In 2025 Cork Biodiversity Hub approached me about creating a collaborative mural with their membership and others to signal a move to a place they could call home at the Powder Mills in Ballincollig. The idea was to bring disparate groups and individuals into a space where they could share their passion for nature and contribute to creating a welcoming space on the new premises.
We gathered in groups large and small including Ballincollig Tidy towns, local primary and secondary schools and famillies, The Cork Rivers Alliance Group, members on the Biodiversity Hub mailing list and the Circular Economy Sewing Group all meeting in the new Hub.
We held a special event celebrating river invertebrates for Heritage day, The Friends of the Dripsey River came in costume and Pauilne Cummins delivered a lecture on kick sampling, the tiles on this day included May fly, Stonefly and Caddis fly larvae and a leech encouraged by humanoid invertebrate cheerleadrers
listening, performing and making
During the course of the summer months we created hundreds of tiles and glazed them, in the studio I made extra tiles to add context and flow
At the beginning of the summer I devoted some time to the Lizard. I had been shortlisted for a comission in a school and my idea was to make a play sculpture that would carry its own story invested with the work of everyon in the school. The school is in a newly built satellite town unimaginitely names Citywest. The little sun loving lizard creeped into my heart and I thought of warm stones, the warmed stones in the walls and rocks of an ancient land. The viviparous is Lizard one of Ireland’s 3 native reptile species. I remembered a Glen walker’s excitement when he spotted one on the sunny slope on the furze hill, back in the pandemic times and the joy this sighting brought.
Lucky Laghairt
It was a lovely time of lizardine engagment. I made many tiles and experimented with glaze colours and patterns, I read sories about lizards – I loved especially the Mexican folk Story of the Lizard and the Sun – how, in a moment of crisis, the Sun went missing, and out of all the creatures it was the little Lizard who found the sun hiding amongst the rocks, and she enticed him out again with music and dancing – this story expressed how I was feeling about this time working with the lizard.
The word for Lizard in Irish is Laghairt and it lodged phonetically in my brain as “lag-heart” – though the pronunciation would be more like Lye-urt
I made tiles with suns and sun patterns in the colours of our native lizard
I imagined the children playing on her serpentine back, sharing intimate moments, as well as balancing, and discovering all that is written into her skin
Laghairt might become a basking presence for quiet times in the school yard and the school community will each have contributed a scale for the lizards back, preserving a snap shot of her coming into being and stories to be found by future generations
basking in their clay skin, getting ready for firing
palswoo hooriding the dragon
dragon fairy tales begin with lizards
During the research phase I found out so much about Ireland’s Viviparos Lizard
We didnt win the commission but we had some fun along the way. The Lizard tiles have been incorporated into other projects. 🙂
A series of images – photos taken of John Joe showing me how to cast a line, from his residence in Fermoy into my studio in the Glen – rivers connecting in memories
Worlds within worlds
This was a weaving echo… Mary at Cluain Dara remembering the blankets made in the mills along the Blackwater … with their characteristic pink stripe… this gesture was a reaching into that time and memory ..as she remembers the newly made blankets hanging out to dry on the bans of the river and she playing amongst them with her friends … the excitement of hiding and finding and the laughter raised in the labyrinth of their folds
Here is the poster in Fermoy Library inviting guests to take a seat at our table within the exhibition of our threads annd trails
and here are some fish… tench trout salmon perch eel and more species found in the Blackwater and tributaries…portraits perhaps…
This project was shortlisted for The Croppy Park in Clonakilty – I had a dream team with Dan Benn and the women from the Wisewater Acadamy… but it wasn’t to be – here is my table top working for the design
and some drawings
trying to get it in perspactive and scaled with people around it…
ROAM for me has been about belonging, the pandemic offered a place to honour and own and be owned by place. During this time of separation we sought out spaces for solace and joy, where we could safely share moments people and place in the open city in a time of upheaval. One of the outcomes of the “lock down” meant that some of us were gifted with more time to build a special relationship with the place on our doorstep. The work we have been doing in St Patricks spirals into this time, beginning on 13 March 2020 and leading till now.For these young women 2025 marks the end of a cycle and transition from primary to secondary education. As we leave things behind we find other things, we find ways to acknowledge grief and loss in the passage of time and recognise the resilience that has brought us through. Together we mapped the places in our