Oliver Nares

Art and Music in a West Cork June

As a retired couple we often get asked what we find to do all day. How do you spend your time? Perhaps there’s a subtle sub-text of ‘way out there in the wilds of West Cork.’ Well, it’s only half way through the month and we have had numerous experiences already in June, including many that revolve around art and music so I thought I would highlight them in this post to give you a flavour of the Wilds. 

Robert has written extensively about the thriving art scene established first by the artists and hippies that made West Cork their home starting in the 60’s, a legacy that is celebrated in the Ballydehob Arts Museum. But it’s as true now as it was then and just in our small villages of Schull and Ballydehob we have been to several exhibitions over the last couple of weeks. I am always drawn to photography and I was bowled over in particular by three exhibitions. 

Oliver Nares is exhibiting at the moment in the Working Artists Studio in Ballydehob. The first three photographs in this post are his. The first two are Flutes and the one above is Tambourine. Oliver captures his images live and, as Pól Ó’Cólmán astutely noted at the opening, he photographs the music, not the musicians. Unbelievably, this is Oliver’s first ever exhibition – if the reaction is anything to go by, it won’t be his last!

Another exhibition that left me breathless was Richard Breathnach’s The Bog in the Bale at the Blue House Gallery. Everyone who comes to see this has the same reaction – what is this? An Oil Painting? An abstract? Richard’s photography, which included many many hours of lying in a bog waiting for just the right image, captures the reflections of a bog in those ubiquitous black plastic silage bales – the results are extraordinary and you can see more on his website.

Meanwhile, the Aisling Gallery, situated over Rosie’s Pub in Ballydehob, has an exhibition focused on All Things Maritime. Chris O’Dell’s iconic image of Cobh (above), taken from the sea, is only one of several of his photographs, and the photographs of others, on display in this show. Chris is a distinguished cinematographer who has worked in television and cinema and is now recording his archive.

We went to Kenmare to see the new Butter Market Gallery, recently opened. (OK – that’s in Kerry, not West Cork, but sure it’s only the next parish over.) With a Modern Irish Sculpture show as its premier event, we weren’t disappointed!

One of the standout artists in the Kenmare show for us was Ayelet Lalor – that’s her large piece above destined now for a hotel. Back in West Cork we were delighted that the Blue House Gallery in Schull devoted prime space in their latest show to her work. Titled A Life at Odds, Ayelet uses her iconic female heads to explore her own heritage and influences with an eclectic conglomeration of media including concrete, ceramics, cutlery, garden forks and industrial brooms!  The results are both captivating and provocative.

On to the music – our regular Friday sessions have resumed in Ballydehob after two years. It’s always great fun for Robert to participate in these and even more so now as they are earlier in the evening (starting at 7 rather than at 9) so he’s full of beans as he heads off with his melodeon and concertina. His post last week had a clip of them all playing. The Fastnet Maritime and Folk Festival is on here at the moment, so the village is full of musicians, including Jackie Daly and Matt Cranitch, about whom Robert wrote in his post Learning from the Masters – check that out to see some of their playing. For now, a tiny clip of John and Uwe from one of the sessions on tin whistle and flute playing Carolan’s Draught.

A couple of days ago we went over to the Beara to meet up with our friend Susan Byron, of Ireland’s Hidden Gems and her group of American tourists. Among them was Bob, who played us over the Healy Pass.

Finally, for something completely different, we travelled to the Beara again today to hear the wonderful David Syme in one of his legendary Living Room Concerts. If you ever get a chance to do this, grab it! Here he is playing the Chopin Etude “Tristess”. This is his own recording on YouTube, and if you Google David Syme and choose video, you’ll get lots more that will give you a flavour of what we heard this afternoon.

Among the pyrotechnics of Chopin, Schubert, Brahms, Bach and Gershwin, David told us a moving story about his Ukrainian-Jewish grandmother and played us a gentle piece called Jewish Prayer for Healing by Debbie Friedman. I will leave you with a short clip from his performance.

Experimental Archaeology – Oliver’s Cupmark

As a student of rock art I am often asked whether a cupmark, the central motif of all Irish rock art, could be just idle ‘doodling’. In response I have usually asserted that making a cupmark is quite a lot of work and therefore unlikely to be the result of simply whiling away time. But I must admit I based that answer on my own guesswork about of the time and difficulty involved, rather than on solid evidence. Well, no more! The scientific evidence is in – read on to see what we found.

