Simply put: attending the Global Ecologies Studio in the Burren changed my life, let alone my art practice.

The Burren is a UNESCO site, deemed so due to the landscape’s unique sprawl of karst bedrock. To walk on the rock is to walk on time uninterrupted – 350 million years of it, to be exact. I would recommend walking on it barefoot. I would recommend lying on it, especially if the sun decides to show its face for longer than a few minutes. After a particularly heartbreaking climate-focused ecology lesson one day, I headed up to the limestone fells and did just that: took off my shoes, curled up on a body-sized swath of rock, and cried into the grikes. I reflected on the notion of the ground being the top layer of an astoundingly deep record of geological history, deeper than I’d ever be able to rationally fathom. I mourned the deaths of my ancestors and thanked them for creating the surface upon which I walk today. In this private moment of grief and gratitude, provided to me by the silence and majesty of the Burren’s precious landscape, I felt a renewed appreciation for the land and those who take extra measures to protect what we have left of it.

All facets of my IP thesis stem from my educational, sublime experience in the Burren. From a sustainability standpoint, I have chosen to forgo purchasing any materials, so everything I make is from upcycled salvage. Thematically, I am exploring ways to capture the experiential passage of time, which is an extension of my research during the Global Ecologies Studio. These have proven to be extremely exciting, fruitful approaches to making, and I see myself continuing down this path for the foreseeable future, all thanks to my experience in Ireland.