For Michael Flaherty, who Initially planned to visit Fort Dunree in 2020, the intervening two years of delays and postponements turned out to be quite beneficial for the development of a proposed project and his art practice as a whole. The proposed project was to involve weaving with the tide, a conceptual project which he had little idea of how to actually execute. During the wait for travel to become possible again, the artist taught himself how to crochet and weave, and built multiple iterations of looms ranging from quite rudimentary to somewhat sophisticated (but still very idiosyncratic). A serious interest in fibre arts, especially crochet, weaving and dyeing, was discovered.
His main project during the residency, which was called Tidal Weave, was a slow collaboration with the ocean to make a woven fabric. A loom was built where some of the moving parts were operated by the rising and falling of the tides. The loom was placed on the beach, and at each low tide, the artist would manually weave a number of rows, and as the tide rose, the loom would be left to be operated by the movement of the water. Over the course of a week (13 tides), a long, narrow tapestry was created. The artist embraced the element of chance with this project and was delighted to find bits of seaweed, sand, and living things inhabiting the wool. This project was a continued exploration of the idea of “slowness” and addressed a research question that the artist had been mulling over for a number of years: How can makers (such as craftspeople) carry on in an era of ecological catastrophe?
Michael plans to continue working in this new direction, with ideas for
new woven works, and will be starting a major project involving crochet
and ceramics, arising from his research in Donegal
- May 30, 2022
