Carrowbeg Artists’ show rooted in sensory connection to nature

Visit the gorgeous group exhibition running upstairs at the Custom House Studios Gallery in Westport and find yourself transported to a world in which nature both forms the canvas and guides the hands that create.

Wall and floor spaces are adorned with delicate, whimsical-feeling creations, constructed with feathers, willow rods, bark, flax, stones, driftwood, flowers, shells, berries, nettle string and other materials. Many are painted with natural pigments – the predominant hues are palish pink, brave white, rich turmeric and earthy, reddish jasper. There’s also a selection of beautiful monoprints made using native leaves, ink and blackberries, as well as a video installation capturing moments along the journey to the show.

To create the exhibition, Westport-based artist Christine Prescott worked for 12 weeks with the Carrowbeg Artists Group, a group of artists with intellectual disabilities that has been creating for 13 years under the guidance of Caroline Masterson, Breda Burns and Gráinne O’Reilly at Custom House Studios at the Quay. The participating artists are Ellen Cafferkey, Una Kearns, Trish Kelly, Anna Rose Lowry, Gerry O’Malley, Sarah Kelly and Máire Maguire.

During her time with them, Christine engaged with the artists as they created art in nature, introducing them to the creative possibilities offered by the natural materials around us. This involved spending time in the natural world during excursions to Old Head Beach in Louisburgh and the woods at Westport House with the artists and their carers.

But these were no ordinary walks in the forest or the trips to beach.

Over the past few years, Christine has been introducing people to the benefits of forest bathing and nature connection – and both of these formed a big part of the outings.

So what is forest bathing when it’s at home?

“It’s about immersing all your senses in the forest,” she tells The Mayo News. “Usually we’re really busy, running here to there with all our timetables…. If we go to the woods we might have a dog with us or our headphones in – so we’re in a natural space, but we’re not paying attention to it.

“What forest bathing does is it gives you permission to step out of all of that busyness and spend time soaking up the forest. You do that through your senses, through touch and taste, smell, sight, listening. All your senses help you tune into where we’re from, where we come from, where we evolved from. In everyday life we become separated from that, but when we give ourselves time to join it again, it can be a simple but very profound experience for people.”

Is it like meditation? “It’s a little like that,” she says. “Some people have said they prefer it to meditation because it gives them something to do; they’re not just sitting there, cross-legged, trying to quieten their mind. It gives their mind something to focus on. It’s like listening outside the body rather than inside the body. You can explore things that you haven’t noticed before, like the shapes and textures on a tree. So it while it can quieten the mind like meditation does, it’s more playful; it’s more about embracing that childlike curiosity.”

During their trips into nature, Christine introduced the Carrowbeg Artists to a combination of forest-bathing methods and eco-art using natural materials. Through nature-immersion sessions designed to open sensory awareness to their surroundings, the participants explored ways they could use natural world around them to make patterns, prints, sounds or sculptural forms. They focused on themes of colour, touch, pattern and shape, as well as movement, sound, visual contrast, smell, mood, ambience, orientation, gravity and balance. The sessions could involve something as simple as walking barefoot, picking up leaves or using touch to explore the bark of a tree.

A real boon to the entire project was the availability of a beach-friendly wheelchair at Old Head, supplied by Mayo County Council, which allows wheelchair users get onto the sand and even into the water. Two of the Carrowbeg Artists availed of this, and it proved a wonderful aspect to the day, enriching the whole experience for everyone. Christine also praised the accessibility of the grounds of Westport House, which allowed the group to spend time in the woods and at the lake – places that all too often are beyond the reach of people with disabilities.

The name of the group’s exhibition, ‘So Nice Day’, is a summation of the simple, shared joy felt by everyone – artists, facilitators and carers – after spending a day together immersed in nature.

So many of us rush passed the natural world, its endless wondrous forms lost to us in the blur of our own preoccupations. This exhibition, and indeed its genesis, is a gentle reminder to us all. Stop a while. See, listen, feel. Reconnect.

• ‘So Nice Day’, by the Carrowbeg Artists Group, is on show upstairs at the Custom House Studios Gallery, The Quay, Westport, until Sunday, February 4.