locality that are dear to our hearts, the places we go for food, for play, to be alone and to be with friends. We remembered how we were when were were 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 and the milestones that happened during that time. As an older adult, working with young people, there has been a personal reaching into the past both back to the pandemic years but also to when I was 8, 9,10,11,12. The intergenerational aspect of ROAM is one that holds a deep fascination for me. So trying to inhabit the space I brought some botanical inks foraged from materials in the locality during the pandemic, we used blackberry and oak, alder and pine inks and made messy, splashy, and controlled maps about time, using modifiers to alter the colour and watch changes. We sometimes shared stories and sometimes had time just for ourselves, to be in the process, the creativity of gesture and material unfolding before us and the responses without and within. We each gathered our weekly pages into a book. The splashy time maps are still changing colour as the inks fade or oxidise in contact with the air. We made tie dye samples binding cloth with bands and spraying these bundles with colour, we used gloves to protect our skin in a reiteration of the hand care of pandemic times. Some of our patterns even mirrored the familiar shape of the corona virus. We find that patterns repeat, spirals from our ancestors and circles in nature come through in many things that we do – when we create we connect. We make beautiful, messy, precise and surprising things. We made small charms from clay, gifts to ourselves and also to the community. Some of these appear on the wall of our local shop, just up from the school, in Gardiner’s Hill.
Julie Forrester, artist with the girls in Ms O’Connell’s 6th Class, St Patricks GNS, Gardiner’s Hill
Roll on Up to the Central Library for story book fun with – I am looking forward to a creative day with the youngest readers, we wil be creating characters and sharing their stories
Stories from the Blackwater Catchment is A Creative Communities project which brings together Elders for Cluain Dara day care centre and young people from the neighbouring school, Coláiste an Chraoibhín. Participants have been sharing stories and questions about the river Blackwater and what it means to live within its catchment. I have been working with the groups since Autumn 2024, stirring up river relations, co-creating and collecting imagery that has been conjured up by this engagement, and I will be bringing this collection to Fermoy library for the Bealtaine Festval (which celebrates creativity as we age, and runs annually during the month of May).
Visitors are invited to come see and hear and contribute to this collection. Members of Cluain Dara and Colaiste an Chraoibhín will be dropping by to share their stories and thoughts about the project. The exhibition will run throughout the month of May and I will be hosting creative sessions in the library on Thursday mornings of the 8th 15th, 22nd and 29th May, if you would like to get involved please do drop in between 10 am and 1pm. All welcome 🙂
John Joe O’Sullivan’s Box of Lures
This fly box belongs to one of our river elders, John Joe O’Sullivan. Each hand-tied fly is a quiet testament to time spent by the water. John Joe has fished in every tributary of the Blackwater and beyond.
These tiny, intricate creations are more than just tools for catching fish. They are quiet conversations with the river — observations made in feathers, plants, scraps of thread, and imagination.
To tie a fly is to understand the insects that live along the banks, the moods of the water, and the patience needed for the catch. John Joe is deeply attuned to the ever-changing greens of the river in shifting light. The materials for each fly are most reliably gathered from the riverbank, chosen to match the weather and the flow of water on that particular day.
Later, a fishing friend tells me: “You must match the hatch.” To catch a fish, your fly must resemble the river insects hatching at that very moment. It’s part science, part instinct — and a deep form of listening to the river.
I am intrigued by the yellow ones both by the material and the spidery form. John Joe ducks my questions and asks me to identify which one might be “The Devil”, one he thinks I might guess by its colour.
This box is more than a collection — it’s a map of memory, craft, and deep-rooted knowledge of the river and its life.
We are continuing to ROAM through the last 5 years and gloving up for tie dye sessions – and a flashback to the PPE of the days of the pandemic and the shape of the virus – remembering the sunshine of 2020 and time on our hands … for tik tok, family, pets and friends in the 5k zone
Scoil Mhuire students were invited by the principal to contemplate the School Crest. They explored by drawing and discussion what the ethos of the school might mean to them. We found that the crest included all the elements – the candle flame, the fountain, the seedling – and had an interesting discussion about how each element influences and encourages the other and what the school ethos means to them.
The girls from 6th class have decided to name their mural “Our burning love for Scoil Mhuire”
julforrester 