Gestures that stay with us – John Joe a keen angler gives a demo of how to make a lure -normally John Joe would pluck something from the river bank – exactly the right shade of green for the day that’s in it – here he had to put up with a box of odds and ends, the tiny hooks made large so we could all see what he was doing, the raffia was the material of choice and as soon as he had torn the slimmest sliver from a strip he began to bind- so fine- Next time I must bring the right hooks for the job, a number 16 he recommends.
We are collaborating on a Creative Communities Project at Cluain Dara Day Care Centre and Coláiste an Chríobhín Secondary School – in May we will celebrate our work so far in Fermoy Library for Bealtaine Festival of Life Long Learning ❤
Painting the native and the invited fish of the Blackwater and flowing with the water
Not everyone has the fondest of memeories of water there are stories of drownings and floodings and near escapes. There are moments from history where people have gone missing. The bridges are places for commemoration for acts from the civil war and war of independance. There are mysteries. There are places where old cars have been used to shore up the banks, an official practice of old, many cars have been found in the river. There are no longer any hotels in Fermoy, but once the Grand hotel flooded twice in a week, calling forth the saying that the waters rise only every thirty years. There is the weir in Fermoy that fed the mills, and initially posed a challenge to the returning journey of the salmon who learnt to jump it. The weir has been in a state of disrepair for many years and the human boaters as well as the anglers are disrupted by this. There is the Duke of devonshire who owns the fishing rights along the Blackwater. We painted the native Salmon, The Stickleback, the Brown Trout as well as The Dace, the Bream, the Rudd and the Roach, the Dace, the Carp, the Eel, the curious Lamprey, the Tench, I found out the habits of each and shared what I learned.
We learned about the fish, the inhabitants of the slow waters and the quick, the native and the invited, We read a poem by Seamus Heaney:
A slideshow of some of the watery river paintings from the group:
I remembered my favourite verse another poem from my school days – it is the last verse from
final verse of The Cloud by Percy Bysse Shelley:
This memory prompted me to revisit the whole poem – it gave me such pleasure to hear the happy memory from my school days, to feel the words in the mouth and ears – it’s here:
julforrester 