Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre

A Forest Sounds Like a Ship at Sea:

A requiem, a cry, a scream, a hope...

Day 25: Remote Residency at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen, Ireland, 7/18/22 to 8/13/22, Maria Driscoll McMahon checking in from New York State

Tomorrow is the last day of my residency, so I guess it's time to wax philosophical after nearly a month of rapid note taking. It is also a good time to address the purpose of research for artistic pursuits for those who may wonder what any of this has to do with art. The truth is that even though methods may differ, many artists are like scientists in their curiosity and fervent desire to know stuff. Research is one tool available to both scientists and artists. Another less recognized tool is drawing (or painting, sculpture, dancing...etc.) itself. Yes, Drawing is a tool for learning. It is also a tool for change, but hopefully that idea has become better establihed.

Drawing helps us think better At its core, drawing is a problem-solving tool. Scientists are often avid doodlers, like the Fields-Medal-winning mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, for instance. “The process of drawing something helps you somehow to stay connected,” she explained in a 2014 interview. “I am a slow thinker, and have to spend a lot of time before I can clean up my ideas and make progress.”

Believe it or not, in my experience, the most interesting artists tend not to draw things they know - at least not completely. (The most interesting things seem to be unknowable anyway.) Rather, it seems that artists almost always draw things they WANT to know; abstractions of thought or feeling they WANT to understand; things they WANT to learn - things like rocks and trees and the way the light falls on your face and planets and stars and BEINGS that walk and crawl and fly and speak by rubbing their limbs together until a fusion of bone or cambium turns them all into gemels emerging from shimmering portals of other dimensions! (See yesterday's post about gemels and you'll see what I did there!)

Thinking of art as anything other than a tool for the artist's exploration and expression of wonder, curiosity, thought, and feeling is, in my view, misguided: it is an error in thinking that demands "expertise" but quells wonder in a world where information is instant and ubiquitous (and misinformation even more so!), but wonder is in short supply.

What the world needs now is love goes the song... but wonder is a close second. In fact, I would say that wonder IS love.

So...A Forest Sounds Like a Ship at Sea is, first and foremost, my vehicle for learning about forests and trees and lots of other things on its most basic level. Even more so, it is my vehicle for learning about the ways in which forests and trees are like ourselves in ways previously unknown or comprehended.

It is also as I previously described, a requiem, in part, for forests past, a cautionary tale - no, a cry, a scream - for forests present, and hope for forests future. It is an "offshoot" of my previous project, By the Time You Cut Teeth You Are Already Ancient, which was one part meta-genealogical investigation, one part spiritual quest, one part cautionary tale.

A Forest Sounds Like a Ship at Sea was inspired by walks in the woods and reading Overstory, a book that forever changed the way I think about trees. In it, Richard Powers, writes like a poet and anthropomorphizes trees in a way that is fully informed by science. It was the anthropomophism that changed me.

My previous body of work focused on my Irish paternal ancestors; for this project, I wanted to focus on their habitats - those they left behind in West Cork Ireland and those that awaited in Pennylvania.

Also, in order to answer the deceptively simple question that resonated in my brain "If you were a tree, what would you be?" I needed to learn a whole lot about trees (and "you"). Why is this seeming, but very unsilly question important? Because we tend to care about things if we can see something of ourselves in them. Richard Powers understood this in Overstory. Thus, these walks in forests with new eyes - and ears - these talks with conservationists, arborists, natural scientists, historians, artists, and fellow descendants of Cornelius O'Driscoll were essential. (I will name some names tomorrow!)

Evil is the refusal to see one's self in others.
Richard Powers, author of "Overstory"

During my residency, I met a Chestnut Tree (among many other trees), an oddball overachiever which towered over many of the neighboring trees. Sadly, the Chestnut, infected with blight, would soon meet the same fate as its predecessors. Known as the "sequoia of the east," the massive old growth forests of "Penn's Woods" were frequently dominated by American Chestnut Trees. This would all come to an end by the end of the 19th century.

Since then, I have discovered that all the forests in the United States (and beyond) are in trouble in one way or another - almost all due exclusively to the short-sighted exploitation of natural resources by European colonists (including my own ancestors) - an exploitation that still happens today.

