Seeds of....
“Seeds of…” is an interactive painting. It started with my desire to connect with the suffering in Darfur, the hunger, the violence against women, children and the elderly. I thought of the intergenerational consequences of this genocide and the clusters of genocides throughout the world over time, as well as persistent poverty.
The theme of Seeds evolved: What are we planting, what are we sowing? What are we harvesting, what are we reaping?
I wanted viewers to be participating by giving them an opportunity to express their feelings and imaginations, to ask: What could we plant? Peace or violence? What can we harvest? Hope or despair?
This piece is currently at The Carter Center in the permanent collection.
A Few Words about Aunt JoAnn By Brendan Hughes 11/7/2015
JoAnn Hughes has joined
a glorious circle of Irish hags.
JoAnn’s mother was Anna Elizabeth Bean
born in Dorchester in 1902.
JoAnn’s mother’s mother
was Mary Clifford
born in Ireland in 1873.
JoAnn’s mother’s mother’s mother
was Katherine Sweeney,
born in Killeentierna in 1853.
JoAnn’s father’s mother
was Margaret Bambrick
born on Prince Edward Island
(which her father called “Poverty Every Inch”)
in 1872.
JoAnn’s father’s father’s mother
was Margaret Flynn,
born in Tipperary Ireland in 1827.
And JoAnn’s father’s father’s father’s mother
was Johanna Barnes,
born in Wexford Ireland in 1796.
Anna Bean,
Mary Clifford,
Katherine Sweeney,
Margaret Bambrick,
Margaret Flynn,
and Johanna Barnes
gather now tonight
at the hag rock,
opening their circle
to welcome JoAnn Hughes,
where the clouds and the surf and the rock
can all become in an instant the same color
and blend despite their densities
into one continuous whole
just as you stand and witness them.
A solid color,
an impossibly earthen
grey-ish,
blue-ish
that is half inside of you
that is impossible to describe
with meager English words
that only a painting
by JoAnn Hughes herself
could hope to truly capture.
Rose Kennedy had a saying.
“What’s the use of being Irish
if the world doesn’t break your heart.”
JoAnn’s rediscovery of her very Irishness
brought her to the Hag of Beara
brought her to a circle and a nation
of hags with broken hearts
who moved heaven and earth and sea
to synthesize the joy and the pain
of the act of living.
JoAnn painted. She spoke. She read.
She told the truth.
She reclaimed for the simple word “hag”
the forgotten power laying deep within it.
And now she has joined
A glorious circle of Irish hags
at rock and ocean and sky
Anna, Mary, Katherine, Margaret, Margaret, Johanna – JoAnn
For JoAnn - written and read by Christine Ernst, November 2015
For JoAnn
on the Sunday two weeks before you leave us
Marney and I crawl into bed with you
we cry together we laugh at the grand joke the blunder of the universe
what the hell we say this is crap you say
I rub your feet you describe the rough bundle of your anger
how you left it in a heap on the ground
you are on a new path now and that thing was a great weight
and you show us the sketches the twiggy wild haired women in sturdy shoes
your middle of the night notebook and the sentence to your poet friend in Ireland
you meant to ask to use his poems but you wrote bones instead
same difference we reason
we talk about the Hag her story your story of seeking her the story you will not finish
so you charge us with the telling
and we cry some more together
on the Sunday one week before you leave us
we gather a Hag circle round you 30 women at least
smashed into the church of your bedroom
you might be the shrine stone herself
Cailleach Bhéara
you are small though not diminished frail but the silence in this sacred space is such
that we receive every word
you give us once more your father’s dying words
one hundred women with push open the gate
you remind us of our responsibility to this message
you speak we listen we breathe with you we don’t want to tire you but hate to leave
and no one really knows the protocol for such a gathering but
then dear Verna faints
you chuckle at this the release
and the Circle is broken
on the Monday before you leave us
I drive down route 6A in the gloaming
paper bag on the seat
I bring real Irish mead or at least he said it was real Irish mead
Marjorie is there we laugh about your pillowcase
a repurposed cashmere sweater and your blanket likewise gray alpaca
stitched together with fat thread a hag’s shawl you have made
you are a queen we sip the honey wine together from earthenware cups
toasting you toasting the ingenuity of hags
I add another budim Russian for simply we shall be
I kiss your feet tonight
understanding time is very short
budim dearest hag budim Cailleach Bhéara we shall be
on the Thursday before you leave us
I am cleaning in my sadness needing the task
purging the stacks and piles paper clutter hoarded scraps
I open an old journal before it goes to recycling and there on the page
a poem for you I wrote five years ago when you and Charlie rented the pink house
I tear it out and take it and leave
drive too fast the weather has cleared the day glitters with wet leaves
the time is too near precious space with your family so
I may just stand on your lawn and read it
but the front door is open I see straight through to your bedroom through the window beyond to the sea the same water that laps the shore at Coulagh Bay
Jennifer nods you’ve come to say good-bye she says
I kneel next to your bed and tell you I found a poem
I cannot do better work in this world than to read this poem to you
you understand you nod and smile
and I read this:
as he lay dying
Mr. Hughes told his daughter JoAnn that
100 women would push open the gate to the future
such a statement for her old dad to make but he told exactly the right person
his JoAnn in her plain linen flax homespun
her socks and birkenstocks sensibility
her straight-talking floppy-hat look-you-in-the-eye-and-nod-silently way about her
she received his message wrote it painted it packed it up and took it to Ireland
trudged it across the shale the peat the rocky heath down the Kilcatherine road
delivered it to the great hag herself
Cailleach Bhéara! I have news! 100 women will push open the gate!
freckly hag glorious hag our girl a prophet from the west
on Irish earth to meet her ancestors
to speak to the great mother on our behalf
JoAnn peering out the upstairs window of the pink house
scanning the horizon for silhouettes of wild-haired women in sturdy shoes
women dancing
the land the rocks rang with their singing she joined them
JoAnn standing on the ground the shoulders the bones of her forewomen
she communed with the hundred gone before her
made safer the way for the hundred still to be born
she met the hag
and brought her home to us
