Little Fields, 2024

Little Fields was a participatory project, working with individuals who avail of a service at HSE EVE Goirtín HUB, located in Grange Gorman, Dublin City.

EVE Goirtín supports people who experience mental health difficulties to live their lives based on their own personal goals, offering a range of supports to enable each person to live a healthier, fulfilling and more independent life.

For 12 weeks throughout the Summer of 2024, I worked with participants gathering local flowers, plants and berries in Grange Gorman. 'Goirtín' means little field in Irish. While walking & foraging in this city centre location, participants were invited to share what the service meant to them. An abundance of nature can be found even in urban settings, when time is taken to look. We picked wild Buddliea flowers to dye cloth and thread. Blackberries were gathered to make anothotype portraits with each participant, using flowers that we picked and dried. Anthotypes are prints made by exposing plant or berry juices to the sun. The process is slow and considered. Each session of art making was slow, peaceful and fun. Dublin folklore was shared, and new words for flowers were created.

Following these participatory interactions, a series of three interlinking artworks were created for the building, and installed on curved walls of the main meeting area of the building. The dried flowers were preserved, photographed, dated and named, creating a experimental, herbarium style record of our interactions. The Buddleia dyed  cloth was embroidered, each circle contains a letter by participants. Each letter was embellished by myself with a plant we gathered. The anthotypes made from blackberries were exposed to the sun, scanned, edited and then archival printed.Each participant received their own personal anthotype. 

The commission was managed by the public art consultant Louise Ward, with assistance by Create.