Clear-cutting entire forests and burning fossil fuels has led to climate change which leads to extreme weather - including droughts and floods, creating conditions for which our delicately balanced habitats are ill adapted. Another scourge is invasive pests which can be exacerbated by climate change as well.

Here in Pennsylvania and New York State stately, elegant ash trees are falling prey to the emerald ash borer beetle.During my trip to the F.R. Newman Arboretum at Cornell University, I was saddened to find many of them had been felled and chopped up into logs to prevent further infestation of neighboring trees.

Infected ash trees at the F.R. Newton Arboretum at Cornell University (left), and in Ridgebury, Pa.

There are also many threats to Hemlock trees including the wooly adelgig, hemlock looper, and borer among others.

Beech Leaf disease affects Beech Trees. Oak wilt can compromise the mighty Oak. Locust Leaf Miner can maim a Locust.

Climate Change affects the proliferation of parasites such as spongy moths and other pests (some invasive) as well rendering habitats too wet or too dry. Floods, droughts - all exacerbated by a warming planet can mean the difference between the survival of entire forests or death.

"Ghost forests" like this one at Botany Bay, South Carolina, are increasing up the east coast as erosion is whittling away at the coastline.

The sad fact is that most every species of tree is under some sort of threat: almost every forest. Whether besieged by invasive pests, drought, floods, fires, logging, fracking, agriculture, human habitation, development for commerce, rising seas leading to erosion and drowned forests, the proliferation of diseases due to climate change, leveling rain forests for cheeseburgers - the list goes on and on.

Francis Eatherington,

Lone Rock Timber

If we don't learn from the past and our indigenous forebears - some of whom are still living in harmony with the natural environment - (that's in the U.S., Ireland, or many places on the planet), the habitats of the earth will decline and their inhabitants will vanish soon after. In the case of the trees of the forests, they are both inhabitants and habitat! If that is true of any other creation, I'm not aware of it at this moment.

HOPE!

But, yes, there is hope through reforestation efforts worldwide. Planting with biodiversity in mind rather than monoculture will ensure longevity and habitats for diverse species. Planting trees is not a panacea - we still need to work to reduce carbon emmissions through the use of green technology and energy systems to solve our problems (not to mention population control). But as trees eat carbon, they are a viable and beautiful part of the plan to slow and reverse climate change. Also, restoring forests will solve other problems as well. Restored forests will mean shelter for those who live there - human and non-human beings alike.

I want to share a small reforestation effort happening in the O'Driscoll ancestral homeland in West Cork on Oileán Chléire (Cape Clear Island), site of Dún An Óir, one of the most forlorn and romantic ruined castles you will ever see.

Dún An Óir, oil on canvas, by Marie D. Driscoll

Cornelius O'Driscoll, the first of my paternal Irish ancestors to settle in the United States hailed from West Cork. The Cape Clear Woodland project below may be a small undertaking, but if everybody did their part, the planet would become a less threatened habitat.

Alder and birch saplings at Oileán Chléire at the Cape Clear Woodland, Plantings and Photos by Séamus Ó Drisceoil of Dublin, Ireland

Across the pond, a baby ash tree grows wild in the forest where the Suquehannocks once lived, wolves roamed, chestnut trees grew, and Cornelius O'Driscoll - fleeing famine and hardship - would find refuge for his family in the mid 19th century "unbroken wilderness" of Ridgebury, Pennsylvania.

Life has a way of talking to the future. It’s called memory. It’s called genes.

Richard Powers, The Overstory

*There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been: A people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful, and self-aware; a people who scheme, promote, deceive, and conquer; who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death. It is a weakening and discoloring idea, that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time-- or even knew selflessness or courage or literature-- but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.
― Annie Dillard

*I found the Annie Dillard quote on the page of a wonderful artist, poet, thinker in her own right - Lucy Meskill - who has also studied trees in a most stunning way through her art. This quote also reminds me how much influence Annie Dilliard had over my own perceptions of nature when I was much younger. "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" is simply one of the most thrilling, meaningful meditations on nature ever.