Urraim / Reverence.
Derreenataggart, Stone Circle,Beara Peninsula, West Cork.
Ancient site activation/ temporary art Intervention, Sept - Oct 2022.
Artistic collaboration of Maria Tanner Cohen and Cyndi O'Hern
On the last misty morning of September, I made tracks from my home in Co.Waterford toward the Beara Peninsula. Traveling deeper into Co. Cork along its south westerly edge, the landscape began to change its robes,a vivid richness of autumnal umber and ocher's, lilacs and the red of berries created the sense of having entered a wild and ancient dreamscape. The landscape of the Beara is a living archetype soaked through with power and mystical secrets of prehistoric Ireland. An Chailleach Bheara,the great elder woman reigns there.Her rivers and streams keen the song lines and stories from the gnarled,knuckled mountains of Miskish and Knockgour and whisper them into the mouth of Bantry Bay.
The landscape is a rolling theater of ancestral dreams and it's there I spent three days with artist and friend Cynthia O'Hern creating at the Derreenataggart stone circle.Working with ancient sites on the land is undertaken in the spirit of utmost respect. We leverage the soft expressive power of sheep's wool as a medium to tell a visionary story. With our hands poised for countless hours in Anjali Mudra,praying hands, wool was rolled between psalms and felted into a pure soft cord, umbilical in its likeness. With the stones we bound our wild prayer and we braided her hair, Maiden Mother, Crone a ritual passage into our own mystical unknown.
