Tony Owen – Just Look, Will Ya

We recently attended a local community artist event. It was organized by a visual artist friend who worked with a curator to produce a series of events that would capture the essence of the people who lived there, the history of the place, the mythology and folklore, and its landscape. The project was a collaboration with seven musicians in residence, none of whom were from the area. The strategy was to talk to the locals and collect stories, to gather photos from the past, and look into history books, all with the intention of composing a musical soundscape, a musical composition that would capture the backbone of the place.

The musicians and visual artist worked side by side, daily, for six weeks. The end result was a performance in the community center; it consisted of a series of musical compositions using overlayed voice overs from local people telling stories and reciting poetry, but the main driving element was the music. Afterwards there was a Q and A. The curator asked each musician how they approached the work, what influenced their creative process? Their answers left much to be desired. In fact, I learned nothing from the explanations they gave. It was their wonderful music that stuck with me. Whether or not I made any connections to the words the locals spoke became irrelevant; the music was what filled me up.

The musicians may have had difficulty verbally articulating the mechanism of making music. They created the compositions and that’s all they needed to do. Our job was to listen, to react to something that caused us to feel, to sense an atmosphere; to comprehend anything more was pointless. Words could not fully capture what floated through the air in that community hall.

From the June, July, August 1989 UMVA Newsletter, this poem by contributor and artist, Stephen Petroff: “I’m not a navigator, I’m an alligator. I’d starve in the wild, I’m surrounded by police and you’re making me cry.‘” This short poem/statement is accompanied by a self-portrait of the artist himself. I have no idea as to its meaning, or at least I don’t think I do, yet reading it multiple times can convey any series of imagery, from jungles, to cops chasing, to—you decide. The poem and self-portrait tells us that the artist was dredging up an emotion only he could fully understand. It is up to us to read those words and make our own decisions as to its meaning.

When Pat and I first moved here to Ireland we felt the need to belong. We had been connected with the art community in Maine, and we hoped for the same connections here in the West of Ireland. The Irish language is a tough one, unless you are born to it, but we felt the need to honor it as best we could, so one May back in 2010 Pat was invited to exhibit a few paintings in Dingle. She chose to incorporate the Irish language in her work. She composed a short poem in English and then translated it into Irish. She used images of farm gates, a ubiquitous sight in rural Ireland, and she inserted the wording over and around those gates. The paintings are so much more than about gates and words. They are about fusing a past with the present, about hoping to find a place as meaningful as the one she left behind.

Words when placed within a piece of art can only tell us so much. They are there to support the visual, or vice versa. In combination they might create the whole, but looks can be deceiving. To me it’s important to walk away with the mystery unsolved, to listen, or look and be content in the knowing we tried.

All the Best From the West of Ireland