Friends exhibit textile work in ‘Soulful Threads’ at Cork venue

Friends since 2017, artists Sarah Buckley and Claire O’Reilly are exhibiting their contemporary textile work together at the West End Art Studios in Mallow.

Entitled Soulful Threads, the two artists’ work on show complements one another. It is deeply personal and is expedited through sometimes intricate needlework.

Sarah explores childhood and memory through drawing with stitch, installation and print. She addresses the complexities of difference and the lingering impact of early experiences.

Two non-cancerous vascular birthmarks were discovered on Sarah’s face when she was just five weeks old.

“One was over my right eye which restricted light going into my eye so I have very poor sight in my right eye. The other one was over my lip.”

Sarah had to go to London a lot as a child for surgery and ended up getting plastic surgery at 15 to remove most of the scarring.

She says she wasn’t bullied at school but did feel different, not least because of travelling to London from Mallow, which nobody did in her day (Sarah is now 48).

When the artist’s mother was moving from her home to a granny flat, she pulled out a pile of photographs and letters concerning Sarah’s medical treatment.

“I looked at the photos and letters and did some research. 

Through my artwork, I started to explore my own journey. I was looking back at my childhood and memory.

2Sometimes, you don’t know if you something or if somebody told you about an event.”

In the exhibition, Sarah is exploring the personal “which is universal. Everybody has a story, some medical experience as a child such as when they broke their hand.”

Viewers at the gallery will see three small baby girls’ dresses sewn into and printed onto calico cotton, representing Sarah as an infant.

Sarah is also showing what she calls ‘snapshots’ which are embroidered versions of old photographs from her family’s collection. And she has created an installation which comprises bandages hanging from the ceiling with text on some of them, recalling her surgeries. There are also fragments of her diaries. For some of the installation, Sarah has hand-dyed thread for the stitch work.

Claire O’Reilly, 42, focuses on the impact of nature on our wellbeing in the exhibition.

“I would be quite an anxious person. I find that walking in my local woodland (Island Wood in Newmarket) sets me up for the day,” she said. “I go on this walk every morning and find it truly empowering. It really helps my mental health. I get anxious about general things going on in my life. I’m a worrier.”

Being among trees and flowers inspires Claire’s art

“The final pieces are embroidery pieces. But to get to that stage, I would do drawing and collage. I take a lot of photographs. I come up with a piece I’m happy with and transfer that to embroidery. It’s kind of like painting with thread, using thread as a paint brush. The work takes me forever. 

It has been a hard few months. I have been bent over stitching for hours and hours every day. So it’s great to get it out into the world.

Claire says the work she does is hard on the eyes.

“I’ve actually gotten glasses in the last few years because of the strain on my eyes.”

But it’s all a labour of love. As Sarah comments: “It’s what feeds our souls. For Claire, it’s walking in nature and taking inspiration from that. For me, it’s delving into my own history.”

Claire’s installation piece is mostly embroidered.

“The imagery is a kind of mix of nature with floral elements as well as human anatomy. There are images of the heart, anatomical images. The heart is probably the most important organ in the body.”

From a viewer’s perspective, Claire hopes that her work will help people recognise the importance of spending time in nature.

“Not everyone has a lovely wood in their locality, like me. I’m lucky that way. Just being among trees gives me energy.”

Both Sarah and Claire say that working as an artist can be lonely. “I’m an introvert anyway,” says Claire. “But I can find it very isolating. There isn’t an artists’ community in Newmarket unfortunately.”

Exhibiting together is a great social outlet with plenty of walks and coffees enjoyed in the planning stages.

Soulful Threads is at Mallow’s West End Art Studios every Friday, Saturday and Sunday until October 20.

Meanwhile, another exhibition by three women artists explores female experiences in a male world. Cork artists Mary Bowen Galvin, Éadaoin Glynn and Oonagh Hurley have called their exhibition Transitus.

On show at the Backwater Artists Studios, it includes a doll’s house, a wedding dress and church-inspired artefacts made from toy soldiers. Each of the artists is currently experiencing a transition in their practices.

They are exploring different methods of expressing “shared themes of untold and hidden narratives of the female experience in the male world.”

Transitus is at the Backwater Artists Studios on Wandesford Quay until October 11.