Category archives: Art
Every Day is a Gif(t): Tumbley Hole Man
Formative experience recollection time. It’s a summer evening in, oh, 1979 (or thenabouts), and I’m standing – gob-smacked and wonder-filled – in the lobby of the (no-longer-existent) prom-side cinema in Lahinch, Co. Clare. I’ve just seen Disney’s Snow White &… continue reading »
Weird Cheese Eye Things & Christian Allegory
Christian iconography. Chuckle! It’s as mad as a bag of transubstantiated communion wafers. Take Jan Provoost’s Christian Allegory (1510-15) for instance. Brimming with the thrown-together, jumble-of-images, pseudo-meaningful charm of a C-grade Leaving Cert “imaginative composition”. All the usual suspects are… continue reading »
Images that Make Me Want to Cry: 3 – Great Coffee, Great Friends
Look, we all hate ourselves. You. Me. The postman. The elderly woman you sat beside on the bus this morning. We all sob ourselves to fitful sleep (wallowing in our pits of self-loathing). And no wonder. Life is brutish, short… continue reading »
Images that Make Me Want to Cry: 2 – The Confused Clipart Stickman
A curious feature of ubiquitous images is this – as soon as you notice the ubiquity, concrete examples become hard to find. One minute they’re everywhere. And then, the minute after you mention their everywhere-ness to someone, they’re nowhere. Vanishing… continue reading »
Images that Make Me Want to Cry: 1 – The Corporate Handshake
Once, in a former life, I taught “Business English”. Really. I taught students proper forms of address. I taught them formalised small talk. I taught them how to compose a professional looking fax. I taught them all this hideous shit… continue reading »
Upside-Down and Downside-Up, Mirror Magic Means Much Mixing
While Gregory Gráinneog and his wretched companions eke out a miserable existence above ground (on a scorched and ruined earth), below the surface – in caverns dark, dank & deep – a weird cabaret repeats itself. Endlessly. A curtain prepares… continue reading »
The Campaign Poster Debaffler: 4 – The Watery Adventures of Toiréasa Ferris (Sinn Féin)
Early yesterday morning – as the wife the daughter, and the husband/father (i.e. myself) strode (and rolled) towards the Milk Market – we chanced upon the Sinn Féin Marine Assault Unit, out on maneuvers. Their movements were simultaneously furtive and… continue reading »
I Love Coffee, and I Now Have the T-Shirt to Prove it
Back in 1983, while in Mrs. Clifford’s third class, I won a copy of The Citadel of Chaos for drawing a picture of an elephant. Then, for a long time, nothing much happened. Until, that is, 2008 when I was… continue reading »
