North Mayo Sculpture Trail

We've just had a couple grand days here in County Mayo, Ireland. Mayo is rugged and pretty remote, a place of hard times and bad weather. About 20 years ago, Ireland tried to increase tourist traffic here in Mayo by sponsoring a group of sculptures along the Atlantic Coast. It's worked somewhat - for instance, we came to see them! 

Tearmann na Gaoithe, by Alan Counihan

There are 15 sculptures, but we didn't see them all, or even most. How interesting that some have just disappeared, devoured by weeds or weather. It was an inauspicious start, to see our first sculpture, surrounded by industrial sites and with some of its parts missing.

Park, installed but not maintained in Killala

Uh-oh, we thought, are we on a fool's errand here? The second sculpture wasn't more encouraging, as it looked like the thousand inlays had fallen out of their bedding in a large retaining wall. The site itself was pretty fascinating, though. It's a waterfront and dock, with some guys fileting salmon, and a beautiful rocky shore. But what was once a shiny counterpart to the bleak concrete wall, is all but invisible now.

Tonnta na Mblianta, by Simon Thomas

But happily, persistence pays. Our project of seeing outdoor sculpture definitely perked up as we continued out a long peninsula full of green pastures, newly sheared sheep, sandy beaches, flowers and sun. 

Just keep going and going

At the end of a long headland, poking out into the Atlantic, cliffy and angular, a most dramatic landscape and a very solid, settled, strong stone sculpture, pictured at the top of this post. There were about eight people out here at the end of a very long road, and I thought it was great they'd come to see the sculpture, which caused Julianne much merriment as of course they were fishermen and nothing to do with art. 

Julianne is bird-watching; fishermen had more luck on the other side

This sculpture is in very good shape, endorsing the idea of durable materials needing no maintenance. Somebody had chiseled his declaration of love into a stone inside, but he did a very nice job of it. There was a box with writing materials to leave your thoughts, which I did. This is dry-laid stone, and it'll be here as long as the peninsula, good for a few thousand years.

The next sculpture we saw, not far as the crow flies but some a distance by road, was somewhat overwhelmed by its site. It's a solid piece, but low to the ground, on a startling headland called Downpatrick Head that demands attention. The sculptor is Danish and has made public art pieces in northern European countries.

Battling Forces, by Fritze Rind

Part of Downpatrick Head, just one section

Downpatrick Head from afar. Julianne and ancient standing stone

See how the headland rises up to meet the ocean? Rind's sculpture is located inland, where the peninsula joins the shore. She did well, but the site is so huge, the work seems smaller than it is.

Well, that was pretty good, and that was yesterday. Today we carried on, visiting a prehistoric site near Ballycastle. We learned a lot about peat and climate change and the prehistoric population of this area, very interesting. 

We were still on the Sculpture Trail, but we failed to find a hillside sculpture of trees planted in a very rough landscape, facing constant wind. The trees had died, we learned later. The berms protecting them were overcome by weeds and basically invisible now. We gave up on that one, and went on west toward the end of the land and more sculpture.

There are six works out there at the very end of County Mayo, but they are very scattered and we only saw two of them. We came across one by accident, stone-carved sheep in a circular setting. It was being enhanced by what will become a paved path, but now is just a construction site with frames and a bulk loader. The site is right next to the road at a junction, and I imagine it's a popular piece, because the locality is supporting it. It was pretty suitable for its setting, actually. Sheep are a mainstay of this economy.

Stratified sheep, by Niall O'Neill

Kind of dumb sheep, actually, but then, they are. There are five sheep in this sculpture, one ram and four ewes. They're carved from local stone. My pictures are actually detail views, as the sheep are rather dispersed. I couldn't get back far enough to get them all in the picture.

The last work was some kind of culmination, capstone, and peak experience for us! We almost didn't expect it, but it was perfect.

We drove west from Bangor (Ireland, not Maine), a bit north, and out onto a sand spit. About a kilometer offshore, little Claggan Island with a few inhabitants, including Laurance Howard and his family, who had donated land for the sculpture. We met three generations of Howards, who offer b&bs right there on their gorgeous property. Oh, we would have been tempted had we known about it. 

Howard farm on Claggan Island, county Mayo. You get there by driving on the sand of a long spit (underwater at high tide). 

Acknowledgement, by Marianna O'Donnell

Long sculpture with center division. It's tall, about 8' in the center, and you can walk through it. From one side it shows a slice of beach, but from the other side it focuses on a low pile of stones that lie slightly uphill. There's quite a story to the piece.

The Catholic Church refused burial in consecrated ground to people who hadn't been baptised. In Ireland this mainly meant stillbirths and infants who died shortly after birth. Shall I say, great consolation and support for the family? I don't know whether they've changed this policy, but as it turns out, the low pile of stones is the final burial place for such infants. So this sculpture is intended to honor those deaths. The picture of Julianne with Mr. Howard shows the stones.

Looking through

There is a poem by Dennis Mahon carved into a stone, too, which reads: "They are begging us you see in their wordless way, / To do something to speak on their behalf, / Or at least not to close the door again."

So that was the final work we saw on our visit to the North Mayo Sculpture Trail. We would have like to go on, but even we have some sort of schedule, so we said goodbye to Mr. Howard, and drove back to our b&b in Ballina, getting ready to go north next day.

by Nancy