of the forest floor

Textile installation | Glenbower Wood, Killeagh, County Cork | May Sunday 2024

Of The Forest Floor was initially conceived over the course of a two-month residency at Greywoods Arts Centre in East Cork, where I spent each day walking the Glenbower Wood and collecting what the forest offered: fallen leaves, lichen, bits of bark, fragments of moss — the soft debris of life in this ecosystem. The thirty-two species of leaves I pressed directly onto the fabric, making eco-prints to document the trails I’d followed. I layered these printed leaves with others crafted from used tea bags, then added felted wool, hand-embroidery, and appliqué of actual organic matter to build texture and depth, acknowledging the many layers of life and time held in the forest’s closed embrace. The intent was to develop a textile that feels less like a narrative tapestry and more like a cloth that had been left out over seasons and then gently lifted from the forest floor. The work was never meant to mimic the environment, but to hold its memory — like a snapshot of the cycles witnessed, the beauty and quiet intelligence observed in this masterful display of decay and renewal.

Completed in Cornwall and exhibited in New York City, it later returned to Ireland to hang among the trees that birthed it for the May Sunday Festival, the local celebration of Beltaine, in 2024. There in Glenbower it found a home among the freshly sprouting wild garlic and spring blossoms, shifting in the wind, gathering moisture and a fresh patina of debris. It sits somewhere between offering and artifact, asking what happens when art is not simply applied to the land, but made in conversation with it.