky grey. Soon all the days looked the same and when she discovered the clocks had stopped, time had grown so brittle nothing could be done...

The story I'm working on at the moment is one of loss, lace and love.

I want to look at the nature of fortune telling, and old superstitions, weaving a ghost story in fragments, like torn lace...

Past Work; (Second Year)

Two years ago my grandmother died, before she did she planted a garden full of roses, (32 where one would have done the job, given time) this is that story, Photography and Narrative, a story of loss, dealing with the mythology of memory, which I hope many can relate to... It also had something of a fairy tale about it, Sleeping Beauty, and so the spools...Below are a few of my images and narratives from that story;

They say the human soul weighs a mere 21g. The weight of a life boiled down to something you could hold in the palm of your hand. Something you could measure out or put away in storage jars, in the back of your cupboard between the flour and the cake tins...

That was the year she planted the roses. At least three per meter. Each one so vigorous it could have taken over the cottage wall all by itself. She planted thirty. So closely packed she could have climbed to the sky. Or perhaps she thought they would wrap around the house, that they would close off the windows and doors, choke out the sunlight like a weed and time would last a little longer.

Spring washed into summer with torrents of deep-green rain. It beat on the windows and doors and bounced off the paths like broken glass. The house was mostly empty and so the vines were free to creep along the fence, over the walls and into the very bones of the building and there they waited…

The swallows came late that summer. They circled for weeks before settling in; they were nervous and fidgety, abaonding their first nest. That should have been a sign. Count the swallows flight, stitch blue thread into your hem and stay close to home...

For weeks the light in the house was golden; a heavy, dark gold and the smell of those roses got everywhere, as if they were in the very walls and under her skin. No amount of lavender and sea salt could shake it just as no amount of drizzle cake could pacify the bees in the garden. All through the following winter the honey for miles would taste of roses and years later women would swear that a honeyed rose would cause dreams of love...

Hello

I'm an art student, embarking on my final year, I'm a photographer, storyteller and weaver, but thats just this week... :)

I love light, and beautiful things, and that sound my camera makes when I take a photo amoung other things.

There are so many stories to be told, and my mind is full of them, here I hope to share them and grow my work, any feedback is more than welcome.

Siobhan.