Dream      458

Drawing      sin-title

Dreamer     Nuala Clarke

Glass

I thought the plan to become a witch would work for me over the summer.

Dream458-Glass-Clarke

 

 

Ballycastle, County Mayo.

I was driving from the back seat. It was raining so hard I couldn’t see. I gave someone a lift down the street. I was upset. I indicated right to turn at the sea road. The wipers were going fast and still I couldn’t see. I decided to turn a bit further down at Padraic’s shed. The door was open. There were people and shelves inside instead of cattle. The person I was giving the lift to had machine parts. He had got them in the shed. I looked in again. There were rows of mustard-coloured glass vases and objects I wanted to examine.

Then I was in an area before the main shed. There was a small plump woman standing at a barrel. She was taking deposits/lodgments. She was the bank. I found myself filling out my deposit slip. There were all kinds of questions on it. I decided not to answer some. It was none of their business and I didn’t have all day. I gave her the deposit and glanced back in at the elegant glassware. I waited at the barrel while she served other people. Why was I waiting? Oh, she hadn’t given me my receipt. I asked her for it. She said I hadn’t filled it out so she couldn’t give it to me. I said, Give it to me now and I’ll fill it. She refused. I somehow got the slip and saw that I had put my Mott Street, New York City address on it. Why had I done that? I was distressed at how distressed I was. Impatient, agitated, practically overwhelmed.

I went to fill out the details on the receipt. Banks often stamped a receipt even if it isn’t all filled out. Why was she being so particular? I returned to her but she was serving others. Then she handed me my change, $5, a piece of chocolate cake and coffee. I took a sip of coffee and said, This isn’t my change. It wasn’t even my coffee.

She was having a bad day and there seemed to be no way to talk to her without making it worse. There was a now long line. A thin woman in brown said to the plump woman, I’ve been coming here all summer and you really don’t seem well today. What’s wrong? You’re usually so organized. The plump woman went off to a shelf, turned back and said, I thought the plan to become a witch would work for me over the summer.

I reeled around on my heel, groaning in agony at the murk of psychological crap she was immersing me in when all I wanted was my receipt.

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Dream of the Drawing for Everything alchemies dream-like things: images and texts and films and sketches and philosophy and half-thoughts and visions and moments and fragments of all kinds. Resting and exploring here may deepen your relationship with the oneiric and, therefore, all apparent reality. Resting and exploring here may augment your psyche’s healing tendency—as Jung called it—through highlighting and delighting in humanity’s hallucinatory creations. (Without them, after all, neurologists assure us we would go starkers.) It is time there was a potentially infinite, intimate museum to what cannot be seen. Welcome to the museum.

Dream of the Drawing for Everything is some of the collaboration between artist Nuala Clarke & writer Crystal Gandrud. Our work arises out of what dances on the edges of perception and our collective attention gravitates to the dream-like nature of human experience. We have been in collaboration since 2010. Our merged practices of visual and textual art unfold on a continuum, as part of an interconnected series evolving over time. Both performed “Fair Shouldered One” (a book which is not a book) at the &Now Literary Festival in Paris, 2012 and installed “Between Spaces”, a Yeats inspired dreamscape at the Hamilton Gallery, Sligo, 2013. Most recently participated in the Find Arts Project in Castlebar, Ireland. Our public art installation of words and images printed on linen, “Woven Found”, hung on Castle Street. The project won the best commissioning practice award from Allianz Business to Arts, 2014.

Nuala Clarke

Nuala Clarke, visual artist, lives and works between Co. Mayo and New York City. Educated at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, she moved to New York City in 1993. In September 2007, she received a fellowship to the Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Mayo and began returning to Ireland from NY to work every year. Clarke has been represented by Boltax Gallery, NY since 2005. Recent shows include, Amid a Space Between: Irish Artists in America at the SFMoMa Artists Gallery, San Francisco, (2012); to Tremble into Stillness, a WB Yeats related show at Hamilton Gallery, Sligo; RHA invited artist; and A drawing for Everything, Ballinglen Arts Foundation (2013). BLINK, a public art installation at the Westport Arts Festival, Co. Mayo (2014). Upcoming shows (2015): Impressions of Yeats, Hamilton Gallery, Sligo; Of this place, Sligo and Madrid.

nualaclarke@gmail.com

Crystal Gandrud

Crystal Gandrud, writer, lives in New York City and Normandy, France. She holds an MFA, Creative Writing and a BFA, Classical Theatre. Recent publications include “Yeatsian: Numberless Dreamers,” The Encyclopedia Project, 2014, “Here,” Lost Magazine, and “Idiom: Woodbird Flies Early,” The Encyclopedia Project. Her dissertation, “Murdoch: the Mandala Maker,” was presented at Kingston University’s Iris Murdoch Conference (2006), London. At the most recent Murdoch Conference, she performed a multi-media excerpt from a work-in-progress entitled “The Forgotten Man,” inspired by Murdoch’s philosophical writings. She is under contract for a memoire entitled “Astonishment: A Litany of the Uncanny.”

gandrud@actuallyorange.com

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