Before he started – Oliver chose a piece of local sandstone and a variety of water-rolled cobbles as picks

First of all, let’s recap what a cupmark actually is. It’s a semi-hemispherical indentation on a rock surface which has been made by a human in the past. In Ireland it’s the most common motif found in prehistoric rock art, often on its own, and also associated with one or more concentric rings, lines extending from the cupmark through the rings, and other lines and grids. It’s usually circular in outline, sometimes perfectly so and sometimes rough and approximate. For a thorough discussion of Irish cupmarked stones, take a look at our post The Complex Cupmark, which has lots of illustrations of cupmarks, both on their own and with cup-and-ring marks. It’s a good introduction to what we are talking about and where they are sited in the Irish landscape.

Oliver found that the first part was the hardest – almost, he said, as if there was a skin you had to break through

Grand so – now you know all about cupmarks except for how, really, they were made. Our friend Oliver Nares became interested in this topic having read our blog posts, and decided that this question should be answered once and for all. In doing so, he has provided a real service to science.

Once through the ‘skin’ things went a little faster and the hammering action raised lots of dust. In some ethnographic studies of cultures that carve cupmarks it appeared that the dust was one of the desired outcomes and played a part in whatever rituals were involved

Believing that he should replicate as closely as possible local conditions, Oliver selected a piece of local sandstone as his base. The technique used to carve is often described as ‘picking’ – that is, repeated taps on the surface of the rock by a stone ‘pick’. No metal was used: the cupmark tradition, although it persisted in time well into the Bronze Age, started in the Neolithic before the invention of metal tools. Copper or bronze would not have been strong enough anyway.

Oliver started with a quartz pick, reasoning that, as one of the hardest local minerals, this would be the ideal stone. However, he soon realised that the quartz stones he could find were not large enough to make a serious impact on the sandstone surface.

He gathered a variety of water-rolled cobbles from a local beach and worked away until they became too chipped, or until they broke. In this way he went through at least a dozen cobbles, perhaps as many as twenty.

On one visit to watch progress I took a turn. What I found hard was maintaining the round shape – as you can see my hammering was turning Oliver’s lovely circle into an egg-shape

A pick is generally a pointed tool – a bit like a hammer but with a pointed tip that allows a geologist, say, to split rock to take samples. Modern picks are made of very hard steel. In practice, it is almost impossible to find a stone that will mirror the pointy-ness and the hardness of a steel pick. Oliver found that hammering or bashing with a cobble was actually the only way he could make headway on carving out the cupmark. Perhaps picking, in fact, is not quite the right was to describe the technique. 

Once the cupmark was as deep and round as he wished, his next step was to smoothen the inside. We have noted this as a feature of cupmarks – when you run your fingers around the inside they do feel more smooth than rough. In fact, a rough surface is often an indication that the ‘cupmark’ is actually a naturally occurring geological anomaly or solution pitting rather than the product of human labour.

At first Oliver used only water to grind away at the surface (above), but soon added beach sand (below) and saw an immediate improvement. His finished product – a cupmark 12cm across and 3.5 com deep – was nice and smooth inside. In terms of size, this cupmark falls well within the normal range of variation in the cupmarks we have seen. 

So, how much time did this actually take, and how much work was it? Oliver estimates that he put between 20 and 25 hours into making this cupmark. Despite being tall and strong, he couldn’t work on it for too long at a stretch because, as is obvious in the videos, repetitive strain and muscle damage was a real hazard.

The other thing that smoothing did was bring out the dark colour of the rock under the surface

What Oliver has shown is that nobody would carve a cupmark unless they were deeply motivated to do so. It must have been an important activity associated with some aspect of the culture that required the kind of labour involved. Perhaps long practice enabled prehistoric carvers to make a cupmark in less than the time that Oliver took but there’s no denying that even for an expert this is a significant undertaking.

Thank you, Oliver, for all that effort! And thank you too for the cupmarked stone itself, now occupying a space outside our door. it looks great – but more than that it is a constant reminder of both your generous donation of your time in the cause of science and the age-old tradition of cupmark carving and the mysteries that lie at its heart.